Ed Driscoll.com: March 2008 Archives

Maybe We Need Harry Caul To Track It Down

By Ed Driscoll · March 26, 2008 12:25 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole

Jonah Goldberg on the missing conversation:

Thank God for Barack Obama. Until his “More Perfect Union” speech last Tuesday, it seems it never occurred to anyone that America needed to talk about race.

“Maybe this’ll be the beginning of a conversation,” Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan proclaimed on Meet the Press. The Chicago Tribune reported that “many voters, black and white, say they were moved by Obama’s speech ... which they see as a long-awaited invitation to begin an honest, calm national dialogue about race.” Newspaper editorial boards agree. In the words of the San Diego Union-Tribune: “Prodding Americans to confront their racial differences is, by itself, an accomplishment of historical proportions.”

Because so many agree on this brilliant new strategy to heal our national wounds, I can only assume that I’m the one missing something. But when one luminary after another smacks his forehead like someone who forgot to have a V8 in epiphanic awe over the genius of Obama’s call for a national conversation on race, all I can do is wonder: “What on Earth are you people talking about?”

“Universities were moving to incorporate the issues Mr. Obama raised into classroom discussions and course work,” the New York Times reported within 48 hours of the speech.

Oh, thank goodness Obama fired the starter’s pistol in the race to discuss race. Here I’d been under the impression that every major university in the country already had boatloads of courses dedicated to race in America. I’d even read somewhere that professors had incorporated racial themes into classes on everything from Shakespeare to the mating habits of snail darters. I also had some vague memory that these universities recruited black students and other racial minorities, on the grounds that interracial conversations on campus are as important as talking about math, science, and literature. A ghost of an image in my mind’s eye seemed to reveal African-American studies centers, banners for Black History Month, and copies of books like Race Matters and The Future of the Race lining shelves at college bookstores.

Were all the corporate diversity consultants and racial sensitivity seminars mere apparitions in a dream? Also disappearing down the memory hole, apparently, were the debates that followed Hurricane Katrina, Trent Lott’s remarks about Strom Thurmond, the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, the publication of The Bell Curve, and O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Not to mention the ongoing national chatter about affirmative action, racial disparities in prison sentences and racial profiling by law enforcement.

And the thousands of hours of newscasts, television dramas, and movies — remember films such as 2004’s Oscar-winning Crash? — dedicated to racial issues? It’s as if they never existed.

"Because sometimes it’s easier to hold on to your own stereotypes and misconceptions"...

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The Gift That Keeps On Giving

By Ed Driscoll · March 26, 2008 10:57 AM · Muggeridge's Law · The Making of the President

As James Taranto writes, "Let's Hope No One Calls Her at 3 A.M.":

"I was sleep-deprived, and I misspoke."--Hillary Clinton, quoted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, March 25

Because it's always 3:00 a.m. somewhere...

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The Speech That Could Have Been

By Ed Driscoll · March 24, 2008 11:11 PM · The Making of the President

Over at the newly renovated Pajamas Media, Hollywood writer-director Lionel Chetwynd weites an open letter to Sen. Barack Obama, describing the speech that Obama should have given:

You say you are devoted to Reverend Wright because he brought you to Christ. I can only imagine how powerful a relationship that forges. But, my imperfect understanding of the Christian Faith tells me you can do him an equally magnificent service: You can help bring him back to Christ. Show him redemption and salvation lie not in the satisfaction of doing little dances in a pulpit while you slander good and decent people. Teach him that great leadership and Christian love abjures the very filth – and I pick that word deliberately – that he spews on an apparently regular basis. After all, Senator, you know our government did not invent the HIV virus to kill African-Americans. You know, Senator, this is not the United States of KKK America. You know the truth of 9/11. At least you should. Both you and Michelle have benefited mightily from the new spirit that has come to America in the last two generations. I thought you were part of that. I thought you were post-racial.

But in your silence, in your justifications, in your facile instruction to contextualize, you seem just a more presentable version of those dreary self-promoters, Sharpton, Jackson, Bakewell and the rest. Surely this is not you. Please, Senator, be brave. Lead. From a position of honesty where context is our daily reality, not drawn from bitter memories, no matter how justified they once might have been. Deny Jeremiah Wright your comfort of “context”. Be Presidential. To all Americans.

That would have been a speech for the ages, and possibly all that a majority of Americans would have needed to be convinced that Obama was made of presidential timber. Instead, as Bill Bradley writes, also at Pajamas HQ, "Obama still has serious questions to answer":

He has to explain to America — and in particular, to key voting groups such as the Scot-Irish who make up much of the working class and patriotically-oriented in the country — the anger that produced such irrational notions as the US government inventing AIDS to destroy the black people, or the idea that the US may have deserved 9/11. And why men such as Wright, whose generation grew up with a frequently rugged racism directed toward them and developed within them, have a chip on their shoulder today.

This task certainly not what Obama wanted to take on when he launched his candidacy on a wave of high-flown, impressively-delivered rhetoric, floating over the historic divisions of America on a cloud of post-racialism.

But it is what he must do now. He didn’t intend to run as “the black candidate” but as a candidate who happened to be black. But being black, or at least, “black enough,” as it turns out, was at least in part a choice for Obama. And as a result of that choice, he rose in Chicago enough to become a United States senator. And as a result of being a senator, he has enough stature to wage this campaign.

As a result, this conversation about race will continue throughout the campaign, together with a conversation about patriotism. “God damn America” is not a concept that goes down well with most voters.

This may be even more of an imperative for Obama than the racial issue, though the two are joined.

What is his idea of America? How is he an American patriot in a time of war?

What can he do to convince the Scots-Irish American voter that he is enough of a patriot to take on the uber-patriot, John McCain, a man who does not have to wave the flag because his very presence waves the flag?

In many respects, Obama represents an emerging America: multi-racial, with an internationalist perspective. But he will not represent any America, at least as president, until he demonstrates that he represents the enduring America.

Read the whole thing--and tune into Bill Bradley (and myself) on Pajamas' PJM Political show each Thursday at 6:00 PM Eastern/3:00 PM Pacific.

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Why Don't You Pass The Time With A Game Of Solitaire?

By Ed Driscoll · March 24, 2008 04:53 PM · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive

"The 8 Stages Of Liberal/Progressive Discussion When They Are Busted":

1. Ignore the story - pretend it is not happening, or deflect like crazy.

2. Find some sort of moral equivalence or a story from 30 years ago saying a Conservative did something sort of similar.

3. Come up with some conspiracy theories. This is usually the most amusing part, reading and hearing all the strange stuff they come up with in their reality based chat rooms.

For some thoughts on the Mother Of All Leftwing Conspiracies, click here.

Update: And speaking of leftwing conspiracy theories!

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Mister, We Could Use A Man Like Curtis Mayfield Again

By Ed Driscoll · March 24, 2008 01:48 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · Muggeridge's Law · The Future and its Enemies · The New Puritans

Indeed we could, but this latest round of "pushers" aren't exactly the best material to write the backstory for Superfly: The Next Generation. Up on the Drudge Report is this headline:

School candy ban spurs underground 'sugar pushers'...

Who, other than the nanny staters, didn't see this one coming from a mile away?

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Neil Aspinall, "The Fifth Beatle", Dies

By Ed Driscoll · March 24, 2008 01:12 PM · All You Need Is Ears

While New York DJ "Murray The K" may have claimed the title of "The Fifth Beatle" at the height of Beatlemania in a shameless act of self-promotion, in reality, if any man could claim the title, it was Neil Aspinall, who died recently at age 66, according to the Telegraph:

One of his last tasks as their eminence grise had been to remaster the group's back catalogue for legal downloading on the internet. Aspinall's involvement with the Beatles dated from 1960 when the group's original drummer, Pete Best, asked him to become their driver.

Although he protested when Best (his best friend) was replaced by Ringo Starr, he remained with the band, and when a brawny Cavern Club bouncer called Mal Evans was taken on in 1963 to hump their instruments in and out of their battered Commer van, Aspinall found himself in the role of personal assistant.
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As such, he became the Beatles' gatekeeper, guardian of their privacy, security, secrets, and eventually the group's fortunes, over which, as managing director of Apple from January 1968, he exercised a shrewd stewardship. A quietly-spoken but tough negotiator, he was credited with having - single-handedly - turned the Beatles into the world's highest-earning band and, by extension, one of its biggest brands.

In the mid-1960s, at the height of Beatlemania, Aspinall's responsibilities as the group's road manager extended far beyond checking their equipment, stage costumes, meals, venues and accommodation: with Mal Evans, he judiciously vetted the groupies, and saw to the day-to-day needs of the Beatles themselves as they were shuttled from plane to limousine to hotel. "It was an unattractive life," he admitted, "and it went on for years. But at least I could go out. They were trapped." He even stood in for George Harrison, when the guitarist was ill, at a camera rehearsal for the band's first appearance on American television.

Aspinall's role changed dramatically with the death of the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, in August 1967, and he effectively took the group over, although he apparently turned down a formal offer of the job from John Lennon. According to one account, the Beatles' musical guru George Martin was unhappy at the idea of Aspinall replacing the public-school-educated Epstein because he lacked the social qualifications needed to speak to the executives at their recording company EMI.

As the group disintegrated, and the members eventually went their separate ways, Aspinall remained a trusted father figure to the famous foursome. Even when they were not speaking to each other he - as the honest broker - remained on good terms with all four.

His role post-Beatles became increasingly entrepreneurial: in 1995 he persuaded Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to collaborate on three Anthology albums and the accompanying television documentary, which took him five years to compile. It was Aspinall's concept that led to the release in 2000 of the Beatles' greatest hits album, Beatles 1, which has since sold 30 million copies.

There's a direct line from Beatlemania to the most pretentious and overwrought aspects of the 1960s, but there's also hours and hours of brilliant music as well, and short of George Martin, who was recording and actively shaping the Beatles' output, Aspinall had the best seat in the house to watch its production.

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Kingdom Of Heaven

By Ed Driscoll · March 24, 2008 09:38 AM · The Making of the President

John Derbyshire writes:

Hey Stanley [Kurtz]:
At the core of Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign is a promise that he can transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars …
Ha! So now we know what young Paddy O'Bama is up to! He wants to immanentize the eschaton!

Hey, some of us spotted Barry O's transcendental meditations last year...

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Getting Poverty Wrong

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 10:11 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · The Making of the President

Steven Malanga writes, "Barack Obama’s much-discussed speech in Philadelphia earlier this week was not only about race":

It was also about economics and, specifically, about poverty. Measures of group wealth, or the lack of it, are often used to support claims that our society is racist. Obama’s speech revealed that though he may be, to many people, a refreshingly new kind of post-racial politician and a healer, when it comes to notions of poverty and economic advancement, his ideas are right out of the 1960s and 1970s.

At one point in his speech, for instance, Obama suggested that some black poverty today can be attributed to the “legalized discrimination” that existed in America prior to the civil rights laws of the 1960s, which, in his telling, prevented black families from accumulating “wealth to bequeath to future generations.” Obama seemed to suggest that families in America escape poverty by patiently accumulating wealth and passing it on to future generations—when in fact millions of Americans of all races leap out of poverty within a single lifetime through their own initiative, not their inheritances. We are long past the time when the legacy of Jim Crow laws and other forms of official discrimination can explain black poverty rates.
* * *
Researchers estimate that the entire rise in poverty in America since the late 1970s can be attributed to “changes in family formation,” a euphemism for the decline of families headed by two married parents. The latest Census data illustrate the problem. Only one out of ten American kids living in two-married-parent families is in poverty—and about one-third of these families are recent immigrants whose poverty is temporary. By contrast, 37 percent of children living with single mothers are impoverished.

Marriage seems to be the defining characteristic of economically successful families. With out-of-wedlock birth rates in America soaring, so that many traditional families aren’t so much breaking up as never getting started, the percentage of children living with cohabiting parents is growing. Yet these kids are three times more likely to be in poverty than the children of married parents. The data actually demonstrate that poverty rates for families headed by two unmarried parents more closely resemble the poverty rates of single-parent families than those of two-married-parent ones.

Part of this shocking difference owes to what City Journal contributing editor Kay S. Hymowitz has called the “marriage gap” in America (“Marriage and Caste,” Winter 2006). Hymowitz describes how better-educated, higher-income men and women are now more likely to delay having children until they’re married, while lower-income, less-educated men and women are more likely to cohabit and have children out of wedlock.

But even these demographic facts don’t completely explain the widely varying poverty rate between married and cohabiting parents. Studies that adjust for parents’ educational levels still find that a family headed by two unmarried parents is twice as likely to wind up in poverty as one that married parents head. Something about the marriage certificate—a sense of long-term commitment, family stability, perhaps—makes an economic difference. Research shows that married workers exhibit more job stability and make greater wage gains than cohabiting parents, a sort of “marriage wage premium,” as some economists dub it.

Such factors also help to illuminate economic disparities along racial lines in America. As the latest Census statistics illustrate, family formation differs widely by race. Nearly nine in ten Asian children, for instance, live with two parents, as do 78 percent of white kids. By contrast, 68 percent of Hispanic children and only 38 percent of black children in America reside in two-parent families. A black child living with a single mother is nearly three times more likely to live in poverty than a black child living with two parents, the Census data show, yet 50 percent more black children are living with single mothers than in two-parent married families.

