Brent Bozell makes an interesting observation about the timing of Michael Richards' meltdown that I hadn't caught:

On the very day that Fox announced it was withdrawing both the O.J. book and the TV show, news emerged that another Hollywood has-been, comedian Michael Richards, went on a screaming frenzy at the Laugh Factory, using the N-word against two black men heckling from the audience.

It's also worth noting that Richards (just last week, though it seems like it was ages ago, doesn't it?), and now this week, Danny DeVito, were both caught by something I dubbed the Internet Immortality Thesis at the start of the month.

(Which seems like a lifetime ago, after the election, Thanksgiving, OJ, Richards, DeVito, the new Bond movie that was actually pretty good for a change...wow, what a long strange month it's been!)

At dinner tonight, I overhead the couple at the table next to ours discussing Danny DeVito's drunken appearance on The View, with the husband telling his wife, "Hey, just download it off YouTube--that's where I saw it". In the past, a celebrity could drink himself blotto in Johnny Carson's green room, stumble through an appearance, and be pretty much assured that unless he really said something divisive, it was on the air and done. (This really worked if you were a liberal politician and said something idiotic, drunk or sober.) And even in the era of VCRs, so what if a handful of people taped it?

Today, YouTube and the Blogosphere have changed all that, and in an era of demassified individual publishing, the safety net that the liberal mass media provided its favorite sons no longer exists. That doesn't mean that entertainers such as Richards and DeVito won't still make fools of themselves from time to time--that's pretty much the main role that celebrities play in today's culture these days. But it should make them pause for thought.

Just ask Senator Kerry--and former Senator Allen.

Update: Related thoughts from Carol Platt Liebau; Hugh Hewitt observes that the Boston Globe is still protecting Kerry, after all these years.

I have a lengthy review of the latest incarnation of Cakewalk's Sonar PC-based multitrack recording program, over at Blogcritics.

Near the end of the piece, I tried to give a brief preview of the multimedia of the very near future: 64-bit computing. While Sonar 6 works great with good ol' Windows XP Professional, it's also compatible with the 64-bit version of Windows XP. One big, big advantage of 64-bit computing? Currently, Windows XP supports up to four gigs of RAM.

64-bit Windows supports a whopping 128-gigs of RAM, and the 64-bit computing in general apparently has a theoritical limit of 16 exabytes! (Insert bug-eyed emoticon here.)

Of course, 200 years from now when we're beaming people up and storing their data in the pattern buffers, we'll wonder how mankind got anything done with a pitiful 128-gigs of RAM. But for the next decade or so, that sounds like a potent future for home multimedia creation. Needless to say, though--Hollywood won't be happy.

In a pair of his trademarked FAQ lists, Dean Barnett looks towards the future, both near term and far. He explores the not-so-rosy future of The Baker Commission; and the legacy of President Bush--of which the jury's still out.

ABC writes, "Iranian Weapons Arm Iraqi Militia".

Wow, there's a shocker, huh?

Update: Tammy Bruce asks an intriguing question:

Could it also be the Establishment Media, now that the Dems are in charge, are keen to provide support for staying in Iraq or even striking Iran? Hmm...

I'm not sure how much I agree with that hypothesis, but as David Keene notes, the left would be wise to avoid being blamed by history for yet another bugout, as when an earlier Democrat-controlled Congress, given cover by a liberal media much more powerful (not to mention omnipresent) than it is today, cut funding on support for the South Vietnamese in the mid-1970s.

TigerHawk is taking credit for being the source of the well-linked Mark Steyn/Ralph Peters Thunderdome rumble this weekend, adding:

Read TigerHawk today to anticipate the intramural blogospheric struggles of tomorrow.

Fair enough!

Andrew Sullivan's worst nightmare is soon to come true, as Tom Maguire writes:

Is America ready for a Mormon leader who is pro-life and believes that "marriage should be between a man and a woman"? We'll find out soon enough--Harry Reid becomes Senate Majority Leader next January.

It's gobsmacking!

Well, this was inevitable, wasn't it?

Michael Richards is getting support from someone who knows exactly what he's going through - Mel Gibson.

Gibson, infamous for his anti-semitic invective after being pulled over for drunk driving, tells Entertainment Weekly, "I feel really badly for the guy. He was obviously in a state of stress. You don't need to be inebriated to be bent out of shape." Ain't that the truth!

Regarding Richards' fate in the media, Mel added, "They'll probably torture him for a while and then let him go. I like him." Of course he does.

Looks like Kramer can count on work in a Gibson flick. Perfect pairing.

And Disney will be more than happy to promote the heck out of it.

