Andrea Billups of the Washington Times writes about advertising and father figures:

Todd Wasserman knew he had touched a nerve when he saw the enormous number of responses from readers.

As editor of Brandweek, a New York-based magazine that covers the nation's marketing industry, Mr. Wasserman penned a column in November bemoaning the treatment of fathers in advertising.

The dad-as-buffoon and the anti-father imagery seemingly permeated advertising and marketing campaigns, which continually use stereotypes about men to get cheap laughs, he observed. And they are increasingly the norm.

The letters poured in.

"I don't think we ever got so much reaction," said Mr. Wasserman, the father of a 5-month-old. "That fathers are often the butt of ads and accepted as idiots, that was just commonly accepted. But for me, it just seems like a stale target, a safe target for someone trying to get an easy laugh in an ad. The more people I talked to, the more it seemed a lot of people felt that way."

He is not alone in his assessment.

No, far from it.

In City Journal, Andrew Klavan, whose novel True Crime was adapted for the big screen by Clint Eastwood, writes:

During World War II, Hollywood stars like James Stewart and directors like Frank Capra enlisted in the military to combat dictators as willingly as Sean Penn and Michael Moore now tootle down to Venezuela and Cuba to embrace them. More to the point, yesteryear’s studio heads—many of them conservative Republicans—worked in cooperation with a Democratic administration to produce top-notch entertainment supporting the war effort. The result was not only rousing combat tales like 1943’s Sahara, Bataan, and Action in the North Atlantic—all still watchable today—but also some of the finest motion pictures ever made: 1942’s Casablanca and Mrs. Miniver, for instance, and the terrific yet all-but-forgotten They Were Expendable (1945). It was one of the film industry’s finest hours.

Much has changed in Hollywood since then. The fall of the business-driven studio system has freed creative types to make more personal films, just as the internationalization of markets and multiple methods of distribution protect them from the financial consequences of alienating the nation’s mainstream. If their anti-American labor of love bombs in Peoria, their investors will probably still make their money back in Europe and on the DVDs.

Beyond that, however, the movie business merely provides the most glamorous example of a greater change throughout our creative and intellectual communities: a decades-long drift toward an idiot radicalism. Movie artists—like all artists except the most original—are the products of the atmosphere of fashionable opinion that surrounds and sustains them. They may play at being heroes who speak truth to power, but the real powers in their lives are the elites who feed them praise, awards, and jobs. To them, the filmmakers speak nothing but slavish agreement.

Because of this, Hollywood war films past and present reflect the political philosophy not just of a small lotusland enclave, but of a large segment of our culture-making classes. The changing ways that these films portray the internal experience of the warrior, along with the change in their overall depiction of the nation and its guardians, are signs of deeper developments with unnerving ramifications.

Indeed they are; read the whole thing.

"McCain wouldn't be my first pick. Then again, none of the candidates were really my first pick. But I think the notion that, variously, conservatism, the country or the party are doomed if he's the nominee or the president is pretty absurd."

If you missed Pajamas' weekly show on XM's POTUS '08 presidential election channel, tune in here:

Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards head for the sidelines, and Bill Clinton dusts off the memories of Jesse Jackson in South Carolina, plus:

Host Bill Bradley on John McCain's comeback, the Kennedys' endorsement of Obama, and a preview of Super Tuesday.

Jonathan Last of the Weekly Standard on the campaign trail with Bill Clinton.

Bridget Johnson on "California's New Starring Role in the Presidential Primaries."

Mary Katharine Ham on being dubbed "The Worst Person In The World" by a little known talk show on public access cable TV.

Produced by Ed Driscoll.

For extended versions of the interviews featured on the show, don’t miss this week’s PJM Political “Director’s Cut Interviews.”

Here are two more tracks to add to the CD edition of SCTV's classic Stairways To Heaven album:

Update: Here's an even cooler DIY mash-up.

Linking to a recent AP article, James Joyner ponders why bloggers are being considered a national security threat:

Let me get this straight:

The AP is publishing cyber-security planning scenarios, thus making it easy for the enemy to know what’s not being planned for.

The major papers are routinely publishing reports on highly classified documents.

Bureaucrats and Congressmen who are losing turf battles leak state secrets all the time.