Given that a significant body of research now shows that children raised in two-parent, married families do better in school, are less likely to wind up in jail, and are less likely to end up on welfare, the startling racial divide in marriage tells us that a new generation of children, especially blacks, are growing up destined to struggle academically, in the job market, and in forming their own families. And policy prescriptions like a higher minimum wage or tax credits are unlikely to help many of these kids. What they mostly need is another parent—usually a father.

In contrast, as Mark Steyn noted, if you believe, as Rev. Wright clearly does, that all of life's negative forces are part of a massive conspiracy invented by The Man to keep blacks down, what incentive is there--to coin a phrase--to do the right thing?

Talk about a blown opportunity for Obama, as Mickey Kaus wrote early last week before The Speech itself:

There are plenty of potential Souljahs still around: Race preferences. Out-of-wedlock births. Three strike laws! But most of all the victim mentality that tells African Americans (in the fashion of Rev. Wright's most infamous sermons) that the important forces shaping their lives are the evil actions of others, of other races.

But then, the reason we remember the original Sister Souljah moment is because of the astounding infrequency of reoccurrence since.

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Boxing's Final Bell

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 09:31 PM · The Future and its Enemies

Back in the mid-'70s, Tom Wolfe (I think) quoted a sports figure who said that heavyweight boxing would die as a professional sport as soon as Muhammad Ali retired. And he was just about right, although for a time, Mike Tyson was thought by many to be his successor. At least until he met Buster Douglas on February 11, 1990, as Paul Beston of City Journal writes, reviewing The Last Great Fight by Joe Layden:

Joe Layden’s The Last Great Fight tells the story of Tyson and Douglas and that memorable evening in Tokyo when the impossible—but now, in retrospect, the inevitable—happened. If his title is a bit of hyperbole—there have been great fights since, even if few of us have seen them—he’s certainly right in his larger point: Tyson’s defeat that night was really the beginning of the end of boxing’s last period of glamour. Without a heavyweight champion who captures public imagination, boxing is the sporting equivalent of a political third party: you’re always a bit surprised when someone you know is involved with such weirdness. Peopled with gamblers and ruthless, amoral promoters like Don King, the sport’s action involves two grown men apparently trying to do nothing more elevated than beat one another into submission. But Layden understands what boxing commentators like Larry Merchant and Jim Lampley, who were ringside in Tokyo, know from years of calling fights, and what innumerable boxing writers and fans, too, have learned through their own devotion to the sport: that its dangerous, primitive theater is rich in character and pathos, drama and lore, in a way that no other athletic competition can match. When boxing reaches its rare pinnacles, as it did in Tyson-Douglas, it can seem to a fan like the only thing worth paying attention to.

For my look at two earlier boxers, click here.

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The Huffington Boast

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 08:23 PM · The New, New Journalism · The Return of the Primitive

Tim Blair spots this amusing exchange:

Porter Berry, Fox News: Ms. Huffington, how are you? I’m Porter Berry from “The O’Reilly Factor.” I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about the Web site. Some of the stuff you have on the Web site, some hate speech. One person commented talking about Tony Snow. They said quote, “His cancer will return and he will die a very painful death ..."

Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post: You know what? I think you need to learn something about the Internet. The comments that appear there are taken down immediately.

Porter Berry: This was posted on the middle of February and was up yesterday.

Whoops.

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The Torture Never Stops

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 06:45 PM · The Making of the President · War And Anti-War

"That’s something I like about John McCain. I feel very strongly that all politicians should be hung by their thumbs. John McCain already has been. Figuratively and literally."

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Nobody Mention The L-Word

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 06:10 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Radical Chic · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole · The Newspeak Dictionary

Ever four years, there's at least one article mentioning that the left hates to be called liberal; here's Rich Lowry's take from 2004 (which actually namechecks Obama, then a newly minted senator). And in the International Herald-Tribune (a Pinch of a spinoff from the NYT), here's this year's model: in addition to never mentioning his middle name, one must never use the L-word to describe Barry O in polite company:

Simon Rosenberg, who leads the New Democrat Network and is currently unaligned in the Democratic contest, argues, "My basic belief is the generation-long era of political domination, the ascendancy of conservative politics, is at an end, and Obama has captured more than anyone else the opportunity of this era." He added: "It's very hard to put labels on him. He's building his own sandbox." [Is he old enough to play in it unsupervised?--Ed]

Obama, in fact, had the support of 64 percent of independents in the last New York Times/CBS News Poll. But can that transpartisan appeal be sustained? He has only begun to take some hard political hits - from the Clinton campaign, from conservative commentators and radio hosts, and from Senator John McCain's campaign. The recent flare-up about his pastor's racial views was one example. And Republicans are just starting up their attacks.

"Nobody's yet taken him on as a liberal," said Andrew Kohut, who leads the Pew Research Center. "But McCain will."

So far, Republicans give every indication of planning to portray Obama as a big-government liberal out of touch with American values and unprepared to be commander in chief.

"When you're rated by National Journal as to the left of Ted Kennedy and Bernie Sanders, that's going to be difficult to explain," said Danny Diaz , a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

Coupled with Michelle Obama's punitive liberalism, Rev. Wright's radical chic-era boilerplate conspiratorial racism, Tony Rezko's questionable financial dealings, and Obama's own minimalistic voting record, that's quite a load of baggage for someone with a featherweight history as a national politician to tote on the road to the White House.

Related: Well, related conceptually, at least: "Kinder, gentler euphemisms for failure."

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The Audacity of Copa

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 04:28 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Making of the President

New York Post film critic Kyle Smith comes clean:

I worshiped at the Church of Manilow for many years. He is a part of me. I can no more disown him than I can unload my LPs of ABBA’s “Super Trouper” or “The Best of Andy Gibb.” However, I respectfully request that you please not hold any facts against me and start talking about something else.

No word yet on what Obama's grandmother thought of him.

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Quadrophenia

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 11:08 AM · Muggeridge's Law

As Tom Maguire notes with brilliant understatement, blogger with reported case of multiple personality disorder syndrome has problems identifying group blog.

We hate it when this happens to us.

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Got A Condo Made Of Foam-Ah

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 10:27 AM · The Substance of Style

Visit "The Tomb of King Peepankhamun", the winner of the Washington Post's "Peeps Show II, The second annual Sunday Source Peeps Diorama Contest".

No fireworks are involved, but a semifinalist did lock and load a diorama of Stanley Peepbrick's "Full Sugar Coating". No word yet on what Peep Ermey thinks of its technical accuracy, though.

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Hyperbole Much, Boys?

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 10:13 AM · Bobos In Paradise · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive

"Obama adviser likens Bill Clinton's comments to McCarthy's", the Boston Globe reports.

Meanwhile, Jake Tapper notes that "Carville Equates Richardson With Judas":

In the New York Times today, Clintonista James Carville calls Bill Richardson's endorsement of Obama "an act of betrayal."

“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Carville said.

So in Mr. Carville's view on this Easter weeend, Richardson is Judas Iscariot, Obama is Caiaphas, and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, is .....?

Heh. Now that brings an entirely new meaning to the phrase, "The King James Bible".

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The Post "Post-Racial Candidate"

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 08:23 AM · Radical Chic · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole · The Return of the Primitive

Mark Steyn's column on the now-infamous Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the implications of his radical chic sermons for the Obama campaign is a must-read:

‘I’m sure,” said Barack Obama in that sonorous baritone that makes his drive-thru order for a Big Mac, fries, and strawberry shake sound profound, “many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

Well, yes. But not many of us have heard remarks from our pastors, priests, or rabbis that are stark, staring, out-of-his-tree flown-the-coop nuts. Unlike Bill Clinton, whose legions of “spiritual advisers” at the height of his Monica troubles outnumbered the U.S. diplomatic corps, Senator Obama has had just one spiritual adviser his entire adult life: the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, two-decade pastor to the president presumptive. The Reverend Wright believes that AIDs was created by the government of the United States — and not as a cure for the common cold that went tragically awry and had to be covered up by Karl Rove, but for the explicit purpose of killing millions of its own citizens. The government has never come clean about this, but the Reverend Wright knows the truth. “The government lied,” he told his flock, “about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.”

Does he really believe this? If so, he’s crazy, and no sane person would sit through his gibberish, certainly not for 20 years.

Or is he just saying it? In which case, he’s profoundly wicked. If you understand that AIDs is spread by sexual promiscuity and drug use, you’ll know that it’s within your power to protect yourself from the disease. If you’re told that it’s just whitey’s latest cunning plot to stick it to you, well, hey, it’s out of your hands, nothing to do with you or your behavior.

Before the speech, Slate’s Mickey Kaus advised Senator Obama to give us a Sister Souljah moment: “There are plenty of potential Souljahs still around: Race preferences. Out-of-wedlock births,” he wrote. “But most of all the victim mentality that tells African Americans (in the fashion of Rev. Wright’s most infamous sermons) that the important forces shaping their lives are the evil actions of others, of other races.” Indeed. It makes no difference to white folks when a black pastor inflicts kook genocide theories on his congregation: The victims are those in his audience who make the mistake of believing him. The Reverend Wright has a hugely popular church with over 8,000 members, and Senator Obama assures us that his pastor does good work by “reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDs.” But maybe he wouldn’t have to quite so much “reaching out” to do and maybe there wouldn’t be quite so many black Americans “suffering from HIV/AIDs” if the likes of Wright weren’t peddling lunatic conspiracy theories to his own community.

Found via the Brothers Judd; much more from the Anchoress, in a post titled, "Obama, Psychic duality & the churches":

It has been exceedingly difficult to discuss race in this nation for about 30 years, because anytime anyone - white or black - has tried to make a serious point, the word “racist!” is immediately flung out; lasting and damaging labels are instantly attached to people, and so everyone just shuts down. People guard their words and swallow provocative debating points - even if their aim is to generate a real, open and honest forum of ideas - because no one wants to be called a racist. This happened to Bill Clinton and to Bill Cosby; it happened to Rush Limbaugh and Geraldine Ferraro, and driving today I heard the word spat out at Sean Hannity. It happened to me, actually, last week, when I was called a “racist” on another blog for writing this; I was also deemed “hypersensitive” about being called a racist.

To which I replied, “I don’t think you’d like it.”

But see, I didn’t think anything I wrote was “racist.” I simply made the mistake of trying to discuss race at all.

“Black” America is forced to live a psychic duality, but in a way, “white” America is, too. We are supposed to - apparently - somehow split our brains, into never even noticing that there are racial differences between us, unless we’re working in praise of those differences. So, there are no differences between us…but we celebrate the differences…but their are none, and if you think there are, you’re a racist. Now celebrate!

Does that make sense? No wonder the national psyche is so battered. No wonder Obama is having difficulty straddling this chasm, despite his long legs. No wonder issues of race are distracting us from a much larger issue, which is whether he is competent to be our president and CIC.

No one likes being called a racist, and fear of being so labeled (or called “sexist”) is part of what is roiling both the nation and this particular election. You cannot talk “race” (or gender) without being denounced by people who don’t want to shatter their own illusions about their own “righteous” ways, or who don’t want to enter the discussion because they might be called “racist,” or a “sexist” too. Toxic, toxic.

Obama’s candidacy has, for better or worse, - I think probably for better - revealed the complicated and shaky state of race-relations in America. Middle class “white” America had not realized just how touchy things were, perhaps because we hadn’t “wanted” to see it, or perhaps because in our minds, with our kids rapping and adopting “street” clothes and lingo, and the popular culture seeming fairly ingrained with a “multi-culti” mindset, it simply seemed like race had become a secondary or tertiary matter. Or we hoped it had.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King waited for the day when his children would be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their character. That day seems very far away, right now, and “white” America - even “well-meaning” white America - shares blame in that. But perhaps “black” America does too. Dr. King was not, I don’t think, exempting blacks from the challenge of considering a man’s character before his skin color, but modern reverends like Wright and Meeks seem to be teaching otherwise.

I wonder what Rev. Wright's typical Easter message is like.

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Living On Tuzla Time

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 08:15 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War

"What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife...oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.'"

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Happy Easter!

By Ed Driscoll · March 23, 2008 07:41 AM · The Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name · The Return of the Primitive

Happy Easter!

Since this newly-born "holiday" lacks the historic significance of, say, World Water Day, Google, starting from zero, sits this one out with no special logo on its splash page. Again.

(At least Dogpile's artists spent 15 minutes to dress up its mascot for the day. And as Mark Steyn notes, sadly, some aspects of the season are becoming a bit too much for traditional churches)

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Network TV's Unceasing Commitment To Ideological Diversity

By Ed Driscoll · March 22, 2008 12:55 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!

John Stossel says that he's the lone libertarian on the big three networks' news programs. Which puts ABC one up on CBS, where one year before RatherGate hit the fan, Lesley Stahl couldn't name a single conservative at the Tiffany Network in an interview with Cal Thomas.

Speaking of RatherGate, last year, Roger Ailes said, "The greatest danger to journalism is a newsroom or a profession where everyone thinks alike. Because then one wrong turn can cause an entire news division to implode". Which may go far to explain a decade of scandals and convulsions most of the television and print news agencies have undergone since 9/11, since they lack the ideological diversity to properly cover the War On Terror and its myriad related facets.