When it's a war by proxy. And as the Professor writes, "they're the proxies of Iran and Syria. These people are not our friends".

Something that NBC, in their quest for ratings and a Cronkite moment of their own, obviously either don't understand, or are willing to distort for ratings and their apparent hope for not just the president's scalp, but those of thousands of innocent Iraqis as well.

Update: Speaking of wars by proxy, let's add Saudi Arabia to the equation, as well.

Gene Expression has some really interesting stats on Europe and belief.

(Via The Corner.)

James Webb, class all the way:

The Washington Post reports that at a recent White House reception for freshmen members of Congress, Senator-elect James Webb tried to avoid President Bush. He declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the president. Eventually, however, Bush found him and asked him how his son, a Marine, was doing. Webb responded, "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President." Bush said, "That's not what I asked you; how's your boy?" According to the Post, Webb "coldly" replied "That's between me and my boy, Mr. President."

The Hill adds this charming detail:

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.

Kudos to President Bush for making the extra effort to seek him out, knowing that the ill-tempered Webb would more than likely self-destruct. But Power Line notes that Webb's more than willing to change his mind about a president, should the situation require it:

Webb seems to get off on disrespecting presidents. In 1997, he said:

I cannot conjure up an ounce of respect for Bill Clinton when it comes to the military. Every time I see him salute a Marine, it infuriates me. I don't think Bill Clinton cares one iota about what happens in a military unit.

However, when Webb needed Clinton's help, he brought the man whose administration he had called "the most corrupt in modern memory" to help him raise funds. Webb explained his about face by claiming that 9/11 had wiped the slate clean.

Thus, if Bush cared, he could take solace in the knowledge that if the wind changes, so too will the attitude of the erratic opportunist from Virginia.

Allah writes that he's just tossing the base some red meat to momentarily placate them:

Smells like something Webb’s people planted in order to give the Kossacks something to moon over before, in a gesture of scorn and contempt, he spits out their collective schwanz and goes maverick on them.

Jim Webb: the Joe Lieberman of 2012!

Me? I'm just happy he didn't ask for his rifle, as another rootin-tootin' reactionary ex-vet did a couple of years ago before meeting the president.

Update: George Will has some further thoughts.

...But you can't take him out of the actor who brought him to life so vividly, by making actor and character appear inseparable (not to mention insufferable). Danny DeVito, who hasn't had a hit movie since, arguably L.A. Confidential nearly a decade ago, really knows how to spread the holiday cheer in promoting his latest film, Deck The Halls:

Danny DeVito seemed drunk when he went on an anti-Bush tirade on ABC’s The View on Wednesday. DeVito recounted how he last visited the White House during the Clinton years, warmly noting that "the place was, had that kind of Clinton feeling, you know," before denigrating President Bush as "numb nuts" (or something like that — ABC bleeped over the last part of that word).

DeVito then began what was supposed to be mimicry of Bush, making a variety of weird sounds and facial expressions. It’s impossible to really capture DeVito’s performance in words (he’d admitted he’d been up partying all night with George Clooney), so I’ve posted a short video of one of his more explosive moments. [Click over to view the clips--Ed]

After his Bush-bashing, DeVito then asked the panel what they thought about "the hat trick last week — Rumsfeld, the House and the Senate," referring to the Democrats’ election victories and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld’s stepping down. DeVito announced how he reacted to the news: "I took my clothes off."

Now that's how to sell a family-friendly Christmas movie to its Red State target audience!

In his podcast interview on The Glenn & Helen Show (which yes, I tuned into largely because of this headline--thanks Allah!), Orson Scott Card said:

What does being liberal have to do with opposing or supporting the war against terror? Our enemies in the war against terror are so anti-liberal, that you would think it would be liberals leaping to protect the world from these monstrous ideologies. Everything that they accuse the Christian right of being, Al Qaeda is. And the Christian right, generally speaking, isn't. But they can get all exercised about the pernicious, evil influence of Christianity in America, without thinking that, oh, maybe we could find it useful to oppose, with force, as has been required of us, the forces of radical Islam. It's just regarded as being unrelated, when it is related. And then the things that are not related, they treat as if they were. It's just maddening.

Victor Davis Hanson explores what happens when a civilization is too exhausted to continue:

Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian benevolence, is the foundation of our material progress, common decency, and scientific excellence, is at risk in this new millennium.

But our newest foes of Reason are not the enraged Athenian democrats who tried and executed Socrates. And they are not the Christian zealots of the medieval church who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity. Nor are they Nazis who burned books and turned Western science against its own to murder millions en masse.