And it’s bloggers that they’re worried about?

Well, I'd be worried about these tyros joining the Blogosphere, myself.

Michael Moore, four years ago:

“There’s a reason that they’re saying Kerry is the No. 1 liberal in the Senate. It’s because he is the No. 1 liberal in the Senate.”

But hey, that was then, this is now.

"With apologies to Dr. Kubler-Ross."

CBS' Harry Smith:

In the civic religion that is Democratic politics, the most treasured covenant was passed to the young Senator from Illinois.

Well, it's tough to argue with the former half of that equation.

As to "the most treasured covenant", and the reality that it was built upon, James Piereson has some thoughts.

Since I'll be busy much of the day assembling the next edition of PJM Political, hopefully this will hold you over in-between posts:

Here's a link to the Pajamas article the video references.

Noemie Emery writes that the world is changing too quickly for the dead tree publishing world to keep pace: "things change so fast nowadays that by the time a book about current affairs hits the market, the reality it is describing may well have ceased to exist."

That's always the danger of projecting current trends too far out into the future. It's not at all a new phenomenon, but clearly it is an accelerating one.

Bruce Bawer writes:

It’s very clear what’s going on here – and where it’s all headed. Europe is on its way down the road of Islamization, and it’s reached a point along that road at which gay people’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is being directly challenged, both by knife-wielding bullies on the street and by taxpayer-funded thugs whose organizations already enjoy quasi-governmental authority. Sharia law may still be an alien concept to some Westerners, but it’s staring gay Europeans right in the face – and pointing toward a chilling future for all free people. Pim Fortuyn saw all this coming years ago; most of today’s European leaders still refuse to see it even though it’s right before their eyes.

Read the whole thing.

Fox has wisely ruled that the Super Bowl will be a politics-free zone.

Unfortunately, someone didn't get the message, it seems.

Anne Applebaum asks, "Where Did All Those Gorgeous Russian Women Come From?":

There was a particular historical moment, round about 1995 or so, when anyone entering a well-appointed drawing room, dining room, or restaurant in London was sure to encounter a beautiful Russian woman. Though the word beautiful doesn't really capture the phenomenon. The women I'm remembering were extraordinarily, unbelievably, stunningly gorgeous.

These women were half-Kazakh or half-Tartar with Mongolian ancestors and perfect skin; dressed in the most tasteful, most expensive clothes; shod in soft leather boots; and perfectly coiffed. They were usually accompanied by an older man, sometimes much older, to whom they were perhaps married, or more likely not. They spoke in low, alluringly accented voices and towered over the lesser mortals in the room. I distinctly remember gazing upon one such creature while in the company of a friend, an old Russia hand who'd spent much of the previous decade in the Soviet Union. He stared, shook his head, and whispered, "But where were they all before?"

In the aftermath of the Australian Open, a tennis tournament whose final rounds featured a parade of notably stunning ex-Soviet-bloc players, it is perhaps time to make a stab at answering my friend's question. Whatever you may say about the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s, it was not widely known for feminine pulchritude. Whatever you may say about women's professional tennis in the 1970s or '80s, it did not feature many players who looked like Maria Sharapova, the latest Australian Open victor.

Where were they all before?

Though this is a fairly frivolous question (OK, extremely frivolous), I am convinced it has an interesting answer. To put it bluntly, in the Soviet Union there was no market for female beauty. No fashion magazines featured beautiful women, since there weren't any fashion magazines. No TV series depended upon beautiful women for high ratings, since there weren't any ratings. There weren't many men rich enough to seek out beautiful women and marry them, and foreign men couldn't get the right sort of visa. There were a few film stars, of course, but some of the most famous—I'm thinking of Lyubov Orlova, alleged to be Stalin's favorite actress—were wholesome and cheerful rather than sultry and stunning. Unusual beauty, like unusual genius, was considered highly suspicious in the Soviet Union and its satellite people's republics.

This doesn't mean there weren't any beautiful women, of course, just that they didn't have the clothes or cosmetics to enhance their looks, and, far more important, they couldn't use their faces to launch international careers. Instead of gracing London drawing rooms, they stayed in Minsk, Omsk, or Alma Ata. Instead of couture, they wore cheap polyester. They could become assembly-line forewomen, Communist Party bosses, even local femmes fatales, but not Vogue cover girls. They didn't even dream of becoming Vogue cover girls, since very few had ever seen an edition of Vogue.