Update: I don't think Leslie would be able to namecheck all that many conservatives in CBS's entertainment division if she ever has to give a follow-up interview.

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Karl Rove Thinks Different

By Ed Driscoll · March 22, 2008 08:24 AM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · The Substance of Style

Glenn Reynolds satirically suggests "a lucrative spokesperson gig" is possibly in the Dark Lord's future from Apple; but if this even more famous Mac head--with the nation's single largest audience of listeners--couldn't get signed, Karl probably shouldn't hold his breath.

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The Ghosts Of 1968, The Year Of The Hippie Poseur

By Ed Driscoll · March 21, 2008 08:46 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Radical Chic

Tom Stoppard describes 1968 as "The year of the posturing rebel". Or as John Lennon confessed a decade later:

"I dabbled in politics in the late 1960s and 1970s, more out of guilt than anything. Guilt for being rich and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something, or get punched in the face to prove I'm one of the people. I was doing it against my instincts."

Fascinating though, that the 1960s and '70s, a period that was rife with poseurs such as Lennon, is still influencing us to this day. You can see it in music, in the form of ersatz nostalgia acts such as Lenny Kravitz and Sheryl Crow, who dress in period costume (sort of the tie-dyed equivalent of greasers like Sha Na Na in leather jackets and D.A.s in 1975, or a big band that same year still playing in tan dinner jackets and bow ties). Or much more dangerously, in a politics that still takes it rhetoric from a period now four decades in the past, whether it's John Kerry in 2004, or Rev. Wright in 2008.

But then, when starting from zero, one is always tempted to stay trapped in Year One.

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The Ghosts Of 1929

By Ed Driscoll · March 21, 2008 04:19 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · The Future and its Enemies · The Memory Hole

Amity Shlaes, the author of The Forgotten Man, her exceptional 2007 look at the Depression, writes, "the 1930s have plenty to tell us, yes. But the real challenge isn't deciding who resembles Hoover. The challenge is for both parties to figure out how to avoid a whole era of mistakes":

Hoover knew free trade was beneficial. But his party, the Grand Old Party, was the tariff party. So in spite of himself, he signed a big new tariff, the Smoot-Hawley act, triggering retaliation from U.S. trading partners.

For many decades now, Democrats have contrasted Hoover's concession to protectionists unfavorably with free-trade legislation written by Roosevelt and his globalization guru, Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

Today it is the Democrats who are doing wrong, and they know better. Candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both internationalists by temperament, yet they seem to be in a race to see who can repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement first.

Read the whole thing.

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I'm Sorry Dave, But I Think You Missed It

By Ed Driscoll · March 21, 2008 02:46 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Future and its Enemies

Andrew Stuttaford links to Reihan Salam's Arthur C. Clarke obituary in the Atlantic, in which Salam writes:

Clarke all but worshipped advanced technology, and his novels were a mash note to heroic humans who transformed the world in a spirit of fellowship and boundless curiosity.But as a later generation of science fiction novelists and philosophers are asking now, what happens when the machines we create surpass us in raw intelligence and even creativity? Clarke dreamed up HAL, the intelligent computer at the heart of 2001, without considering that HAL, in a very real sense, rendered humanity obsolete. What is humanity's purpose in a world made by HAL? What Clarke failed to understand about the supposed "mind virus" of religious belief is that it answers exactly this question — it grounds human dignity in transcendent truth. And that's nothing to sneeze at.

It's been ages since I've read The Lost Worlds Of 2001, which documents the tens of thousands of words that Clarke wrote and the dozens of blind alleys that Clarke and Kubrick went down before coming up with the final screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Salam appears to have missed the entire point of the film. (And admittedly, the novelized version of 2001 is a very different experience that Kubrick's more open-ended movie version, even though both were created concurrently.)

DANGER: PRETENTIOUS COLLEGE BULL SESSION-STYLE FILM WONKERY AHEAD! PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION!

Kubrick's 2001 is structured to be a journey up the evolutionary ladder of man's intellegence. Beginning with the appearance of the alien monolith to nudge "Moonwatcher" into something approaching sentience, including a sense of how to create and use tools (the bone he uses to defend his tribe's watering hole--and can you say "Intelligent Design"? I knew that you could), the film then moves to modern man, in the form of the passive, but secretive scientist/bureaucrat Heywood Floyd, before reaching artificial intelligence in the form of HAL 9000.

(Just as Floyd was a mid-1960s conception of a then-modern era bureaucrat, sort of along the lines of, say, Robert Mcnamara, Hal is of the same era, a prediction of what an intelligent machine would resemble. Blade Runner would later posit what neuroses artificial intelligence would have if it was encased in human form, rather than a mainframe computer.)

The third segment of 2001, which pits the Discovery's astronauts against HAL as their space craft travels to Jupiter, is a symbolic battle of man versus machine. If Hal had won and entered the Star Gate in orbit around Jupiter, and taken the film's vaunted "Ultimate Trip" to meet the alien race behind the monoliths, then clearly a very different creature would have returned to Earth than the Nietzschian "Star Child" at the film's conclusion. Maybe something like V'Ger, or the Borg on Star Trek, instead.

But in any case, it's clear from the movie that Kubrick understood full well that HAL rendered mankind, in its current form as obsolete. Which means Clarke probably did as well. Kubrick's 2001 posits that man is near obsolete anyhow, and in need of spiritual rebirth, as indicated by the banality of the language and the deliberately low-key performances, especially, in both cases, when compared to the film's predecessor, the gonzo, hellzapoppin' Dr. Strangelove.

(Incidentally, for the best guide to the structure and subtext of the film version, try to get a hold of a copy of Carolyn Geduld's 1973 Filmguide to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which Kubrick once read, approvingly, according to a quote from one of Kubrick's relatives in Taschen's massive tomb of Kurick-a-brac.)

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But Isn't This Mary Katharine Ham's Territory?

By Ed Driscoll · March 21, 2008 02:04 PM · The Substance of Style

Seeking to take his mind off the frozen tundra of Jasperwood, James Lileks does unspeaking things to poor, defenseless foam rubber (isn't that what they're made out of? Feels like it when biting into them) Peeps:

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Live From Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, It's PJM Political!

By Ed Driscoll · March 20, 2008 10:29 PM · Ed On The Radio

Assuming some or all of the hyperlinks and MP3 files work, the special Road Warrior edition of PJM Political that I produced while I'm on the East Coast this week is online here. Show topics include:

Carly Fiorina was once the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. These days, she's working for John McCain, as another CEO--Roger L. Simon of Pajamas Media--discovers. And host Bill Bradley on the little-discussed speech that McCain's presumptive opponent quietly gave in Philadelphia this week. Plus:

Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online explains how, as he puts it, Valerie Bertinelli's "lesbian kisses and diet tips" knocked his book Liberal Fascism from atop the NYT Best-Seller List!

James Lileks test drives his Reverend Jeremiah Wright impersonation. (Don't try this at home, kids.)

Michael Barone says the decade's Red and Blue State maps will be thrown out the window in November.

Tune in, here!

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Climbing Up On Solsbury Hill

By Ed Driscoll · March 20, 2008 10:15 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted

"If a liberal falls in the liberal forest and no one says they heard it, can you say it didn't happen? Mr. Mamet must feel like the guy in a mob movie who knows the hit is coming but has to sweat through to the bullet."

As Glenn Reynolds once wrote, "he left looks for heretics and the right looks for converts, and both find what they're looking for". And woe betide the man who takes Apple's advice and actually does begin to "think different": the silence will be deafening.

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Maybe You Can Throw Grandma Under The Bus...

By Ed Driscoll · March 20, 2008 01:08 PM · The Making of the President

But Geraldine Ferraro--now a free agent who doesn't have to worry about appeasing Hillary--is not going quietly.

Elsewhere, a stereotype too far?

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Obama Hits A Single

By Ed Driscoll · March 20, 2008 08:42 AM · The Making of the President

At least when Bill Clinton ran in 1992, he put himself on the map by throwing Jesse Jackson under the bus, not his grandmother and potential voters.

Too bad, since the media would have gotten warm and tinglies from anything he said, Obama had nothing to fear by going for broke. If John McCain pulls it out in November--or heck, Hillary departs Denver with the nomination--we may very well look back on Tuesday as the day Obama camp blew it by hitting a single (if that) instead of a home run.

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I Think He Needs A New Flak Catcher

By Ed Driscoll · March 20, 2008 08:29 AM · Radical Chic · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole

After hors d'oeuvres with Lenny & Felicia, the New Black Panther Party drops in for a nightcap on Barack Obama's Website.

Remember those carefree days so long ago when all we worried about with liberal presidential candidates were bimbo eruptions?

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And Then DiCaprio Shouts, "I'm The Fuhrer Of The World!"

By Ed Driscoll · March 18, 2008 11:55 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted · Liberal Fascism · The Memory Hole

James Lileks stumbles over the 1943 movie version of Titanic:

Did I get the British version? No, that’s “A Night to Remember.” I checked the TiVo info: this was “Titanic” from 1943. What? Robert Osbourne ambled up to the camera and explained:

This was the Nazi version of the tale.

I’d never heard of it. (Of course, there are ten reviews on imdb.com.) It was a fairly big-budget item for the German cinema, what with the war and all, and had two directors. The first was killed by the Gestapo midway through production. Must have been hell to arrange a competition bond in those days. Goebbels nixed its release in the end, since so many people dying was apparently a depressing thing to show war-weary audiences. They wanted music, romance, comedy. They got it, but from the clips I’ve seen they were fascinatingly soulless things – everyone seems to be smiling through sheer terror. Imagine a Busby Berkeley sequence in which every dancer has her own sniper in the wings waiting to shoot her if she fails, and you’ll get the idea.

The Nazi “Titanic” is useful evidence against those who think the National Socialists chose the second part of their name for no particular reason – it’s anti-capitalist propaganda. The movie begins not on the dock, or on board, or in a boisterous café by the quay; no, it starts off in the White Star boardroom, where the eeeevil investors are figuring out the best way to manipulate the stock. Yes, that’s correct: insider trading sunk the Titanic. The head of White Star – a tall, dashing, cynical, cunning, selfish Bruce Ismay (snort) pushes the captain to reach New York in record speed to boost the stock, which had gyrated up and down prior to departure, and had been subject to large block purchases by other characters on the ship – oh, don’t ask. The interiors looks nothing like the Titanic, but the special effects aren’t bad, and it’s impressively shot. It’s just all wrong. Every frame is just saturated with a strong dose of Wrong.

Forgot the best part: the hero is a German. He’s a fictional officer who tries to warn everyone about the ice. He’s cool, composed, devoted to duty, and scornful of the capitalists. At least the Soviets had that Russian-soulfulness thing going, so their movies would be soaked with sloppy emotion and Slavic hymns; the Nazis were tin-eared thick-thumbed boors when it came to art. God help us if they’d won; I cannot imagine their sitcoms.

Sadly, I can.

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New Silicon Graffiti: "Collapse Into Cliche"

By Ed Driscoll · March 17, 2008 09:00 AM · Bobos In Paradise · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Ed TV · The Substance of Style · War And Anti-War

While it lacks the staggering production values and stentorian dialogue readings of the finest Fred Spencer Productions, the latest edition of Silicon Graffiti, our in-house video blog, is online. It analyzes and breaks down the creepy 9/11-ish vibe of a couple of advertisements, the first a Starbucks ad that actually ran in Manhattan less than a year after September 11th (here's our concurrent blog post from our first year). And the second, a much more recent viral video for a (possibly fictitious?) Dutch travel agency with close to a million and half views on YouTube and at least one appearance on the cable news channels, which is where I first saw it at the start of this month.

(Past episodes of Silicon Graffiti can be found here.)

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A Century of "Liberal Fascism"

By Ed Driscoll · March 17, 2008 08:00 AM · Ed On Dead Tree · Liberal Fascism · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War

Here's my review of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, from the March issue of the New Individualist magazine. The text of that issue is not yet online, so I'm reprinting this review online with the permission of editor-in-chief Robert Bidinotto, who, separate and apart from his long-form work "on dead tree", is also a fine blogger.

Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 496 pages, $27.95.

Reviewed by Edward B. Driscoll, Jr.

With America committed to war overseas, an American president (who many consider to be racist) suspends vast swatches of American liberties. Opponents of the war are demonized, their patriotism routinely questioned. Even popular foods bearing the names of now-unpopular, formerly allied nations are spontaneously renamed, in banal demonstrations of mass support for the war effort.

Is this an account in 2004 by a blogger on the leftwing Daily Kos website, railing feverishly against President Bush and the Global War on Terror? No, it’s a description of the state of our nation in 1917, under President Wilson during World War I. As Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online, writes in his new book Liberal Fascism:

The liberty cabbage, the state-sanctioned brutality, the stifling of dissent, the loyalty oaths and the enemies list--all of these things not only happened in America but happened at the hands of liberals. Self-described progressives--as well as the majority of American socialists--were at the forefront of the push for a truly totalitarian state. They applauded every crackdown and questioned the patriotism, the intelligence, and decency of every pacifist and classically liberal dissenter.