No, the culprits are now more often us. In the most affluent, and leisured age in the history of Western civilization--never more powerful in its military reach, never more prosperous in our material bounty--we have become complacent, and then scared of the most recent face of barbarism from the primordial extremists of the Middle East.

What would a beleaguered Socrates, a Galileo, a Descartes, or Locke believe, for example, of the moral paralysis in Europe? Was all their bold and courageous thinking--won at such a great personal cost--to allow their successors a cheap surrender to religious fanaticism and the megaphones of state-sponsored fascism?

Just imagine in our present year, 2006: plan an opera in today's Germany, and then shut it down. Again, this surrender was not done last month by the Nazis, the Communists, or kings, but by the producers themselves in simple fear of Islamic fanatics who objected to purported bad taste. Or write a novel deemed unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That is what did Salman Rushdie did, and for his daring, he faced years of solitude, ostracism, and death threats--and in the heart of Europe no less. Or compose a documentary film, as did the often obnoxious Theo Van Gogh, and you may well have your throat cut in "liberal" Holland. Or better yet, sketch a simple cartoon in postmodern Denmark of legendary easy tolerance, and then go into hiding to save yourself from the gruesome fate of a Van Gogh. Or quote an ancient treatise, as did Pope Benedict, and then learn that all of Christendom may come under assault, and even the magnificent stones of the Vatican may offer no refuge--although their costumed Swiss Guard would prove a better bulwark than the European police. Or write a book critical of Islam, and then go into hiding in fear of your life, as did French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker.

And we need not only speak of threats to free speech, but also the tangible rewards from a terrified West to the agents of such repression. Note the recent honorary degree given to former Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, whose regime has killed and silenced so many, and who himself is under investigation by the Argentine government for his role in sponsoring Hezbollah killers to murder dozens of Jewish innocents in Buenos Aires.

Read the rest. And don't miss the rest of the Orson Scott Card podcast. You'll hear many of the themes that we've addressed in various posts over the years here repeated and amplified brilliantly by Card, who sounds like a terrific interviewee.

Update: In regards to the above YouTube clip, which I found the other day on the Pajamas homepage, Libertas writes, "Hey, Hollywood, Over Here…":

We’re coming up on a new year and I’m sure you’re all set to shoot your 1,008th film about American imperialism, your 257th film about AIDS, your 912th film about Southern bigotry, and your 100,632nd film about the Hollywood blacklist. And I don’t want to stop you, but how about telling this story about Iran hanging 4,000 people only because they’re gay? I’m sure you’re buried under development ideas about the plight of gays and lesbians not being able to marry in a country happy to offer civil unions, but in the country lead by a man Mike Wallace found charming they’re actually hanging people for being gay.

Why should Hollywood take a chance on an untested plot like that? Especially when Hollywood's longstanding obsessions are still burning up the box office.

No, that wasn't the catch phrase from Buckaroo Bonzai. Tim Blair explores the "HOT! Er, I mean, warm. Er, climate changed" pinup calendar released into the environment by the self-proclaimed “ecobabes” of California's Sonoma County.

Update: "Pirelli's position as the babes calendar is not under threat here."

In Opinion Journal, Om Malick explores the importance of software platforms:

A couple of years ago, in the days before YouTube, a short video clip spread like wildfire on the Internet. It showed the fourth richest man on the planet, Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, doing a crazy jig onstage at a conference, screaming "developers, developers, developers." Truer words have never been spoken--or repeated. Without "developers," Microsoft would not possess its desktop monopoly or billions of dollars in profits.

Those developers are the little platoons of software programmers and product-inventors who turn operating systems (like Microsoft's Windows), Internet browsers (Firefox), game devices (PlayStation) and much else into something more than themselves--into "platforms" upon which a whole economic ecosystem rests. It is impossible to imagine Dell Computer's success, or that of Intuit Corp. or even Electronic Arts (the videogame company) without the platform that Windows constructed with the help, so to speak, of Microsoft. Windows is but one example of many software engines that have propelled mega-billion-dollar industries and created wealth beyond compare. Just as the internal combustion engine led to the formation of the modern automobile industry and ended up driving so much else in the economy (think only of steel and gasoline), invisible engines are now powering the vast postindustrial economies in which we live and work.

Such is the persuasive thesis of "Invisible Engines," by David S. Evans, Andrei Hagiu and Richard Schmalensee. The authors document the rise of platforms, outline the strategies by which they are developed and marketed, and offer little-known details about popular devices--Sony's PlayStation, Apple's iPod, Palm Treo--that have become essential aspects of our modern lives.

No wonder the American left and the EU want/wanted to topple Microsoft and long for the 1950s--or at least the 1970s, when things were so much simpler at the tail end of the industrial revolution rather than its information-based demassified successor.