As Applebaum concludes, "Beauty is a matter of luck, but the same could be said of many other talents. And what open markets do for beautiful women they also do for other sorts of genius."

I first met Mary Katharine Ham when I covered a special Senate briefing for bloggers for the second day of Pajamas Media's existence, back in November of 2005. She seemed so fresh-faced and innocent back then. Who knew that just a couple of years later, she would be destined to become.... The Worst Person In The World.

Personally, I blame this tragic denouement on the all-corrosive effects of Las Vegas.

Kay Hymowitz charts the current status of the Decline of Western Civilization with the SYMs--Single Young Males:

Maxim asked the SYM what he wanted and learned that he didn’t want to grow up. Whatever else you might say about Playboy or Esquire, they tried to project the image of a cultured and au courant fellow; as Hefner famously—and from today’s cultural vantage point, risibly—wrote in an early Playboy, his ideal reader enjoyed “inviting a female acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” Hearing this, the Maxim dude would want to hurl. He’d like to forget that he ever went to school.

Maxim happily obliges. The editors try to keep readers’ minds from wandering with articles like “Confessions of a Strip Club Bouncer.” But they rely heavily on picture-laden features promoting the latest skateboards, video games, camcorders, and other tech products, along with an occasional Q-and-A with, say, Kid Rock—all with the bare minimum of print required to distinguish a magazine from a shopping catalog or pinup calendar. Playboy’s philosophy may not have been Aristotle, but it was an attempt, of sorts, to define the good life. The Maxim reader prefers lists, which make up in brevity what they lose in thought: “Ten Greatest Video Game Heroes of All Time,” “The Five Unsexiest Women Alive,” “Sixteen People Who Look Like They Absolutely Reek,” and so on.

Obligatory Allahpundit-inspired Exit Questions: Do the trends that Hymowitz describes above dovetail into this--and if so, how are they intertwined?

Update: Reader Stephen Shields squares the circle, with a link to this.

Teddy Kennedy was quoted today as saying:

"Through Barack, I believe we will move beyond the politics of fear and personal destruction and unite our country with the politics of common purpose."

Pretty ironic, considering it's coming from the man who did the most to bring the politics of fear and personal destruction to modern Washington.

Update: The New York State chapter of NOW decides to raise the stakes on Ted, to see who can peg the irony meter higher.

Karl of Protein Wisdom writes:

The Clinton strategy of marginalizing Obama as “the black candidate” and claiming that Obama was a Reagan supporter strikes at the very heart of the mulicultural vision, at the very heart of the Left-liberal identity. It cannot be compartmentalized as a defense of progressive ideals or the progressive movement because there is no significant ideological difference between Sens. Clinton and Obama. Moreover, the Democrats’ success in 2006, combined with their belief that this will be a “change” election cycle, makes the environment much different from the 1990s, when the Clintons were seen as first arresting the advance of the Right, later as the only bulwark against a GOP-led Congress. Thus, the relentless, overweening ambition and narcissism of the Clintons and their resort to racial politics is so nakedly exposed that Left-liberals are unable to avert their eyes from it.

Of course, it remains possible — perhaps even probable — that Left-liberals would rally to the Clintons again, should she win the nomination and even the general election. But I would still suggest that at the margins, this campaign, in this political environment, has forced Left-liberals to see the Clintons in a way that erodes the intensity of support they enjoyed in the 1990s. The scales have fallen.

Read the whole thing.

In September, I wrote:

As detailed in Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover's Mad As Hell: Revolt at the Ballot Box, 1992, what some may not recall these days about Bill Clinton's "Sister Souljah Moment", was that it had little to do with insulting a two-bit virtually unknown rapper, and everything to do with distancing himself from the failed radic chic 1970-era politics of her backer, Jesse Jackson. It was one of many gestures that allowed Clinton to position himself as much more moderate than the average Democrat presidential candidate, and went far towards cementing his candidacy.

For a moment of course, Clinton thought he needed Jackson's imprimatur during the impeachment hearings, but ten years on, Jesse's back to being merely a name to be demagogued by Bill.