Partly inspired by Leonard Peikoff’s The Ominous Parallels, Goldberg has done his homework assembling Liberal Fascism, going back to books and documents of the 1930s, ’40s, and even earlier. And understandably so: He knows that his book will be attacked and possibly dismissed for any mistakes in history, more than for his actual arguments.

That so little of this history is remembered, Goldberg argues, is the result of two things. First, since the left has a remarkably firm grip on academia, they tend to write history--and write it in a way that’s favorable to their side of history. Second, the left tends to have a remarkably short collective memory. While most conservatives and libertarians can name those movements’ founders (such as Hayek, Buckley, and Rand), the typical modern leftist tends not to remember his intellectual forefathers nearly as well. Or as liberal journalist and Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. wrote in his 2004 book Stand Up, Fight Back, “Liberals and Democrats tend not to view themselves as the inheritors of a grand tradition. Almost on principle, they are suspicious of such traditions, of too much theorizing, of linking themselves too much to the past.”

The result is that the intertwining of Marxism, Progressivism, and Fascism in the first decades of the twentieth century--the theme of Liberal Fascism--has been virtually forgotten among the modern left. Which is why it is now routine for conservatives (including whichever Republican happens to hold the highest national office at the time, whether it’s Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, or George W. Bush) to be demonized by the left as a Nazi, and for the Nazis--and fascism in general--to be widely described by the left, and much of the culture at large, as rightwing movements.

The Mustache on the Left

Of course, it was the Soviets of the 1920s who first began to describe fascism as being on the right. As a more populist strain of totalitarianism, it was, arguably, to the right of communism, which ultimately killed tens of millions more people during the twentieth century. But the collectivist nature of fascism is far, far to the left of American conservatism and especially American libertarianism. To paraphrase a remark by Charles Krauthammer shortly after the 2006 midterm elections: Americans play politics within the middle of the football field; since 1789, Europeans have confined themselves mostly to the forty yards on the left side of the field. This helps to explain why, when the wall dividing Berlin fell in 1989, the same region embraced a corporatist, nanny-state European Union only a few years later.

Goldberg does yeoman’s work researching and documenting material that the American left had consigned to the memory hole since 1945. By the 1970s, this pre-World War II past was considered hermetically sealed by liberals. As Goldberg writes, Ronald Reagan, a former FDR backer, was attacked in the Washington Post as late as 1981 for correctly pointing out the favorable lip service that he remembered being paid by FDR’s brain trust to Mussolini.

But lots of intellectuals and artists of the era before WWII had good things to say about Il Duce. Herbert Croly, a founder of the New Republic, offered, in Goldberg’s words, “qualified support for Mussolini” in the pages of his magazine. Cole Porter (or possibly P.G. Wodehouse, when he revised Porter’s lyrics for the British stage) name-checked Mussolini in an early version of “You’re the Tops.” In fact, the title of Goldberg’s book comes from a 1932 speech by H.G. Wells at Oxford University to Britain’s Young Liberals organization, in which he said, “I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.” Goldberg quotes George Orwell, discussing Wells nine years later: “Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany.” Of Germany’s Italian counterpart, in 1933’s The Shape of Things to Come Wells wrote, “Fascism indeed was not an altogether bad thing; it was a bad good thing; and Mussolini has left his mark on history.”

Populist Totalitarianism

In fact, Mussolini’s fascist Italy features rather prominently in Goldberg’s book, for numerous reasons. It predates Hitler’s vision of a National Socialist Germany. As David Ramsay Steele wrote in a 2003 essay titled “The Mystery of Fascism,” the ideology’s most influential thinkers--including Mussolini himself--evolved their positions in an attempt to create a more populist form of socialist government than Marxism, especially the Soviet revolutionary model. And as Goldberg writes, fascism, by its very nature, will embody the nationalist traditions of whatever nation it infects--which is why fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany were each very different regimes. Anti-Semitism, now often viewed as part and parcel of fascism, was a key historical component of Germany in particular. In contrast, Goldberg writes:

For most of his career, Mussolini considered anti-Semitism a silly distraction and, later, a necessary sop to his overbearing German patron. Jews could be good socialists or fascists if they thought and behaved like good socialists or fascists. Because Hitler thought explicitly in terms of what we would today call identity politics, Jews were irredeemably Jews, no matter how well they spoke German. His allegiance, like that of all practitioners of identity politics, was to the iron cage of immutable identity.

The word “fascism” is Italian for bundling together, derived from the Latin word fasces, and Mussolini adopted the original Roman symbol of power--a bundle of birch rods tied together with a red ribbon--for fascist Italy.

As Goldberg mentioned to me in a recent interview, Mussolini similarly invented the word “totalitarianism” as a way to describe a cradle-to-grave socialism that would bind all aspects of his nation together. “Mussolini meant it to be appealing to people,” Goldberg said. “It was a sales pitch for his kind of government. He meant it as we would use words like ‘holistic’ today, as sort of covering every aspect of life; everyone’s going to be included, everyone’s going to be part of the community. No child is going to be left behind. That was the meaning of totalitarianism in its original conception.”

These sorts of reminders are part of Liberal Facism’s strength. Goldberg does not just look back with ninety years of hindsight and editorial bias. He presents the concepts and the words used in the way they were envisioned at the time.

It’s only after WWII that totalitarianism understandably became associated with militaristic, jackbooted thugs. But militarism wasn’t exclusive to European fascists. The collectivists of the first half of the twentieth century--from Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to the Soviets--chose military forms and imagery because they were thought of as the most efficient ways to mobilize their nations. The New Dealers were inspired by Wilson’s handling of World War I--both in the trenches in Europe and almost as aggressively while fighting the administration’s enemies domestically. And much of the New Deal was an attempt to place the Depression–addled U.S. economy under the equivalent of a wartime footing. As Goldberg notes, the imagery promoting the National Recovery Act was virtually indistinguishable from much of the concurrent propaganda of 1930s–era Germany.

Brave New Village

That the wartime pitch of the 1910s, 1930s, and 1940s was global is one of the reasons why Orwell’s 1984 predicted that socialist England could come to resemble a mélange of fascism and Stalinism only a few decades after its 1949 publication date. And ever since, 1984 has been seen as the model of a totalitarian future. But modern, post–1960s collectivism--whether it’s the EU and its “soft” but all-encompassing policies; Hillary Clinton with her “It Takes a Village” imagery; or President Bush with his “compassionate conservatism” catchphrase--has generally moved away from militaristic imagery and instead uses muted, much more seductive language, symbols, and programs to expand government. Which is why Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Goldberg writes, is the more apt model for modern socialism and its cradle-to-grave nanny state.

This also explains the “have a nice day” smiley face with the Hitler mustache on the dust jacket of Liberal Fascism. It’s one of the few signs of humor in this otherwise scholarly book, from a writer known for drafting very funny columns during the early days of National Review Online.

Since I’m writing this over a month before the book’s publication date, I’ll be quite interested to see how liberal elites respond to it. We already know what the rank-and-file left thinks: Months before publication, its Amazon.com page was full of the most vile ad hominems and slander, when it wasn’t being hacked; and since no one attacking the book on Amazon had yet read it, it’s safe to assume that their attacks were based almost solely on the book’s cover art and title. Which illustrates one of Goldberg’s central theses remarkably well: How many of the book’s detractors know that they’re attacking it for language written by H.G. Wells from 1932?

One debatable point I noticed was in the chapter on New Age mysticism, where Goldberg writes:

Tom Wolfe, in his essay, “The Great Relearning,” details how the counterculture, inspired by the German Bauhaus, wanted to start over, to declare a New Year Zero (much as the Jacobins and Nazis did), to go back to the fork in the road where Western civilization allegedly took the wrong path.

I think Goldberg misses Wolfe’s point and inadvertently draws the inaccurate conclusion that the ’60s U.S. counterculture took some inspiration from Bauhaus theories. The history of the left during the twentieth century is one of an endlessly repeating theme, “start from zero”; that theme connects the artists of the Bauhaus with the hippies of the sixties. But otherwise, modernism was anathema to the countercultural denizens of Haight-Ashbury. If they had even heard of the Bauhaus, hippies rather forcefully rejected its modernist aesthetics, which were then at their cultural peak in the form of every major corporation’s skyscraper.

Also, I’m not sure how comfortable I am with the concluding paragraphs of Goldberg’s book:

In 1968, in a televised debate on ABC News during the Chicago Democratic National Convention, Gore Vidal continually goaded William F. Buckley, eventually calling him a “crypto-Nazi.” Vidal himself is an open homosexual, a pagan, a statist, and a conspiracy theorist. Buckley, a patriotic, free-market, antitotalitarian gentleman of impeccably good manners, could take it no more and responded: “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”

It is one of the few times in Buckley’s long public life that he abandoned civility, and he instantly regretted it. Nonetheless, having been on the receiving end of many similar insults and diatribes, I have deep sympathy for Buckley’s frustration. For at some point it is necessary to throw down the gauntlet, to draw a line in the sand, to set a boundary, to cry at long last, “Enough is enough.” To stand athwart “progress” and yell, “Stop!” My hope is that this book has served much the same purpose as Buckley’s intemperate outburst while striving for his more typical civility.

This ending seemed to cheapen, just a hair, what is overall quite a remarkable book. For a moment, I was left thinking that Liberal Fascism is little more than a “Nyah!”--a thumbing of the nose back at liberals for decades of calling conservatives Nazis. But it’s so much more than that. And I’m worried that these two paragraphs will be reported as the whole theme of the book (er, as I just did).

But Goldberg’s real point is inescapable: The modern American left totes a lot of historical baggage, much of which it’s unaware. And that baggage continues to inspire it, even as the left mutates into softer, kinder, gentler, squishier forms unthinkable by its ancestors when they “started from zero” ninety-some years ago.

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Has Philip Glass Ever Written The Music For His Ads?

By Ed Driscoll · March 17, 2008 12:35 AM · Muggeridge's Law · The Making of the President

Andrew Ferguson waxes philosophic on "The Wit & Wisdom of Barack Obama":

There's still room for whimsy at the New Yorker magazine, I don't care what you've heard. Just the other day two of the New Yorker's bloggers (now there's a phrase to send Harold Ross spinning) were chewing over the widely noted eloquence of Barack Obama. They were struck by "Obama's wonderful line," as one of them described it, to the effect that "We are the ones we've been waiting for." Obama uses it as one of his signature refrains. Some of his followers even turned it into a music video.

So one thing led to another, as it does on blogs, and before long the bloggers began wondering, as they do at the New Yorker, what the phrase would sound like in French.

"You couldn't say it in French," blogged one of the bloggers.

"Are you sure about the French?" the other blogger blogged back. "Mine isn't good enough to know if 'C'est nous qui nous avons attendu' or 'Ceux qui nous attendons, c'est nous' would sound French to a French ear, or if it just would sound stupid." Oui, blogged the first blogger. It would sound très stupid. "My ear/memory tells me that it would be too weird to say, since I think there's a we/us thing that doesn't work."

Eventually a French journalist was consulted. He ruled summarily that, translated into French, "the Barack Obama sentence [le sentence de la Barack Obama] sounds weird to me."

So there you have it: You can't really say "We are the ones we've
been waiting for" in French. The matter was closed. The bloggers moved on. Good times indeed.

But wait. There was something tantalizingly incomplete about this brief discussion of whether the sentence sounds weird in French: What was missing was an acknowledgement of how weird the sentence sounds in English. What, after all, does "We are the ones we've been waiting for" mean, precisely? My hunch is that the sentence is one of those things that no one will admit to being confused by, like the movies of Godard or the tenor-sax solos of John Coltrane, lest your peers think you're a loser or a moron. Certainly Obama fans won't admit how obscure the sentence is--though several have claimed that it's lifted from a prophecy of the Tribal Elders of the Hopi Indians. Hopi prophecies are famously obscure.

Hopi prophecies? Would that make Obama the Koyaanisqatsi candidate? Both have in common a dazzling surface, great soundtrack, and little more than nihilism and warmed-over leftwing sixties rhetoric at their core.

(Via Orrin Judd, who concludes his post with a punning, "The Audacity of Hopi".)

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McCain Camp: "Please Keep Running Those 3:00 A.M. Ads"

By Ed Driscoll · March 16, 2008 03:26 PM · Ed TV · The Making of the President · War And Anti-War

That's how Foreign Policy's Mike Boyer reports the conversation went at a recent Council on Foreign Relations event in DC involving representatives of both the Hillary and McCain camps:

After Mara Rudman, who is advising Hillary Clinton, very briefly addressed the issue of Clinton's foreign policy experience, [Randy Scheunemann, who is overseeing foreign policy issues for John McCain's campaign], chimed in with:
"Please keep running those 3:00 A.M. ads about who you want to answer the phone, because we like those."

Happy to oblige:

Because it's always 3:00 AM, somewhere!

Update: The Gipper certainly understood inter-party campaign jujitsu.

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Eyes Wide Shut

By Ed Driscoll · March 16, 2008 03:30 AM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Oh, That Liberal Media!