Mickey Kaus has some thoughts on lazy journalism:

Many analysts say that "analysts say" pieces are the laziest form of journalism, because the "analysts" usually just happen to say what the journalist himself would say if the rules of journalism permitted him to do so without putting the opinions in the mouths of "analysts." Meanwhile, analysts who might say something else get ignored. But at least "analysts say" pieces, analysts say, should quote some analysts saying the things the analysts are supposed to have said. Otherwise the impression is overhwelming that the journalist who wrote the thing is just spouting off. According to observers.

Indeed, as some say in the Blogosphere.

Allah writes, "Fox News just broke in to say that [Alcee] Hastings has confirmed he won’t lead" the House Intelligence Committee. The Professor writes, "That's bad news for the GOP, but good news for the Democrats, and the country".

We're still in the preseason, but that's O for 2 for Speaker-to-be-Pelosi, incidentally.

Update: In a post titled with a variation of Mickey Kaus's great "Alcee Ya!" pun, Paul Mirengoff of Power Line writes, "Pelosi reportedly is still resolved to deny the chair to her adversary Rep. Jane Harman, who was in line for the position and (for a Democrat) would not have been a bad choice. So Pelosi still has an interesting decision to make."

Meanwhile, Alcee has his "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more" moment.

Back in my college days, I would have signed up for this course in an Old Milwaukee second. Cathy Young writes:

Maybe the next frontier in the academic battle against all varieties of oppression should be "drunk studies." Why not an academic program championing the idea that "alcohol abuse" is an artificial construct based on the mainstream culture's oppressive notions of what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate consumption of alcohol? "Drunk studies" could tell us that the stigmatization of drunkenness stems from the Western valorization of such dubious values as self-control, rationality, and obedience to social norms, and reflects a pernicious fear of rebellion against inhibitions and authority. Of course, it would also question conventional wisdom -- supposedly based on scientific evidence, but really rooted in anti-drunk bias -- about the deleterious health consequences of alcohol abuse and the dangers of drunk driving. After all, the goal of "drunk studies" would be to empower drunks!

Glenn Reynolds suggests the perfect professor to helm the course; Ann Althouse has some thoughts on the just-as-ludicrous actual course that inspired Young's proposal.

Incidentally, if the courses that Young and Althouse discuss ever got together for a chat, this would have to be the food of choice at the interdepartmental meetings!

James Lileks, a resident of the Minneapolis area, has an exceptionally good idea for a story:

Back to work now; more tomorrow, including a discussion of the piece in the local paper about the background of that fellow who was kicked off the plane last week. I mean, given the questions and peculiarities of some of his associations, I am certain a full accounting is forthcoming.

Because I can’t see any reason why such a piece wouldn’t be written.

Ergo, I’m certain it’s en route.

Quite certain.

Absolutely dead-bang positive.

Really. I also expect that a reporter will have called the hotel where the conference took place, found out who was in the adjacent room, contacted a representative of that organization, asked for a recap of what they heard, and ran the assessment past a newly prominent local politician who was in attendance to see if it squared with his recollection. Said politician would also be asked about the deplaned imam’s connections, regardless of whether this seemed like recrudescent Islamophobia, because these are crucial issues –

Sorry. Got the vapors for a moment. All better now.

It's truly sad when an individual citizen of a major metropolitan area can't get the attention of anyone at the apparently extremely impersonal major metropolitan newspaper that services his area, and is forced to write these things on his blog. But then, these local Minneapolis citizens also couldn't attract the attention of that same newspaper either, despite some chance encounters a few years back with at least one of its columnists.

I'm sure it's all just a coincidence, mere synchronicity, as is the original story itself, of course.

The National Football League has long been known as a copycat league. When one team has enormous success, every aspect of its program is scrutinized by other NFL teams to see what worked, and what can be adapted to level the playing field.

After the 1985 Chicago Bears went 15-1 in the regular season and blew out the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX, their ultimate team weapon was exposed by several other teams in the late 1980s, who would utilize it themselves for its talismanic powers:

Behold! The really, really, really cheesy team rap video.

WARNING: The management of Ed Driscoll.com, Pajamas Media, the National Football League, Ditka's Steakhouse, and Refrigerator Perry are in no way responsible for the psychic damage that clicking on the above link and watching all three videos back to back can potentially cause. Proceed at your own risk!

In Iraq that is. Is the name Jamil Hussein about to join Adnan Hajj in the ranks of journalistic infamy bogosity? Gateway Pundit notes that AP has relied on him "at least 10 times since April of this year".