Will it work? Michael Graham posits that it already has:

How to Defeat Obama?

Fight him. That's what the Clintons have shown. When he is forced to fight, Sen. Obama's inexperience shows. His record, slight as it is, is tough to defend.

He's got a glass jaw, and he will fall into the trap of identity politics.

In fact, he already has. The "could we beat Obama?" conversation is purely academic. It's over. The Clintons have defeated him already, because he is leaving South Carolina as "the black candidate."

He won't win another state. Even worse, in November Hillary will carry 90 percent of the black vote, despite their cynical, race-based campaign against the first viable black presidential candidate.

But it sounds like the scope of Obama's victory last night may make the Clintons look increasingly small. Still, don't count out what 17 years of battlefield prep can do for you.

Found via Fausta's Blog, Front Page magazine notes that "The David Horowitz Freedom Center has succeeded in putting the feminists and Islamists on the defensive":

As David Horowitz and Robert Spencer note in the article below, the DHFC's exposure of the feminist movement's lack of attention to women's rights in the Muslim world has caused many of the movement's most prominent activists to sign a letter protesting that they originated concern for Muslim women. The letter, drafted by feminist writer Katha Pollitt, has been signed by such notables as:

Susan Faludi, the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women, which argues conservatives are trying to suppress American womyn, and The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, which claims terrorism provided a handy excuse for the American Right to begin binding women's feet again;

Julianne Malveaux, who expressed her feelings about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on PBS' To the Contrary, "I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease"

Jennifer Baumgardner, a Nation writer whose idea of fighting female oppression is staging productions of The Vagina Monologues;

Dana Goldstein, an employee of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress and a writing fellow at the Soros-funded The American Prospect; and

More than 700 more leftists.

The letter spread quickly, beginning on the website of the far-Left's flagship publication, The Nation. (The Nation's piece was also picked up by Yahoo News). Soon, it had been posted on Mother Jones, the Islamic Forum, the University of Maine, and many other sites -- including that of a woman named Heart who is running for president. Not all are pleased; at least one insists U.S. immigration laws and Israeli treatment of Palestinians are a more direct affront to women's rights than clitorectomies. (She asks, "Does Ms. Pollitt think that 'Muslim countries' are particularly hostile to women’s rights for some reason?") Nonetheless, the very fact that the Left, so long silent about the crimes countenanced by its Islamic partners in the antiwar movement, now feels that it must mount a rousing defense is a vindication of our efforts. -- The Editors.

Hey, everyone's entitled to an off-decade.

Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters writes:

NewsBusters reported in December that Internet behemoth Google had a disclaimer cautioning readers that the website of conservative magazine the American Spectator "may harm your computer."

For some reason, this warning no longer exists.

This raises a couple of important questions:

Did the American Spectator do anything to its website that made it "safer?"

If not, did Google change its "harmful site" parameters, and, if so, why?

It raises another question--which Websites get stuck with this tag?

I noticed the same warning on the libertarian Tech Central Station Website (where I've been an off and on contributer since 2002), when I did a Google search to find Arnold Kling's "Folk Marxism" meme last May. Here's a screen capture from back then displaying that same "This site my harm your computer" warning above two separate TCS links.

After seeing that warning pop-up, I immediately sent the above screen capture to Nick Schulz, TCS's editor and publisher to let him know. The warning that Google slapped on TCS quickly went away, presumably after Nick or one of his associates got in touch with Google. And as Noel writes above, Google removed their warning on the American Spectator's site, again, presumably after a friendly email or twenty from the folks at AmSpec.

This could be something that one or two mischievous coders in the bowels of the Google cubicles are doing to goof off in-between World of Warcraft sessions. Or it could be some sort of virus or malware installed by someone not associated at all with Google, but designed to trigger Google's warning mechanisms, and thus steer traffic away from non-PC sites that might engender thoughtcrime. But the fact that it's hit at least two prominent libertarian, conservative, free-market, non-leftwing, whatever you want to call them sites is quite a remarkable coincidence, it seems.

Fresh on top of Hamas' noontime candlelit noontime siesta yesterday, Small Dead Animals spots another case of Middle Eastern fauxtography: the giant killing machines oppressing the "Occupied Territories Of The Little People."