David Weidner of Dow Jones' Market Watch writes, "The real Eliot was always there. We just averted our eyes." We, white man? Plenty of conservative and libertarian writers expressed their concerns about Spitzer's Giuliani versus Drexel Burnham with the Marshall stacks turned up to 11 approach. But in contrast, the liberal New York media were typically more than happy to roll over for someone like Spitzer, Weidner notes:

It's the editors and reporters who stepped out of their roles when it came to making Spitzer too good to be true. Big papers dutifully leaked embarrassing details about Spitzer's targets, generated by the attorney general's office, while protecting the source of the information. In most cases, reporters put careerism ahead of fairness or, at least, questioning the tactics of one of the state's leading law-enforcement officials.

At the height of his power, Spitzer was in control, and instead of challenging him, the media was part of his machine.

Doesn't this sound identical to the New York press's see-no-evil approach to Hillary Clinton, particularly when she first ran for the Senate in 2000?

One of the media's Folk Marxist tropes is a century-old line that's still trotted out to this day: "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." (Gee, that's the very definition of objective and clinical, huh?) No wonder the press saw Spitzer as a kindred spirit.

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The Legacy Of Howard Metzenbaum

By Ed Driscoll · March 15, 2008 09:10 PM · The Memory Hole

NRO's "Bench Memos" blog has a post with some thoughts on the legacy of Howard M. Metzenbaum, the Democrat former senator from Ohio who died Wednesday in Florida at the age of 90. As Matthew J. Franck writes, in a private conversation before Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings, Thomas had him, in more ways than one, for lunch--and Metzenbaum nearly got a very public revenge, very nearly derailing Thomas's Supreme Court appointment in the form of Anita Hill.

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Bluffs You Can Believe In--But Is The Tilt The "Tell"?

By Ed Driscoll · March 15, 2008 07:06 PM · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole

Between Tony Rezko and (especially) Rev. Jeremiah Wright, this was the week that Obama's version of the Straight Talk Express went into the shop for major repairs.

Tim Blair and his commenters frequently refer to the "head tilt of compassion". Is it the subconscious poker player's "tell" that gives away Obama's bluffing?

Update: Welcome readers of Rezkorama, one stop shopping for information on everybody's favorite bagman!

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Is That All?

By Ed Driscoll · March 15, 2008 06:43 PM · An Army Of Davids · The Long Tail

"IDC said in 2007, the digital universe equaled 281 billion gigabytes of data, or about 45 gigabytes for every person on Earth."

45 gigs? Somebody's clearly not trying. Between DIY music, podcasts, radio shows and lately video, I've gotten to the point where this looks nigh-essential.

(Via the Bettie Page fans--and consequently, note presence of NSFW photo--at Liberty Peak Lodge.)

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Five Years On

By Ed Driscoll · March 15, 2008 06:07 PM · The Future and its Enemies · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War

Jules Crittenden, who was there "when the balloon went up", as Don Surber notes, has links to several essays, including his own, on the fifth anniversary of the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein. Liberation? Yes, for those few who choose to remember this.

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Down The Memory Ho!

By Ed Driscoll · March 15, 2008 03:51 PM · The Memory Hole

Mayflower Hotel's Room #871 "magically disappears".

(Found via the swanky virtual lodgings of Execupundit. And yes, I apologize profusely for the staggeringly cheap pun in the above headline.)

Update: For a much more serious look at the real cost of Elliot Spitzer, long before the Emperor's Club and Room #871 became a household name and number, read Roger Kimball's "Spitzer and the army of born-again Leninists". It links to this Arnold Kling article, but Spitzer's power, and his attraction to Manhattan liberals who allowed him carry on demonizing Wall Street is also a reminder of another, older piece by Kling.

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"Why Aren't The Vietnamese More Grateful To Tom Hayden?"

By Ed Driscoll · March 15, 2008 03:11 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Gulag Archipelago · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War

In Canada's National Post, Robert Fulford asks what to many is a fairly straightforward rhetorical question:

Why aren't the Vietnamese more grateful to Tom Hayden? Recently, he returned for the first time in 36 years to the country that he and his then-wife Jane Fonda tried to save from American domination in the Vietnam war. The trip disappointed him. As he writes in the March 10 issue of The Nation, Vietnam has turned capitalist. Was that what he fought for? Absolutely not. He remains capitalism's enemy, still the same lefty who helped found 1960s student radicalism.

In the San Jose suburb of Milpitas, the large Vietnamese population is so enamored with the current communist regime that they've gone back to flying the flag of the free former South Vietnam. And they're not alone.

Via Small Dead Animals, which notes:

Ah yes, those ungrateful Vietnamese. After Hollywood cleared their path for a worker's paradise they've decided they don't like it much after all and are abandoning it. Oh well, Hollywood still has Cuba and there's always Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to embrace.

And possibly, eventually, not even the former:

A growing underground network of young people armed with computer memory sticks, digital cameras and clandestine Internet hookups has been mounting some challenges to the Cuban government in recent months, spreading news the official state media try to suppress.

Last month, students at a prestigious computer science university videotaped an ugly confrontation they had with Ricardo Alarcón, the president of the National Assembly. Alarcón seemed flummoxed when students grilled him on why they could not travel abroad, stay at hotels, earn better wages or use search engines like Google. The video spread like wildfire through Havana, passed from person to person, and seriously damaged Alarcón's reputation in some circles.

Something similar happened in late January when officials tried to impose a tax on the tips and wages of employees of foreign companies.

Workers erupted in jeers and shouts when told about the new tax, a moment caught on a cellphone camera and passed along by memory sticks.

"It passes from flash drive to flash drive," said Ariel, 33, a computer programmer, who, like almost everyone else interviewed for this article, asked that his last name not be used for fear of political persecution. "This is going to get out of the government's hands because the technology is moving so rapidly."

This is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and Cuba has the benefit of much more modern techology, to boot.

As the Cato Institute, among many others has noted, in the 1980s:

Fax machines and photocopiers, video recorders and personal computers outside the government were no longer exotica but a sprawling, living nervous system that linked the Russian political opposition, the republican independence movements, and the burgeoning private sector. Tied informally together, this equipment constituted a network of considerable scale.

During that period, those same tools had a similar, if sadly less revolutionary impact in China. So the decision to allow possession of computers in Cuba by the new regime after Castro's six year PC blockade could have suprisingly remarkable long term consequences for that currently still-imprisoned Island.

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The Screeching Inversion

By Ed Driscoll · March 15, 2008 02:11 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Newspeak Dictionary · The Return of the Primitive

Found via the above "Day By Day" cartoon, Plumb Bob Blog has bobbed and weaved unto quite a plumb meme:

The short version of the screeching inversion is that the most immature among us get to pretend that they’re moral paragons, while the most mature are treated as moral pariahs, simply because the immature screech louder and a lot more often. Thus, in a morally deteriorating society, evil gets tagged as good, and good, evil.

Read the whole thing. The applications of the screeching inversion (and PBB's suggestions as to one of its popularizers in the 1960s is a pretty good one, in my opinion) are endless, but this endlessly screeched inversion is as good a recent example as any.

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Horton Hears A Fascist?

By Ed Driscoll · March 15, 2008 01:36 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · Hollywood, Interrupted · Liberal Fascism

Title by Jonah, review of Horton Hears a Who by The Conservative Mindcleaner:

It looks like I got Jonah Goldberg's attention with this one. I don't know what to make of his "Uh oh" though. Let's just say I'm not the only one who's going to make these connections. I might be the only one stupid enough, however, to say it out loud.

I wouldn't call it "stupid", as Libertas also noticed this otherwise probably innocuous film's inevitable Hollywood sucker punch moment.

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Hookers And Snappers

By Ed Driscoll · March 15, 2008 01:04 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!

Speaking of double standards, Mark Steyn, via an assist from fellow New Englander Jules Crittenden catches this doozy at AP:

If you use Associated Press photographs to point out that AP pix from the Middle East seem awfully staged and that their local snappers seem to see themselves as court photographers to the new Caliphate, the AP legal department will shut you down.

But, if the Associated Press goes to "Kristen"'s website, cut-and-pastes personal photographs of the happy hooker, and distributes them around the world without paying her a dime, well, that's "fair use".

In disputes of this kind, one would normally bet on the multinational megacorp with the big legal department. But it's pretty clear from her general philosophy that "Kristen" doesn't give away much for free, and certainly not "exotic photographs". And, given what one of my readers calls her "fully-funded mandate" from the Governor of New York, she presumably has the pockets to take AP to court. You go, girl! It's not often you get a case where there's someone in the room with a higher hourly rate than the lawyers.

But then, AP is far from the only news agency vexed by photography issues.

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Double Standards? You're Soaking In Them

By Ed Driscoll · March 15, 2008 11:10 AM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President

Ace of Spades writes, "It looks like the opening shot in The Second Battle of Congressional Hearings [involving General Petraeus] has been fired. I think it will take a willing suspension of disbelief to trust much of what you read about it in the MSM."

Shades of the heavily politicized 9/11 Commission (which culminated in one of the rare moments when "a Clinton Admin official got in trouble for what he put into his pants", right around this time during the last presidential election year.

Meanwhile, Terry Trippany presents "The AP Style Guide on Defending Barack Obama", which isn't too far removed from the "Andrew Sullivan Style Guide on Defending Barack Obama", as Ed Morrissey writes:

The reaction of Obama supporters to Jeremiah Wright has certainly been instructive, especially those who had plenty to say about Mitt Romney and Mormonism last year. Today’s example is Andrew Sullivan, who wondered whether Romney wore Mormon underwear and posted repeatedly about the polygamy that Romney’s faith repudiated over a century earlier. Today, he’s singing a different tune about Barack Obama, whose minister didn’t make his racially inflammatory statements 100 years ago or even thirty years ago.

Andrew Sullivan? Double Standards? I just can't see that, myself.

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The World Trembles On Its Axis...

By Ed Driscoll · March 15, 2008 01:43 AM · The Long Tail

...At the thought that the Tex & Edna Boil of the DIY video world can put you--yes, you!--into an online video!

(Via The B-Cast. This has to be what the British euphemistically refer to as a piss-take, and one of the commenters at Gawker also picked up on the Tex & Edna vibe. Otherwise, something tells me that I won't be writing about these folks for Videomaker any time soon.)

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The Song Remains The Same

By Ed Driscoll · March 14, 2008 10:30 PM · Bobos In Paradise · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War

"Within weeks of being inaugurated, I will return to the U.N. and I will literally, formally rejoin the community of nations and turn over a proud new chapter in America's relationship with the world."

Barack Obama out on the hustings this week? No, that's what John Kerry was saying right around this time four years ago.

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Now Are You Bloggers Happy?!

By Ed Driscoll · March 14, 2008 09:11 PM · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Future and its Enemies · The New, New Journalism · The Substance of Style

In addition to killing print newspapers, you're killing their ink-stained wretches' favorite watering holes, too!

Of course, it's also likely that the political correctness of the modern newspaper person isn't doing much for saloon keepers: today's journalist on a bender is much more likely to blow through a cube of Diet Pepsi than a fifth of Chivas.

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Probably--As Long As You Don't Question His Patriotism

By Ed Driscoll · March 14, 2008 08:23 PM · The Making of the President

"Can We Call Obama Anti-American Now?"

If you've never read it, James Piereson's "Punitive Liberalism" is a great introduction to a symptom that has its roots in the Democrats' post-JFK confusion of the 1960s, during which, as Piereson once told me, liberalism and the far left began to merge. And as Richard Miniter notes, who killed Kennedy was far the only conspiracy theory of the time.

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Ain't That America?

By Ed Driscoll · March 14, 2008 07:26 PM · The Making of the President · The Return of the Primitive

Link: sevenload.com

The government lied about Pearl Harbor? Does John Cougar Mellencamp attend Trinity United?

More seriously, "‘If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from,’ says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, ‘just look at Jeremiah Wright.’"

Update: Related thoughts from one of Jim Geraghty's readers: "Obama is being Jesse-ized by the day. The Clintons began the job, and Wright is finishing it."

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CARVILLE TO NEW YORK: DROP DEAD

By Ed Driscoll · March 14, 2008 06:53 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President

Well, to the New York Times at least, but it's always fun to recreate one of the great screaming tabloid headlines of all time. The Bonfire of the Democrats, as Rich Lowry calls it, observing the ongoing circular firing squads as one liberal institution attacks another, continues.

(Via Steve "Shecky" Green, whose comedy stylings--backed up by a few of the rim shots and gong hits in my Acid drum loop collection--are now playing on this week's PJM Political on XM Satellite Radio and here.)

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Hillary’s Scorched Earth Campaign

By Ed Driscoll · March 14, 2008 04:32 PM · The Making of the President

John Podhoretz explains, "This Is Why Hillary Is Staying In The Race":

Hillary Clinton is not stupid. She knows perfectly well that she’s not going to catch up with Barack Obama when it comes to delegates or the overall popular vote in the primaries, and that her lead with superdelegates is not at all secure. She’s staying in the race to see what happens — to lengthen it so that there is a chance Obama will implode for some reason or combination of reasons, leaving her to pick up the pieces.

When Hillary and her people talk about Obama’s lack of experience, they are not just talking about foreign policy and Washington voting. They are, implicitly, talking about his lack of experience with a hostile media. He has never been subjected to the withering examination of a reportorial or even punditorial pack — not in his service in the Illinois state senate, not in his 2004 Senate race, and not even when it came to his well-reviewed books. One never, ever knows how someone will hold up under such circumstances, or how quickly a reputation can be damaged.