Meanwhile, Allah writes, "See-Dubya wants to know (a) who is Qais al-Bashir and (b) why is his byline on (almost) every AP story that quotes phony police captain Jamil Hussein?"

The Dallas Cowboys cut Mike Vanderjagt today, who is either "the most accurate kicker in NFL history", if you ask him, or "that idiot kicker", if you ask former teammate Peyton Manning. They're replacing him with Martin Gramatica, who's had his own cases of the yips in recent years.

The Cowboys enter the Meadowlands, Bill Parcells' old stomping grounds this Sunday, to play the New York Giants, which is known--not the least of which, to Parcells--as a temperamental location for kickers late in the season.

James Taranto explores the Mark Steyn/Ralph Peters smackdown yesterday and writes, "Think about this: Peters is predicting a rebirth of European fascism, possibly including genocide--and he's the optimist of this pair".

"Poll: Kerry Ranks Low With Voters". Who knew?!

In more serious Election 2008 news, Jim Geraghty writes:

Over in the New York Sun, I've started a new feature, a weekly or so update on the early goings-on in the 2008 presidential race. Yes, early as it seems, the strategic moves and jockeying have begun already, and there is news to cover.

Update: More astonishing news just in, here.

Power Line's Scott Johnson has the perfect location to hold the meetings, if America wants to negotiate with Iran and Syria.

Jonah Goldberg compares troop morale in Vietnam and Iraq and writes:

There are lots of stories, many heartbreaking, about family hardships, soldiers missing their homes, battle stress and the like. But they don't "feel" like stories coming from another Vietnam. Lord knows the press is looking for these kinds of stories. And yet we do hear a lot from troops about how they want to see this through and how they don't want this to be another Vietnam (i.e. they don't want to see America turn its back on the Iraqis the way it did on the South Vietnamese). Maybe I'm missing something(s), but as far as dogs that don't bark go, this is a pretty big dog.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has advice for Senator Kerry--or something like that.

(For an earlier media dog that didn't bark, click here.)

Update: Elsewhere, Patterico looks at the sources that Big Media uses for its Iraq stories and writes, "It’s very sobering to realize that much of the news coming out of Iraq is completely unreliable".

Another Update: Charles Johnson writes:

Curt at Flopping Aces has received confirmation from CENTCOM that “Iraqi police Capt. Jamil Hussein,” cited as a source (often the only source) in a long string of media articles about murders and atrocities in Iraq (including the recent report of 6 people burned alive), is not a police officer, nor is he employed by Iraq’s Interior Ministry.

Paging Mr. Hajj, Mr. Adnan Hajj to the white courtesy phone, please.

Betsy Newmark writes:

Jonathan Chait, who first came to many people's attention by writing about all the ways he hated George W. Bush, now comes out in the Los Angeles Times with the argument that Iraq is such a mess right now that we should just bring back Saddam Hussein and have him impose order. Sure, he's a murderous dictator and all, but he'd know how to stop all the killing in Iraq.

It's usually a safe bet that the Times of both coasts will back The Man With The Mustache.

Update: Related thoughts here and here, found via The Anchoress.

Another Update: Orrin Judd retorts, "White South Africa was safer too", but I'm not sure if that would phase the L.A. Times all that much. This is a paper which only last year was singing the praises of North Korea, after all.

And The Road To Utopia was pulled from theaters some time in 1946. But, as Michael Barone writes, all of the "Progressive" economic plans of the incoming Democrat-controlled Congress head Back To The Future. Whether the final destination is Europe of the 1970s, or the American "Rust Belt" economy of Ike and Truman's years is what's being debated.

But as Barone writes, there is a Third Way (to coin a phrase) available to them:

One interesting proposal by [Clinton aide Gene Sperling] is for a "universal 401(k)," which would give all workers tax-sheltered savings accounts, funded by employers and employees. One option is to give low earners tax credits, perhaps even refundable tax credits, for their contributions to the accounts. Over time, this would increase low earners' wealth accumulation -- progressive redistribution. But it would also tend to transfer funds from the federal treasury to individuals, from the public sector to the private sector -- not the direction Democrats usually want to go.

It's a proposal that looks a lot like the Social Security individual investment accounts George W. Bush called for, and Democrats scorned. It would be ironic if this turns out to be the major progressive achievement of this Democratic Congress.

And it may just be the most viable.

Update: Rowan Callick explores how the election is playing overseas.

Tammy Bruce spots the "Most Idiotic, Contradictory Headline of the Day"; meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt explores the mindset of those who write them.

The Independent's Mark Hooper writes:

It's been an extraordinary few months for Hollywood's A-list actors: embarrassing outbursts, drunken tirades and - here's the real issue - their films tanking spectacularly at the box office. Are we witnessing the last generation of true movie stars?