"Killer dolphins baffle marine experts."

Found via Ace of Spades, National Review's Andrew McCarthy writes:

The readers’ representative recounted discussing the matter with Times editor Bill Keller. Tellingly, Keller said he “does not want to single out Greenhouse … because it would appear to be a tacit rebuke in the face of a partisan assault.” And so, at last, we stumble into the truth. The Times is not a newspaper. It is a partisan, self-consciously engaged in partisan battle.

This was news when their previous ombudsman at least had the cojones to cop to it in more straightforward language four years ago. No one should be all that surprised, these days.

"A U.S. study suggests marketing plays a role in how often parents buy fast food for their children."

I need a study to tell me this?

If someone in Hollywood has been itching to do a distaff postmodern remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, your perfect source material has just presented itself.

(Via Hot Air, which wryly dubs the story "Tabloid nirvana attained.")

One of the readers of NRO's Corner has an excellent suggestion:

One way our people ought to start standing up to the various debate moderators is to start simply answering their rather biased questions with a repeated stock phrase which clearly identifies who they are.

So, for example, when a wacky Tim Russert question pops up, the answer should always start: “Well, Tim, I understand why you phrased your question that way, as a former top aide to Mario Cuomo, but let me tell you…” Same trope with Brian Williams: “Brian, I understand why you’d put it that way, given your previous speechwriting work for Jimmy Carter, but here’s the way to look at it…” Stephanopolous: “George, we all know your work for Bill Clinton, so you may look at it that way, but let me tell you…”

No need to be heated or confrontational in laying their backgrounds on the table, just gently and firmly remind viewers and colleagues of who these people really are. Might get the New York Times and the liberals in a twitter, but would force the media ethicists and howard kurtzes to cover the controversy and maybe introduce just a little shame into the systems of these jokers…

Of course, if you're on the opposite side of the aisle, you can simply ask for the deck chairs to be rearranged at your leisure.

Ezra Levant writes:

I was interviewed on the XM satellite radio channel "POTUS '08". Click here to hear it. I'm not sure how a radio channel dedicated to the 2008 U.S. presidential election found a way to dedicate 15 minutes to a case of Canadian censorship, where the CBC's several radio channels have been silent on the subject.

That's an easy one--Ezra's story went from Little Green Footballs to Hot Air to Instapundit to the Pajamas motherblog, stopping by for a cup of coffee on my blog as well. Since it seemed to resonate so much with Pajamas' bloggers--not to mention readers--it seemed to me that it was a topic we should explore on Pajamas' radio show, even if it's a story only tangentially related to the 2008 election. (Presumably, we'll be back to wall-to-wall election horse race coverage next week.)

Even more fauxtography from AP and Reuters?

On at least two occasions this week, Hamas staged scenes of darkness as part of its campaign to end the political and economic sanctions against the Gaza Strip, Palestinian journalists said Wednesday.

In the first case, journalists who were invited to cover the Hamas government meeting were surprised to see Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his ministers sitting around a table with burning candles.

In the second case on Tuesday, journalists noticed that Hamas legislators who were meeting in Gaza City also sat in front of burning candles.

But some of the journalists noticed that there was actually no need for the candles because both meetings were being held in daylight.

"They had closed the curtains in the rooms to create the impression that Hamas leaders were also suffering as a result of the power stoppage," one journalist told The Jerusalem Post. "It was obvious that the whole thing was staged."

Note the sunlight streaming into the room, from behind the curtains.

Of course, this is far from the first time Reuters has been caught cooking the books in the Middle East. But hey, maybe Hamas are just big Sunday Night Football fans...

Update (1/26/08): Pajamas HQ notes:

Since this post went up, TIME has altered the caption on the photograph. Now it strikes a much more “symbolic” note: “Blackout: The Israeli embargo has left the Gaza Strip without electricity. To emphasize its plight the Palestinian Parliament met by candlelight on Tuesday.”

James Lileks sails into the annual Minneapolis Boat Show, camcorder in hand:

(Larger version viewable here.)

We had Ezra Levant on PJM Political today, and even played excerpts from a couple of his YouTube clips. But Iowahawk, somehow, has found the original complaint against Levant.