Meanwhile, in his Blog Talk Radio interview with "Generalissimo" Duane Patterson, Ed Morrissey ponders how the video of Reverend Wright ended up on YouTube this week. Ed speculates that another Democratic candidate for the presidency leaked it, positing that it likely wasn't John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, or even Mike Gravel, despite his absolute mastery of all things Internet video...

Geraldine Ferraro provided Hillary with a valuable, if Pyrrhic, kamikaze-style assist in that general department this week; similarly, Rick Moran writes, "Hillary Clinton’s tactics from here on out are apparently designed to cleave the Democratic party in two and bulldoze her way to the nomination by any means necessary."

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It's A Show About Nothing

By Ed Driscoll · March 14, 2008 01:16 PM · The Making of the President · The Return of the Primitive

Gerard Vanderleun has the logical metaphor for the Democrats' 2008 campaign. Which makes perfect sense: having boiled all of their policies down to a Nancy Reagan-esque "Just Say No": No to traditional religion, no to patriotism, no to energy, no to new construction, no to SUVs, no to war (except Darfur!), no to reforming the Middle East, no to cutting taxes, (Update: no fireplaces, either!), all that's left is primitive fighting over ethnic and gender issues. (Gerard's metaphor is also a reminder of Thomas Hibbs' fascinating book about the nihilism lurking just under the hilarious surface of Seinfeld.)

I don't know if he will benefit from it in the ~~ratings~~ polls, but the contrast of John McCain's statesman-like tour of Europe and the Middle East sounds like absolutely perfect timing.

(Via Jules Crittenden.)

Update: Related thoughts from Charles Krauthammer and Betsy Newmark, who writes, "When there are no policy differences, vote identity politics."

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Client #9 Has Left The Building

By Ed Driscoll · March 14, 2008 03:15 AM · Ed On The Radio · The Making of the President

And the latest PJM Political is online, here.

Two guesses as to one of the main topics of conversation.

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VDH: Let's Get Serious About Energy

By Ed Driscoll · March 13, 2008 11:40 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · The Making of the President · The New Puritans

The great Victor Davis Hanson wonders why none of the candidates will get serious about discussing America's energy needs:

In terms of energy, we continue to delay coal plants despite our vast reserves, we dither on nuclear power, we won’t drill off the California coast or in tiny parcels in a vast Alaska, while we talk grandly of wind and solar and hydrogen and all the other solutions that are decades away from contributing in major ways to our energy needs—while our enemies in the Middle East are building trillion dollar reserves that will find their way into the hands of those who want to kill us. Do we think Nigeria or Russia is easier on the environment than we are when drilling oil, or that the Chinese have cleaner coal plants? If we really live on planet Earth, then isn’t it incumbent on us to exploit our own resources safely to ensure others less careful do less damage to our shared globe?

Can’t we find a single Presidential candidate who says: ‘Hang on. We are going to get serious. We our going to build coal, nuclear, more hydro-electric plants. We want as many Americans as possible to buy a second electric plug-in car for urban driving; we want more efficient gas and diesel engines; we are going to cut spending, radically so, to balance the budget, pay down the debt, pay off our foreign debt, and raise the value of our currency. Tighten your belts: federal spending is frozen for five years; we are going to raise the Social Security retirement age and reform the system. The borders are going to close, and citizenship is going to mean something again.’

Should McCain say that, it would trump ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and the 1960s tired old agenda, adopted by both parties, that got us in the mess we’re in.

What's really fascinating is that even a sclerotic leftwing organization such as this one is willing to engage in a more sensible conversation about America's energy needs than any of the remaining candidates on either side of the aisle.

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Most Emphatically, Yes!

By Ed Driscoll · March 13, 2008 07:38 PM · The Substance of Style

"And is it possible to like sushi and still be conservative?"

Well, at least a pretty strong classical liberal.

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Study: Networks Always Label GOPers With Sex Scandals

By Ed Driscoll · March 13, 2008 07:27 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Memory Hole

Rich Noyes writes:

My colleague Brent Baker has painstakingly documented how the big three broadcast networks have gone out of their way to avoid labeling scandal-scarred New York Governor Eliot Spitzer as a “Democrat.”

According to AFP, he moved to the right in less than a week!

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Reuters: Anti-Semitism On Rise Globally

By Ed Driscoll · March 13, 2008 07:18 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War

Not exactly shocking news, of course, but check out who's reporting it:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Anti-Semitism, including government-promoted hatred toward Jews and prejudice couched as criticism of Israel, has risen globally over the last decade, the State Department said on Thursday.

"Prejudice couched as criticism of Israel?" Adnan Hajj and Zakaria Zubeidi could not be reached to comment on these explosive allegations.

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The Moral Ambiguity Of "Death Of A F***ing Salesman"

By Ed Driscoll · March 13, 2008 03:22 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted · Oh, That Liberal Media!

Kevin D. Williamson spots a classic line in The Grauniad:

Writing about David Mamet's rejection of "brain-dead liberalism" in the Guardian (commented on yesterday in Media Blog), columnist Michael Billington offers this groaner on Glenngary Glen Ross:
Given his new-found conservatism, I doubt he could ever write a play riddled with such moral ambiguity.

Kevin's response on the moral certainty of almost everyone on the far left is well worth your time, but Billington's comments on Glenngary Glen Ross and its "moral ambiguity" read as hilarious to me. I've only seen the movie, not the play, but the movie was one of the least morally ambiguous--and most depressing--films I've ever watched. There's a reason why the cast referred to the movie as "Death of a F***in' Salesman": it has the absolute certainly that Arthur Miller had that capitalism is evil, and selling is the most evil profession of all. At least until it's time to sell that latest movie or play.

Contrast Glenngary with Oliver Stone's Wall Street, a film written by an equally hard-line leftist, (at least prior to Mamet's intellectual awakening) which nonetheless dresses its contempt for the investment world in a slick, seductive surface. There's a reason why everyone I've met when I worked in the financial industry could recite big swatches of the film's dialogue (as could I), and why Gordon Gekko's horizontal striped shirts (designed by Alan Flusser) relaunched for a time amongst Wall Street executives a style long-dead since the 1930s.

In contrast, because Glengarry was a much less ambiguous film, it appeals much more only to true believers, a trait which Oliver Stone's post-Wall Street movies increasingly suffered from. Assuming Mamet ever works again after coming out of the other celluloid closet, I'll be very curious to see if and how the tone of his work shifts.

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The Man Without A Party

By Ed Driscoll · March 13, 2008 12:58 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!

As Seton Motley writes, "Ronald Reagan often said, 'I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me'":

For floundering and foundering New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- a twist on the Gipper’s words. Spitzer didn’t leave the Democratic Party: the Media just didn’t see the need to mention the fact that Spitzer was -- at least until noon Wednesday -- one of the most powerful Democrats in the nation.

On Monday afternoon, the Big Three Networks (NBC, ABC and CBS) and the Associated Press led the charge of the wall-to-wall coverage of the breaking news that Spitzer was involved with an interstate prostitution ring. And with near unanimity they failed to mention that Spitzer is a Democrat.

We'll have much more on Client #9 on this week's edition of PJM Political, coming later today.

Update: "Newsweek Web Exclusive Mum on Detroit Mayor's Dem Affiliation." Name That Party--the party game that never ends!

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Contraband Possession Derails Honor Student

By Ed Driscoll · March 13, 2008 12:38 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · Muggeridge's Law · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive

As I noted three years ago:

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

The contraband in question back then? Candy, which is increasingly verboten on school property. And a bag of illicit Skittles has derailed (temporarily one hopes) an eighth-grade honors student in Connecticut.

Fascinating that boomers did all sorts of really illicit substances in the 1960s, and endlessly shouted "question authority." But now, as they approach their dotage and are the authority, they get the vapors from trivialities as silly as a bag of candy in school.

(Via Jules Crittenden.)

Update: "School clears kids in contraband candy caper", AP reports. And the student learns a valuable lesson regarding how juvenile the alleged leftwing grown-ups running his school are.

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The Winter Soldier In Winter

By Ed Driscoll · March 12, 2008 09:23 PM · Radical Chic · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War

CliffsNotes Edition: I've been misquoted hundreds of times about the charges I never made slandering the US troops, which incidentally were subsequently verified by different entities.

(Snarky comments aside, don't miss this one. No wonder it's so painful to watch Kerry fumble, bumble and mumble his answers: he's being asked the key questions about his radical chic past that he rarely had to face from a complicit legacy media while he was campaigning four years ago.)

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Glengarry, Bill Buckley

By Ed Driscoll · March 12, 2008 12:56 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Future and its Enemies

David Mamet discovers the true power of the Dark Side of the Force. But will he have a career left?

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I Read The News Today, Oh Boy

By Ed Driscoll · March 12, 2008 12:00 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Making of the President

This sounds like a Tiger Beat questionnaire from the Bizzaro universe: Which Beatle's wife you think Hillary would be reveals your true personality!

"Okay, but don't start arguing Hillary's Barbara Bach."

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And Note That He Won The Argument

By Ed Driscoll · March 12, 2008 11:46 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War

As Anne Applebaum once wrote, "Sometimes in the course of a great American debate there comes a moment when the big battle guns fall silent, the pundits run out of breath, and -- unexpectedly -- the long, bitter argument suddenly turns into farce."

"Sinbad takes on Hillary."

Related: Steve Green (OK, to be honest, Camille Paglia) has your Quote of the Day.

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The Media As Cheerleaders

By Ed Driscoll · March 12, 2008 11:39 AM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President

Kimberley Strassel looks at “Spitzer's Media Enablers”:

Journalism has many functions, but perhaps the most important is keeping tabs on public officials. That duty is even more vital concerning government positions that are subject to few other checks and balances. Chief among those is the prosecutor, who can use his awesome state power to punish, even destroy, private citizens.

Yet from the start, the press corps acted as an adjunct of Spitzer power, rather than a skeptic of it.

Good thing they've learned from their mistakes in time to report on Barack Obama's candidacy.

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It's Not Like People Watch The News For News, Of Course

By Ed Driscoll · March 12, 2008 10:57 AM · Bobos In Paradise · Oh, That Liberal Media!

William Wilson asks, "Network TV News: Evil or Incompetent?" I think we can put our money on the latter, to be honest:

It is the day before the Ohio and Texas primaries. A main issue in the debate between Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama revolves around which of the two would be stronger in dealing with foreign affairs. And yet, NBC treated the meat of the issue as if it was of no consequence.

In all of 31 seconds, NBC gave stories about the threat by Venezuela – a major oil exporter – to launch a war against a neighboring country, the Russian election where stark authoritarianism is raising its head once again, the bombing of another nation by the United States, and near open warfare in Gaza. That’s right: 31 seconds to deal with four stories, any one of which could have devastating consequences for American citizens.

So how did NBC fill the rest of the time? They spent 4 minutes and 20 seconds on two stories that will warm my mother’s heart. The first came down to “eat a good breakfast.” The second had one theme: “get 8 hours of sleep a night.”

Huntley and Brinkley would be working for a suburban TV channel--or a blog--in today's Oprah-fied, Katie Couric-ish network environment.

Related: "Listen, we need to talk to every high-dollar hooker on the eastern seaboard, like yesterday. Get on it, people! Err, you know what I mean."

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Sayonara, Spitz!

By Ed Driscoll · March 12, 2008 10:18 AM · Democracy In America

So as he flies the blue ladies of the Emperor's Club into the sunset, we say "aloha, 5 O'clock Elliot" and return to our duties. Let me remind you the Weblog is open 24 hours for your dining and dancing pleasure.

Update: With 3,000 hours a year of annual fees, Mrs. Spitzer can certainly churn 'em and burn 'em with the best of them.

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Naked Lunch

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 09:29 PM · Muggeridge's Law · The Substance of Style

But where do they put the wasabi?

(Via Breitbart.TV)

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Spitzer Shrugs

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 08:02 PM · Bobos In Paradise

Not surprisingly, Pamela of Atlas Shrugs has lots of fun at her (soon to be-former?) governor's expense, complete with links to the Smoking Gun and numerous Photoshops of the Empire State's Man Who Would Be Emperor and his Club.

Meanwhile, "When New York Magazine gave him their Public Service Award, they wrote, '... if you’ve heard of it, Spitzer did it.'"

He's gotta have it!

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Obama's Well-Aged Beef

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 07:42 PM · The Making of the President

In Tech Central Station, Peter J. Wallison writes, "The Obama program has been attacked with the slogan 'Where's the beef?' This attack is misplaced. There's plenty of beef; the problem is that it's very well-aged":

What appears to qualify this candidacy as a candidacy of change is not the policies or programs it relies on but the fact that the same old ideas are coming from a new and telegenic messenger. It is no wonder, then, that this messenger has excited and attracted young people. If you've never heard this message before, and if you don't have any background in the politics of the last two generations, you might think these ideas will be generally accepted. But anyone who has followed American politics over more than the last year knows that there is real disagreement in this country about the role of government, about trade, about taxes, about confronting the nation's enemies. If Senator Obama is ultimately elected, and if his program ultimately adopted, it will certainly bring about change, but no one should be under the illusion that this is a message of reconciliation, or that the American people as a whole will rally around these ideas. Ask George McGovern.