* * *

The isolated incidents with major stars hint at a much larger truth: the business of movie-making is undergoing a major shift, one that will be felt a long way from California. The reality is stark and impossible to ignore. Box-office figures are down: the returns from 2005 - due to high-profile flops such as The Island and Kingdom of Heaven - were the lowest for 15 years. DVD sales, so lucrative during the past few (omega) years, have flattened. Piracy is rampant: according to industry experts, illegal copying now accounts for $1.3bn annually in lost revenue in the US alone. All the while, the stars want more money for their performances. In 1995, the average cost of making and marketing a movie was $54.1m; by last year, it had spiralled to $96.2m.

* * *

So, what does this mean for the stars? Film magazine Premiere recently claimed that we are witnessing the demise of "the last unironic movie-star generation".(omega) Certainly, Russell Crowe and the rest had better get used to considerably deflated salaries. In another high-profile case, 20th Century Fox and Universal clashed with the mighty Peter Jackson, Oscar-winning director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, over wage demands - the Jackson-produced Halo, based on the video game of the same name, has since been halted.

At this point, do I even need to say it?

In the middle of the Anchoress's extensive highlights of weekend Blogospheric action, she has a particularly good round-up of posts bringing readers up to speed on Mitt Romney. She writes that Romney is "going to have a long row to hoe if he is serious about a bid for the White House", and I agree--he will:

Ann Althouse is giving Andrew Sullivan a dressing down and she’s staying on the subject with a second post. I think this is very interesting and bears watching. Ann Althouse is demonstrating for all the world to see, what a classical liberal looks like. She reads Sullivan’s disappointing thrust on Mitt Romney’s religion, and she notes the unsurprising secondary parries in the press, and she is properly angry that a man’s religion is clearly being used to cast suspicion and doubt upon both his motives and his morals.

Once upon a time, the people who identified themselves as liberals would get upset to see someone attacked for their religion. Now, the people who call themselves liberal (or who staunchly identify themselves as conservatives, although with a clear leftist bent) seem to be embracing a very different mindset. It’s time to either take back the world “liberal” or find a way to distinguis “classical liberals” from the pack. I like Althouse’s righteous anger here - and her warnings about the very dangerous game that is being played with religion by people who should know better - and urge you to read what she is saying, even though I am not yet on board with Mitt Romney.

And btw, Betsy Newmark predicted all this, (and so did I) a long while back. We predicted this behavior from the press, and others. Mitt’s going to have a long row to hoe if he is serious about a bid for the WH. Meanwhile read the link to Betsy, who wrote smart about Mitt’s future trials and tribulations back in 2005.

Instapundit notes - quite rightly - that Mormon Harry Reid does not have to endure all this scrutiny…basically because he is a Democrat and therefore must be above reproach, with no dubious ambitions at his core.

Sullivan also once understood media double standards. But that was an awfully long time ago.

Michael Richards' long, slow road to show-biz redemption continues with an entirely fictitious and satiric appearance on Chris Macaca's, err Chris Matthews' Hardball.

(Via Betsy Newmark.)

Update: Back in the real world, Richards continues to make the media rounds, this time with Jesse Jackson. Note though, there are no references in the AP piece to Jackson's own gaffes.

Another Update: Dubbing it "a cultural moment to hang above America’s fireplace", Hot Air has a brief audio clip of Richards' appearance on Jackson's show.

The Chicago Tribune notes, "Stores revert to 'Merry Christmas'--Wal-Mart leads way, backing off from 'happy holidays'".

That's great to see, and it's a direct response to the amount of complaints that filtered up through the Blogosphere and online forums last year. It's also further proof of something that Jonah Goldberg wrote last year, which the midterms confirmed:

Galloping toward the center is nothing new in American politics. The parties have always regressed to the mean. The center of gravity is in the, uh, center. What's changed is that the center has — finally — been moving an eensy bit to the right.

And perhaps it's also a small sign that the 1970s might be slowly--ever, ever so slowly--be receding into the distance.

Hopefully many more brick and mortar chains will follow suit. As I wrote last year, there's absolutely no excuse for any large Internet retailer for not doing this, of course.

Update: Mary Katharine Ham spots another difference between Christmas retailing this year and last.