Or a reasonably satirical facsimile thereof.

He hasn't even gotten the gig with the Redskins yet, but there's already a "Fire Jim Fassel" Weblog.

Their motto? "Why waste time"!

Roger L. Simon: the John Wayne of the Blogosphere?

As Glenn Reynolds notes:

THE NEW YORK TIMES ENDORSES HILLARY CLINTON -- and, because they must want to do him harm, John McCain. (No, really -- Rudy's people are even pointing out the endorsement.)

Thus offering the perfect softball for Brian Williams to unwittingly pitch to Rudy during tonight's GOP debate:

Back in 2004, Jeff Zucker, the president of NBC told USA Today, "No one understands this NASCAR nation more than Brian." Curious, isn't it, how such a man of Middle America can pay such deference to the Gray Lady?

Update: Related thoughts from Duke Wayne Roger L. Simon.

Back in early 2006, Australia's John Birmingham profiled Tim Blair, amongst others, in his look at conservative comedy:

Blair, the closest antipodean analogue of O'Rourke, is a declared political warrior, with no interest in fairness, unlike traditional satirists such as Patrick Cook or Mike Carlton who are even-handed in their choice of targets. A Blair column is predictable insofar as you know who is going to get whacked - exactly the same people who took a beating in that morning's Miranda Devine op-ed piece. But unlike Devine, Blair consistently rewards attention with little hash cookies of humour such as his obsession with AC/DC's bagpipe player. Does he tour? Does he have groupies? Are they called bag ladies?

He does indeed tour--and gets down with his bad, Utilikilted self!

(Get well soon, Tim!)

It's to a far, far better gig that Kucinich goes--because let's face it, Ed Straker can't run SHADO forever.

Ezra Levant was our special guest this week on PJM Political, in which he discussed his infamous videotaped kerfuffle with the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

Also on the show were David Frum on his new book, Comeback:Conservatism That Can Win Again, Patrick Cox, who was Fred Thompson's first campaign hire, and James Lileks.

Tune in here to listen to the whole show, or here to go straight to my interview with Ezra.

As David Frum, our guest this week on PJM Political wrote in How We Got Here, the 1970s was an era loaded with bad ideas (not to mention even worse aesthetics). One of the few bad ideas that America dodged was converting to the metric system--but that's not the case in EU-ifed England. Debbie Schlussel warns, "Beware the metric jihadis. Consider me a fellow member of Al Anti-Metricaeda."

Robert Bidinotto writes, "So much for the canard that the Bush administration manufactured lies to justify the Iraq invasion":

The Bush people didn't lie. They were taken in by Saddam Hussein's lies.

And ultimately, Saddam was taken in by his own lies.

Misled by Saddam, the Bush administration (and most of the world) honestly believed that he had WMD, and the invasion therefore made sense. So, don't blame Bush for an "unnecessary war."

Blame the lying thug who provoked it.

Like most fascists, Saddam simply wasn't prepared to have his bluff called, despite the astronomic stakes involved.

In 1960, Mort Sahl summed up the race--fought alongside virtually identical political positions--between Richard Nixon, the 47-year old vice president of President and former General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then 70, and 43-year old John F. Kennedy, the son of the 72-year old one-man political machine Joseph P. Kennedy as "Oh yeah? So's your old man!"

Tom Maguire writes that the fiercely fought battles between Hillary and Obama boil down to "'You're Black' Versus 'You're The Boss's Wife'".

As Orrin Judd writes, "In the absence of ideas, they're stuck fighting over minutiae."

Update: The American Thinker looks at a much more bitter and modern version of "So's Your Old Man."

Titled, "Obama: I'm Not a Muslim! Forward This to Everyone You Know", this Wired article contains this unintentionally ironic passage:

The Obama campaign announced the debunking effort with an e-mail barrage from John Kerry of Massachusetts, in which the former presidential candidate urges supporters to "e-mail the truth" to everyone on their address books, to print out the facts about Obama's background and post them at work, and to call local radio stations and talk to neighbors.

"If lies can be spread virally, let's prove to the cynics that the truth can be every bit as persuasive as it is powerful," Kerry wrote in the note.