Heck, at age 85, even McGovern's sounding more up-to-date than Obama these days.

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Quote Of The Day

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 05:13 PM · Muggeridge's Law

"Conspiracy theory is the sophistication of the ignorant."
--Richard Grenier, via Daniel Pipes

Found in the comments of Daily Takes' "Left Blames Bush for Spitzer Paying for Sex".

For some earlier thoughts on an infinitely bigger (and older) conspiracy theory, click here.

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"Rented SUV Allegedly Involved In Redskin Taylor's Murder"

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 03:21 PM · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · Run To Daylight · The Assault On Reason

"A rented sports utility vehicle is apparently involved in the November shooting of Washington Redskins star Sean Taylor at his Miami home."

Last year, the Orlando Sentinel actually ran a headline that read "SUV crashes into store, perhaps in attempt to steal guns".

Having gotten a taste for larceny, clearly, the killer cars have moved on to even more heinous crimes.

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A Bimbo Eruption Too Far

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 01:40 PM · Muggeridge's Law · The Making of the President

Airbrush Alert: Hillary Clinton's campaign Website--suddenly Spitzer-free!

(Via Hot Air's ongoing Spitzer-palooza.)

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Today's Over The Top Michelle Obama Statement

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 01:18 PM · The Making of the President

The Teresa Heinz moments continue to pile up; Dr. Helen writes:

Jim Geraghty at National Review points out an article at The New Republic on Michelle Obama that indicates how she feels about men--they're selfish and a mess:
In a 2004 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Michelle observed: "What I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, God is in there somewhere, but me is first. ... And, for women, me is fourth, and that's not healthy." This is not a radical observation: Get a half-dozen gals together with a few bottles of Beaujolais, and a similar theme will eventually emerge. (Trust me on this.).....

But, when she talks smack about her husband's hygiene, she sounds like any old housewife gabbing to her girlfriends about what a hopeless mess her man is. It's a clever approach, winning Michelle props for being outspoken and un-Stepford, even as she avoids alienating more traditional voters by keeping her focus on the family.
If male politicians spoke this way about women--"they're all selfish and a mess!"-- heads would roll, but Michelle Obama is seen as "outspoken" and independent. You go girl! But just remember that your husband needs votes from the very block of people you are dissing. In fact, some speculate that men might just be the deciding block in this election. You might want to choose your words more carefully.

Michelle's safe on this one: men can be bashed with impunity when you're in the mommy party.

Related: "So we may have reached the perfect gender dilemma: is Obama 'man enough' to be President? That, really, is the question Clinton is raising in her own way."

Elsewhere: Legendary British blogger* Don Surber posits the Edwardian (no relation!) statement that there are indeed Two Americas--"The one the Obamas live in and the one for the rest of us."

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Ben To The Bone

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 12:02 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · Hollywood, Interrupted

Via Orrin Judd, who notes, "The Right Has All The Fun." Heh, indeed.

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Somewhere, Dan Quayle Laughs In Wry Amusement

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 11:51 AM · The Making of the President

The New York Times yesterday:

Senator Barack Obama stood before Washington’s elite at the spring dinner of the storied Gridiron Club. In self-parody, he ticked off his accomplishments, little more than a year after arriving in town.

Mr. Obama poked fun at himself at the Gridiron Club in 2006 with, left, his current chief strategist, David Axelrod, and his communications director, Robert Gibbs.

“I’ve been very blessed,” Mr. Obama told the crowd assembled in March 2006. “Keynote speaker at the Democratic convention. The cover of Newsweek. My book made the best-seller list. I just won a Grammy for reading it on tape.

“Really, what else is there to do?” he said, his smile now broad. “Well, I guess I could pass a law or something.”

The Politico today:

“I don’t understand. If I am not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?” Obama asked the crowd, which gave him a standing ovation during his defense. “I don’t understand.”

Me neither, to be honest.

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"From Troopergate To Shtupergate"

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 11:42 AM · Muggeridge's Law

That's Flip Pidot's hilarious headline on Elliot Spitzer's extracurricular activites. Or as Steve Green writes, "Governor Eliot Spitzer: Cleaning up New York one prostitute at a time. Sometimes maybe even two at a time."

Glenn Reynolds adds, "So much for Mr. Clean", NRO writes, "Danger Neutralized".

Update: "Name That Party", uber-high-profile edition. Elsewhere, Hot Air is doing running updates on a story that appears to be developing with surprising rapidity.

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Today's @#*#*@ing 3:00 AM Parody

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 11:18 AM · The Making of the President

As Peggy Noonan recently wrote:

In a bark-stripping piece of reportage in the Washington Post, Peter Baker and Anne Kornblut captured "a combustible environment" in Hillary Headquarters. They cannot agree on what to do, or even what has been done in the past. And the dialogue. Blank you. Blank you! No blank you, you blank. Blank all of you. It's like David Mamet rewritten by Joe Pesci.

These are the things that make life worth living.

And it makes for a really smashing YouTube parody as well! (NSFW--there's plenty of profanity, as you might have guessed.)

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The Top 10 Reasons Bloggers Don't Succeed

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 10:46 AM · The New, New Journalism

Advice for the tyro new media journalist from John Hawkins, who's been blogging since 2001.

(Hey, that's a year longer than I have! So you know he knows from whence he says...)

Update: Kate of Small Dead Animals adds an 11th item that can also result in a small dead Weblog.

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Of Course He Is

By Ed Driscoll · March 10, 2008 10:07 AM · Muggeridge's Law · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole

Barack Obama was recently listed as the most liberal member of the US Senate--and that's saying something--by the National Journal. That doesn't stop this claim found via Jules Crittenden:

Tony is also press officer for an organization known as “Republicans for Obama” (RFO). The group was started in December 2006, before Obama officially announced his candidacy, to help encourage him to make a run for the White House. Since then, the all-volunteer RFO has morphed into a grassroots effort to disseminate information on why Republicans should support the Senator. The group — active members of which number around a thousand — operates with no funding and no coordination or official relationship with the Obama campaign.

So, how does a Republican and former Bush booster like Tony end up working with an organization that is supporting a Democratic Senator’s bid for the White House?

“Obama is more conservative than the media sometimes express,” Tony said when we talked Thursday afternoon, March 6. “Obama co-sponsored the federal funding and transparency act with (Republican) Senators Coburn and McCain. He co-sponsored the nuclear non-proliferation bill with (Republican) Senator Lugar. He was also a co-sponsor of a Senate immigration bill that would have cracked down on employers using illegal labor and helped secure our borders.”

“Granted, on certain things, I don’t agree with him,” Tony added. “For instance, I’m pro-life; he’s not. But he is pro-abstinence, which I applaud. Plus, he displays a level of common sense that the other candidates seem to be lacking.”

Just like the candidate four years ago whom National Journal rated "Most Liberal In Senate For 2003" followed, in the next year, by a then-somewhat prominent pundit writing, "Kerry may be the right man — and the conservative choice — for a difficult and perilous time".

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Holidays In Hell

By Ed Driscoll · March 9, 2008 06:22 PM · The Future and its Enemies · The Memory Hole · The Return of the Primitive

The Wall Street Journal's Evan Ramstad offers a rare video glimpse of Pyongyang:

Ted Turner, not to mention Camp 22, could not be reached for comment.

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Three's Company

By Ed Driscoll · March 9, 2008 02:42 PM · The New, New Journalism

Just when you thought nothing could be geekier than a World of Warcraft LAN party: political bloggers living together in DC.

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Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds

By Ed Driscoll · March 9, 2008 02:00 PM · The Making of the President

Victor Davis Hanson writes that Obamamania is "the new generation's pet rock."

The pet rock fad dissipated rather quietly, as I recall. But as others have written, it may happen by the summer, in November, or perhaps February or March of next year. But when the messianic Obama fad crashes, the fallout and hangover will be rather ugly for the left.

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Broadway Babies Say Goodnight

By Ed Driscoll · March 9, 2008 01:36 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Future and its Enemies · The Return of the Primitive

This just in: "Do NOT get Mark Steyn started on 'Show Boat'".

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Media Bias, Then And Now

By Ed Driscoll · March 9, 2008 01:08 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President

As I've written before, the mass media of the latter half of the 20th century invariably went out of their way to pooh-pooh any claims of bias. (Dan Rather, naturally enough, was a past master at this technique.) But for an assortment of reasons, basically a confluence of alternative media such as blogs, talk radio and Fox News, mixed with a overdose of BDS from the media themselves, that all began to change after 9/11. Or as media professor Steve Boriss writes on his Future of News blog:

The problems began when those on the right started to complain about liberal media bias. They were labeled as angry, mean-spirited, paranoid kooks. Then, conservative talk radio and Fox News Channel emerged. Their audiences were labeled as misfits who were not only angry, but also too closed-minded to face the truth as presented by the objective mainstream media. Eventually, with help from Bernard Goldberg’s book on bias, some very high profile Old Media failures (e.g. Dan Rather’s forged documents), and the Internet, the idea that the mainstream media were biased became mainstream. Those on the right remained mad, while those on the left, who benefited from the center-left bias, understandably did not get quite so worked-up.

But now, the public has gone beyond being mad at media bias. They are laughing hysterically. With the latest bias victim being one of the center-left’s own candidates, and the pro-Obama bias blatantly obvious to everyone, it is now getting difficult for anyone to take the mainstream media and its insistence on its own objectivity seriously anymore. The skit below on Saturday Night Live, a program we can assume has a young, liberal audience, is devastating. Old Media just lost its chance to restore its reputation for objectivity – the firewall that we are told differentiates journalists from bloggers. Some unexpected people are now getting the last laugh.

(Complete SNL clip via Big Mouth Frog, which has exceptional taste in the online video they link to...)

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It's 3:00 a.m. Somewhere...

By Ed Driscoll · March 9, 2008 03:00 AM · Ed TV · The Making of the President

Several pundits have noted that Hillary's new "3:00 a.m." ad could be the perfect ad for John McCain. So for the latest edition of our Silicon Graffiti video blog, we mashed it into just that:

And for those who want to link to the mash-up itself, here it is:

Update: Welcome Power Line readers! Elsewhere in the Blogosphere, Jammie Wearing Fool notes, "Girl in Hillary's 3 a.m. Ad Actually an Obama Supporter".

More: Ann Althouse and Michelle Malkin dissect SNL's parody of the "3:00 a.m." video.

(Bumped to top.)

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Gathering of Eagles Descend On Times Square

By Ed Driscoll · March 8, 2008 09:43 PM · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War

Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs has a great round-up of photos of the Gathering of Eagles pro-American, pro-military rally in front of the recently bombed US recruiting office on Times Square.

And for some perspective on the recent and seemingly increasing domestic attacks on the US military and its recruiters, don't miss this lengthy, detailed post by Michelle Malkin, "Tracing The Left’s Escalating War On Military Recruiters".

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On The Other Hand...

By Ed Driscoll · March 8, 2008 07:40 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President

"Look Whose Editors Just Figured Out He Can't Win".

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Today's New York Times Hit On McCain

By Ed Driscoll · March 8, 2008 05:07 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole

"On the Campaign Trail, Few Mentions of McCain’s Bout With Melanoma."

Well, until now, that is. But in 2004, there were even fewer mentions--especially by the Times--of the cancer scare suffered by another presidential nominee.

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Hollywood's Inevitable Sucker Punch

By Ed Driscoll · March 7, 2008 05:00 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted

A reader of the conservative Libertas film blog makes a great observation:

I want to have movies to see, to enjoy, nay, to adore. I am a movie fan. But now, every movie I watch, I wait for it. You know what I mean by it. I mean that moment which had nothing to do with the plot where the movie makers express contempt for everything I hold dear. I mean the moment when they puke on me.

No matter how much I enjoy the film, nowadays I only enjoy it with half my attention, because I am on my guard for the sucker-punch that always, always comes.

I watch my beloved movies with the attitude of a battered wife, waiting to see when the man I love will suddenly lash out and give me a black eye. The rest of the evening with him is just fine.

So you go do your study, and tell me how many other members of the audience there are who feel as I do. Am I really the only one? I doubt it.

I've long felt exactly the same way, and it's great to the see the point made so articulately. The inevitable Hollywood sucker punch is why I've found myself going to the movies less and less each year, and usually only when a film has been vetted by like-minded blog readers and critics; unlike Charlie Brown, there are only so many times I'll endure having the football yanked away at the last second before I want quit the game. And these days, between blogging, DIY video and DIY music, there's plenty of other games to play, some of which are even sucker punch free.

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"McCain Clashes With NYT Reporter"--Updated W/Video

By Ed Driscoll · March 7, 2008 12:06 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President

It's not quite an Adam Clymer moment, but John McCain's efforts to woo conservatives begins here.

Update: Here's the video of the "confrontation":

Timeswoman Elizabeth Bumiller asks McCain “Why are you so angry?”, but even in today's mega-Prozac-ed nation, McCain's sounds far more annoyed than pugilistic. And when it comes to frustration with the Times, he's far from alone.

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Reporter Who Badgered Elderly Robbery Victim Fired

By Ed Driscoll · March 7, 2008 11:21 AM · Oh, That Liberal Media!