The Anchoress links to an essay by CBS's Dick Meyer titled "Land Of The Fake" and adds:

Why are we so willing to endure fakery that has become so commonplace it is predictable? Why do we reward politicians for it? (Did anyone really believe Pelosi when she said “Impeachment is off the table?” Then why do so many pretend to?) Why do we embrace it within ourselves, body and soul? What is the root cause of our willingness to surround ourselves with it? Some will say “it began with the first cult which became the first religion - that fakery doomed us to this day.” Others might suggest that the “damn the truth, print this headline” Pravda mindset that has impacted the whole world in one way or another has set the stage for our current acquiescence into the land of make-believe and spin. Some, of course, will blame the Clintons. Everyone else will blame Bush, who, standing atop a pile of rubble or holding the shield of a fallen cop before a joint session of congress - may have (along with Rudy Giuliani) managed the last authentic moments in our political memory.

A year and a half ago, I explored very similar territory in a piece for The New Partisan titled "M For Fake", inspired by a review DVD of Orson Welles' last movie, F For Fake. In the late 1930s, Welles was a man who began his ascension to superstardom when he gave America the first fake radio news broadcast that many believed to be accurate. Today, at the dawn of the 21st century, even before Meyer's former CBS colleagues descent into their own fakery, Blogospheric debunking of the mainstream media's excesses has become a 24 hour activity.

Television news rooms in particular love fakes: I noticed last week while clicking channels in my South Jersey hotel room that CNN trotted out Al Sharpton to comment on Michael Richards' on-stage meltdown--despite the fact that Sharpton is staggeringly damaged goods himself on the issue of racial taunting. The legacy media had a complete case of amnesia when John Kerry ran for the White House of his early '70s Winter Soldier radical chic past. Cindy Sheehan's lie that President Bush never met with her after her son was killed was ignored by virtually all journalists once she began camping out in Crawford in August of 2005, because it would damage her claim to Absolute Moral Authority, to borrow Maureen Dowd's now infamous phrase. And, as The Anchoress herself notes, journalists tossed Bill Clinton's attacks on Saddam Hussein (and their own as well) right down the Memory Hole even before Saddam was captured hiding in a hole of his own.

Perhaps the ultimate example of media fakery leading to media accolades is Michael Moore. Moore's chicanery in the editing room--widely documented at the start of his career--is completely ignored by today's left. As Mark Steyn reminds us in the introduction to his reprint of his 2002 review of Bowling For Columbine, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Moore along with Oliver Stone, were dubbed "well-known cranks, regarded with considerable distaste even on the Left" by Slate's Jacob Weisberg.

Less than three years later, Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) told The New York Times "There might be half the Democratic Senate here,'' at the Washington premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11. Shortly thereafter, Moore was sitting next to Jimmy Carter in Carter's luxury box at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. (And incidentally, Stone's reputation--at least amongst the left in Hollywood boardrooms--was itself sufficiently revived a year later: Paramount's brass pegged him to helm World Trade Center and its $63 million production budget).

I don't think he knowingly intended to do so, but seven decades ago, Welles set a pattern for obtaining media stardom: pull a stunt so outrageous in its fakery that it captures the media's attention--and then do everything you can to stay in the media's eye. Because they'll forget (or ignore) how you got yourself onto the map long before the general public does.

Libertas askes, "Is there anyone in Hollywood with the moral courage to cry, 'What about the Iraqi people?'" and finds one man willing to make a difference: George Clooney.

In 1999, at least:

Of all people, George Clooney starred in a film called Three Kings, that savagely criticized the tragic consequences of Bush I encouraging the Iraqi people to revolt against Saddam after the Gulf War - but then doing nothing to help them. What changed? Are the Iraqs less human today? In less peril? And how in seven years did abandoning the Iraqis suddenly become okay to the liberal establishment? Who’s the liberal now, George? Or, has ‘liberal’ devolved into opposing anything a conservative stands for even at the cost of innocent life?

It would be very tempting to respond with a terse "yes", but that wouldn't be quite accurate. But there's a reason, of course, why Joe Lieberman found it necessary to run as an independent this year, as Democrats "progressed" further and further to the left of mid-century Truman/JFK/LBJ-style moderate liberalism.

On paper at least, the Democrats did tack a bit back towards the center with the help of such candidates as Webb, Schuler, pro-lifer Bob Casey, Jr., along with Lieberman’s decisive win. But it's too early to tell if they'll make any difference at all in the philosophy of the party as a whole, or if they were, as one commentator recently dubbed them, crash test dummies--mere cannon fodder on the way back to future.

As Glenn Reynolds writes, "If you're in London, Jackie Danicki could use your help with a photo identification".

Tim Blair waits until halfway through an essay on the glowing, err, growing demand for nuclear reactors, and writes:

Hey, we're 400 words gone here and still no mention of Chernobyl.

For nuclear energy opponents, the Chernobyl meltdown is an argument ender - who could possibly argue that nuclear energy is safe following the radiation-caused deaths of so many people?