Kerry's note was titled "Swiftboating" -- a reference to Kerry's own presidential campaign in 2004, which was famously sunk by falsities spread by the lobbying group Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth.

Yes, how did the Swift Vets, on their budget, talk Industrial Light & Magic into digitally inserting Kerry into footage of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations back in 1971, and pay Rich Little for doing an outrageously over-the-top Boston Brahmin accent? (But c'mon Rich--JJJJJennnghis Kahn? isn't that a bit too much? Nobody will believe it!) To complete the ultimate scam, ILM then digitally inserted Kerry, much like Hollywood's Forrest Gump a decade ago, onto the set of the Dick Cavett Show from that same year. And they talked C-Span into running that footage in 2004. Amazing!

Update: Related thoughts from Mike Hendrix and Power Line.

Playing the role of attack dog on the campaign trail, Bill Clinton snarls at CNN:

"Once you accuse somebody of racism or bigotry or something, the facts become irrelevant."

as Ace writes, "Irony much? Oh yes, very much."

(Sorry for the lack of posts yesterday; I was putting this week's PJM Political to bed.)

Michael Ledeen writes that the Washington Post may finally be getting it:

Monday the WaPo had a front-page story about the "foreign fighters" in Iraq. It was based on the so-called Sinjar documents, captured in Iraq, and detailing the lives and activities of would-be martyrs. It increases the percentage of foreign suicide bombers in Iraq to something like ninety percent.

Maybe it's time to rethink the "civil war" theme?

There's a thought.

On his Pajamas blog, Michael's thoughts on "The Post, Newsweek, and the Jews" (specifically their commissioning--and subsequent apologizing for--Arun Gandhi and his anti-Semitic rant) are also well worth your time.

James Taranto links to an astonishing passage in a CNN article that certainly puts the emphasis on the second word of the phrase presidential race:

Recent polls show black women are expected to make up more than a third of all Democratic voters in South Carolina's primary in five days.

For these women, a unique, and most unexpected dilemma, presents itself: Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender?

No other voting bloc in the country faces this choice.

Steve Green responds that identity politics-themed articles such as this are "Why Politics Make Me Drink Reason #478". adding:

I dunno. White Republican males had like seven or eights guys to choose from (plus Ron Paul), and they seem to be handling it just fine.

Heh^TM.

More on media-induced identity politics from Steve Boriss, who writes, "Media Blinders Impede a Colorblind Society."

While this is a perfectly acceptable Tom Cruise parody video, I'd say that Mickey Kaus has Tom's shtick down.

KSW, all you spectators, KSW!

A public service message campaign whose time (and Newsweek!) has come.

Breaking, as Matt Drudge would say:

NEW YORK -- Oscar-nominated actor Heath Ledger has been found dead at a downtown Manhattan residence, police said Tuesday, in what might be a drug-related death.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Ledger had an appointment for a massage at the SoHo apartment that is believed to be his home. A housekeeper went to let Ledger know the masseuse was there, and found him dead at 3:26 p.m, Browne said.

Ledger was found with a bottle of pills next to him, according to an NYPD spokesman.

The Brokeback Mountain star was 28; his next role was scheduled to be as the Joker in the next Batman movie, where presumably (and somewhat reminiscent of Brandon Lee in The Crow), principle photography had already concluded before his death.

Andrea Harris writes:

A tale of two photos. Even now, with the truth about the Vietnam War trickling ever so slowly out into the world, I’ll bet most people still accept the “received wisdom” about these famous photographs. I know I had no idea.

One of the photos that Neo revisits was previously dissected in an early Jonah Goldberg G-File, back in 1999. But the second, and equally iconic photo I didn't know the real history of either.

Meanwhile, over at Opinion Journal video, Bret Stephens suggests that the resurgence of John McCain is due in large part to the desire of a wide swatch of the American public to avoid a repeat of the defunding of the South Vietnamese by the American left and its horrific aftermath:

The claim that there was no “bloodbath” in South Vietnam is true only by comparison with what happened to its neighbor Cambodia. On top of the more than 275,000 South Vietnamese who died fighting in the country’s armed forces, at least 65,000 were murdered or shot after “liberation”—the equivalent of three-quarters of a million people in today’s United Sta