(Not so many as you'd think, by the way - according to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.)

Of course, Chernobyl was more an example of Soviet blundering than of nuclear dangers.

If we relied on Soviet-era data as a general safety guide, we'd probably be forced to outlaw flight.

Aeroflot wasn't exactly a typical example of a modern airline. Between 1953 and 1994 the Soviet national carrier managed to kill 6895 people in 127 accidents.

If you've got the risk-taking gene, you won't get off on living next door to a Western nuclear reactor; you'll get off by getting on an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154, scheduled to arrive nose-first in the frozen dirt outside Moscow.

Please enjoy the terrified screams of your fellow passengers.

Never mind nuclear power - communism turns even simple construction work into a festival of blood.

When Australian racing driver Glenn Seton visited the new Formula One track built a few years ago in Shanghai, he was alarmed by the stories he kept hearing of how many workers had been killed during its construction.

Many more, it goes without saying, than were killed at Chernobyl. If Chernobyl is a warning regarding nuclear energy, why isn't Shanghai a warning not to build grandstands and chicanes?

Well, it probably is, for someone like former Vice President Gore, who view the internal combustion engine as merely one cog in a new Final Solution, after having spent the bulk of the 1990s riding behind a fleet of black Secret Service Suburbans inside his own White House limo.

As for the rest of us who aren't immediately horrified by the thought of nuclear power's increasingly viable future, don't miss this recent Popular Mechanics article on the topic.

Update: Steven Den Beste emails:

Admiral Rickover was given a tour of a Soviet nuclear submarine. He happened to be carrying a film dosimeter. Later when it was developed it showed that he'd been exposed to more radiation during that brief tour than he had been in all the years he led the American nuclear submarine program.

Meanwhile, Jim Geraghty writes that the more things change in Russia, the more they stay the same.

Scott Johnson of Power Line looks at a Clinton-style apology "for offenses he had not committed to those who had not suffered them" from Dartmouth's athletic director concerning the--gasp!--American Indian name of another(!) college's hockey team, and writes:

Dartmouth has now managed to distinguish itself on the national stage for its political correctness. Adjusted for degree of difficulty, this is an almost unbelievable accomplishment. Surely some kind of award is in order.

Fortunately, there is one.

As someone recently said about the midterms, "The Republicans lost and the Democrats won for the same reason--they distanced themselves from their base. "

Recent comments strongly suggest that the Democrats would be wise to keep that distance.

In his review of Borat, Jonah Goldberg writes:

Cohen undoubtedly shot thousands of hours of footage, and he picked the funniest bits, not the most representative ones. Even so, as Christopher Hitchens noted recently in Slate, most of the Americans — save for some cranky feminists — are polite to a fault with Borat. One southern lady takes her guest to the bathroom to explain how to use the toilet and toilet paper — only after Borat has brought a plastic bag full of what those tools are intended to deal with. Do we really believe the French would be even more accommodating?

Meanwhile, Borat’s more conservative defenders hail the film’s allegedly implicit critique of political correctness. But this is a hard case to make when Borat’s victims are almost all demons in the politically correct pantheon (Christians, rednecks, et al.). Borat never visits, say, Muslims who might sincerely return Borat’s high-fives for Jew hatred.

Betsy Newmark and Charles Krauthammer agree:

As Krauthammer writes, with rising numbers of anti-Semitic violence in Europe and Middle Eastern leaders like Ahmadinejad openly calling for the end of Israel, do we really see the seeds of a new Holocaust coming from barflies in Arizona.

In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez says that the "descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ" have "taken possession of all the wealth in the world." Just this month, Tehran hosted an international festival of Holocaust cartoons featuring enough hooked noses and horns to give Goebbels a posthumous smile. Throughout the Islamic world, newspapers and television, schoolbooks and sermons are filled with the most vile anti-Semitism.

Baron Cohen could easily have found what he seeks closer to home. He is, after all, from Europe, where synagogues are torched and cemeteries desecrated in a revival of anti-Semitism -- not "indifference" to but active -- unseen since the Holocaust. Where a Jew is singled out for torture and death by French-African thugs. Where a leading Norwegian intellectual -- et tu, Norway? -- mocks "God's Chosen People" ("We laugh at this people's capriciousness and weep at its misdeeds") and calls for the destruction of Israel, the "state founded . . . on the ruins of an archaic national and warlike religion."

Yes, but that would require an artist truly willing to make a statement, instead of being trapped, in his own way, by the paralyzing hand of political correctness.

As God is my witness...

(Via another radio institution from Ohio.)

Update: More Thanksgiving multimedia fun, here.