Rebecca Aguilar of Fox 4 in Dallas has been fired after her interview badgering a 78-year old business owner for lawfully defending his property:

In a telephone interview Wednesday night, Aguilar, 49, said she was checking her mail at mid-afternoon that day when she noticed an envelope under her front door mat. It informed her that Fox4 was exercising an option to drop her at the halfway point of a two-year contract that began on March 6, 2007.

"No doorbell, no knock on the door," said Aguilar, who had been on paid suspension since Oct. 16th following her controversial interview with an elderly West Dallas salvage business owner who had shot and killed two alleged burglars within three weeks time.

So in other words, she was disappointed that she wasn't approached with infinitely more patience and respect than the way she blindsides her interviewees.

It could be argued that Aguilar bore sole responsibility for her actions if her interview had aired live on the air. But it was obviously videotaped and edited to air later in the day, since she appears on-camera in the studio immediately afterwards. Her producer(s) demonstrated judgment as equally as poor as Aguilar--actually worse, since, like a print editor, the producer's job is to have the final say as to what airs under the television station's imprimatur. Will they receive any punishment for the public relations damage their poor decisions brought to their station?

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In His Own Image

By Ed Driscoll · March 7, 2008 10:13 AM · Democracy In America · The Future and its Enemies

William F. Buckley passed away last week, and since I was on my cruise to Mexico, I didn't have a chance to blog about the death of the man who invented modern conservatism, and for whose Website I briefly contributed articles in the summer and fall of 2001 before taking up residence in the then-nascent Blogosphere. For an extended video look at the man, it's tough to beat the above profile by Scott Baker and Liz Stephans of Breitbart.TV.

One of Buckley's most important decisions, as I wrote a few years ago, was "casting out the John Birchers and their anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories." That's the subject of this exceptional article by Jonathan Tobin:

The long-term implications of Buckley's stands were enormous. By remaking the conservative movement in his own image, in which the emphasis was on anti-communism and a libertarian skepticism of government power, he ensured that it, and the Republican Party, which it came to dominate, would be a place where Jew-haters were unwelcome.

That enabled liberal Jews, such as Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, to feel comfortable making common cause with the right on a host of issues as he began his own journey away from the left. Though expectations that the Jews would ditch liberalism en masse were always unrealistic, the birth of an intellectually viable brand of Jewish conservative thought in this country wouldn't have happened had not Buckley first cleaned out the GOP stables.

In terms of practical politics, Buckley's rout of the anti-Semites made it possible for the sort of bipartisan consensus in favor of support for Israel that we now take for granted. He replaced the Buchanan-like world of American conservatism that existed before National Review with something that was not only more successful, but purged of Jew-hatred. If Israel Lobby authors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt want to find the real father of the enormous support for Israel in our political system today, they can look no further than the irrepressible Buckley, whose life was a testament to the power of ideas.

His was a political faith that most Jews never embraced, but as we survey a political spectrum in which our enemies are confined to the margins, we should all remember the unique achievements of this American original. May his memory be for a blessing for all who love liberty.

(Via Charles Johnson.)

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Fly The Friendly Skies Of The U.N.

By Ed Driscoll · March 7, 2008 09:47 AM · The Assault On Reason

As Glenn Reynolds would say, I'll believe global warming is a crisis when those who believe that it is a crisis act that way:

Meanwhile, even as American Airlines is given grief simply for maintaining its published schedule, Private Jet Progressives are given a pass by their fellow elitists for their own individual "binge flying".

Update: Here's a beast that brings new meaning to the phrase "commuter jet!"

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Podhoretz's Razor

By Ed Driscoll · March 6, 2008 11:54 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted

John Podhoretz writes that when it comes explaining the Oscars' woes, sometimes the simplest answer is best:

This year's excruciatingly boring Oscars stumbled to a conclusion with the victory of a movie that (a) nobody has seen and (b) nobody who has seen it is all that crazy about. The 80th annual Academy Awards ceremony was no country for ordinary men, or women, who go to the movies because they want to have a good time. The show's ratings have been declining for a decade, and usually the decline is attributed to the proliferation of other awards shows, the excessive political-style campaigning for the prizes, and the general withdrawal of affect from once-starry-eyed consumers of show business.

These may all have contributed to the ratings woes. But what if the cause is far simpler? What if the Oscars, in a display of perverse artistic integrity, are simply determined to garland movies in which (and performers in whom) no one but a critic or a film-industry professional has the slightest interest?

Thus taking the original intentions of the founding fathers of the movie industry and why they created their "Academy" and completing perverting their goals. But then, that's modern Hollywood in a nutshell.

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In Search Of Secular Nirvana

By Ed Driscoll · March 6, 2008 10:43 PM · The Making of the President

Michael Knox Beran writes:

The rich, churchless, blue-state elites, by contrast, are hungry for the kind of secular nirvana Obama is serving up. Obama-mania is a political expression of the same impulse that underlies a broader movement, among the educated rich, towards a post-Christian spirituality, evident in such fetishes as yoga, feng-shui, investment-banker Buddhism, and tennis-set Sufism — the small-is-beautiful and green-is-good crazes.

Well, I can't argue with that.

Meanwhile, Mona Charen peruses Obama's first book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and concludes, "Once you get past the happy surprise of finding a politician who can actually write, the book contains some disquieting elements":

Obama's self-portrait in this book is that of a searching, nonjudgmental young man attempting to find his rightful place after a confusing start in life. But he is attracted by the harshly ideological Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose church he joins. Wright peddles racial grievance religion. Following 9/11, he said, "[W]hite America got a wake-up call ... White America and the Western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns."

Obama says he doesn't agree with Wright about everything. Fine. And maybe he doesn't agree with his wife when she (twice) said that she'd never been proud of her country until its people began to support her husband. But then, what did he mean when he said on March 4 that making a little girl proud to say she is an American is the "change we are calling for"?

One suspects that beneath the soothing talk, there is bitterness in the man that we'd best learn more about before voting.

Or as syndicated columnist "Spengler" writes, "Spouses do not necessarily share their likes, but they must have their hatreds in common."

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Bunker Time

By Ed Driscoll · March 6, 2008 08:07 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted · Oh, That Liberal Media!

Glenn Reynolds links to Howard Mortman, and notes, "Amusingly, All in the Family is older now than the square acts that Archie and Edith Bunker sang about in the theme song were when the show was new."

It's actually not all that surprising, given that the left is permanently trapped in the 1970s. But additionally, expect cultural references in general to have an increasingly nostalgic tone to them: as pop culture becomes more and more fractured, there will be less and less shared contemporaneous references available to writers that they can expect their readers will get.

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"One Of Them's Mad And The Other Is Wholly Unscrupulous"

By Ed Driscoll · March 6, 2008 07:55 PM · The Making of the President

Peggy Noonan writes that it's trench warfare time on the Leftwing Front:

An overview:

From the first voting in Iowa on Jan. 3 she had to prove that Clintons Are Magic. She wound up losing 11 in a row. Meaning Clintons aren't magic. He had to take her out in New Hampshire, on Super Tuesday or Junior Tuesday. He didn't. Meaning Obama isn't magic.

Two nonmagical beings are left.

What the Democrats lost this week was the chance to paint the '08 campaign as a brilliant Napoleonic twinning of strategy and tactics that left history awed. What they have instead is a ticket to Verdun. Trench warfare, and the daily, wearying life of the soldier under siege. The mud, the cold, the dank water rotting the boots, all of it punctuated by mad cries of "Over the top," bayonets fixed.

Don't miss Peggy's reference to Lawrence of Arabia, another man who confused politics and godhood.

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Exquisitely Bored In California

By Ed Driscoll · March 6, 2008 03:16 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Making of the President

Yesterday, Karl Rove wrote:

Tuesday was an exciting moment in what is already one of the most dramatic presidential primaries in decades. And with six months until the conventions and eight months until the general election, we have many exciting moments ahead in what for political junkies is a vintage year.

Not surprisingly, Obama man Tom Hanks disagrees:

“I wish the election was being held tomorrow. I’m bored!”

Because it's all about Tom.

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In The Light...Everybody Needs Some Light

By Ed Driscoll · March 6, 2008 01:25 PM · The Making of the President

The Catholic Libertarian ponders one of more vexing quandaries of our time:

Question: How many Obama supporters does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: None, because when Obama becomes president, light bulbs will change themselves.

But who needs artificial light when Obama is self-illuminating?

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"B.O. Admissions Plunge 200 Million Since 2002"

By Ed Driscoll · March 6, 2008 12:52 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted

The Libertas film blog notes a key number left out of the recent figures on Hollywood's box office trends:

The seeming important news was that the domestic marketplace (ie. the U.S. and Canada) generated $9.63 billion in sales of movie tickets during 2007.

If it wasn’t already the case, we might ooh about the unprecedented amount of money spent at multiplexes assuming audiences maintained a healthy appetite at the concession stand. The MPAA believes (along with the National Association of Theater Owners) the figure translates to a non-record of roughly 1.4 billion admissions – about 0.3% more than the prior year and 200 million fewer folk than attended back in 2002.

Which certainly helps to explain this headline as well, no? This in an era, Libertas notes, in which the US population "increased by roughly 12.5 million since 2002."

While DIY video distributed via the 'Net will become an increasingly competitive factor in the next few years, movies are one of the few remaining entertainment fields where big money and lots of people are needed for a superior product. But Hollywood seems to have forgotten this: instead of cranking out apolitical entertainment for the masses, Hollywood movies have become increasingly insular and reactionary since 9/11. To the point where a mass audience is optional, as Mark Steyn wrote a few years ago:

That’s why Hollywood prefers to make “controversial” films about controversies that are settled, rousing itself to fight battles long won. Go back to USA Today’s approving list of Hollywood’s willingness to “broach the tough issues”: “Brokeback and Capote for their portrayal of gay characters; Crash for its examination of racial tension . . .” That might have been “bold” “courageous” movie-making half-a-century ago. Ever seen the Dirk Bogarde film Victim? He plays a respectable married barrister whose latest case threatens to expose his homosexuality. That was 1961, when homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom and Bogarde was the British movie industry’s matinee idol and every schoolgirl’s pinup: That’s brave. Doing it at a time when your typical conservative politician gets denounced as “homophobic” because he’s only in favor of civil unions is just an exercise in moral self-congratulation. And, unlike the media, most of the American people are savvy enough to conclude that by definition that doesn’t require their participation.

Like I said...

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Well That's One Way To Get The GOP To Vote For Him

By Ed Driscoll · March 6, 2008 11:08 AM · Muggeridge's Law · The Making of the President

"Clinton aide compares Obama to Ken Starr."

Bill Clinton's trousers could not be reached for comment. Though I think Mark Steyn still has the dress's email address.

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"Recreate '68!"

By Ed Driscoll · March 6, 2008 09:42 AM · Liberal Fascism · Radical Chic · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War

Assuming that those who attacked the Times Square military recruitment office turn out to be the usual suspects, (and it ultimately may not, of course), it's further proof that the radical left is trapped in the time machine, with the dial permanently set at 1968. Ed Morrissey writes:

Given the escalating protests over military recruitment, it seems inevitable that people would bomb those who seek to protect the nation and fight our enemies. This morning, unknown attackers bombed a Times Square military recruitment office. Thankfully, the office and the building that housed it was closed at the time of attack:
An explosive device damaged a military recruiting station in Times Square early Thursday, and police blocked off the area to investigate.

The explosive device caused minor damage, and no one was injured, police said. The explosion shattered a glass entryway. …

Witnesses staying at a hotel in the area said they heard a “big bang” and could feel the building shake. A large plume of smoke was also visible after the explosion, they said.
Melanie Morgan just wrote about the escalating attacks on military recruiters a week ago. She lists several cities where recruitment centers have been attacked in varying degrees, usually limited to vandalism and threats of violence. These operations have not hurt military recruiting at all. Michelle wrote about this two years ago (and many times since), and quite obviously the attackers have grown frustrated that they haven’t frightened off enough people to slow down the flow of recruits.

Now the movement has decided to morph into domestic terrorism. Of course, the people responsible will claim that they bombed the office during the night to keep anyone from being hurt. That’s exactly the same kind of rationalization that people like the Weather Underground and the SLA used at first, anyway — that terrorism was justified by their politics. In fact, a few like William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn still claim that.

And speaking of "Recreate '68", found via Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit, Michael Goldfarb writes:

I wrote a little while ago about the plan of some protest groups to 'Recreate 68' at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this year. If there's a close delegate count and the convention is contested -- which is still unlikely, but possible -- that stands to raise the tension level for Democrats. If the anti-war base is dissatisfied with Congress' failure to bring the troops home -- a virtual certainty -- that could raise it as well. The pressure is on the DNC to ensure that despite the potential trouble, the nominating party goes smoothly.

Since writing previously, I've learned that the folks trying to screw up the liberalpalooza have their own website: Recreate 68.org. The site is set up to facilitate communications between protesters, and help them with planning. It includes a primer on 'Direct Action.' The first part is devoted to an argument over semantics -- trying to explain how Direct Action is different from terrorism. Then they assert that while it's not terrorism, 'it is violent:'
To say that it is violent to destroy the machinery of a slaughterhouse or to break windows belonging to a party that promotes war is to prioritize property over human and animal life. This objection subtly validates violence against living creatures by focusing all attention on property rights and away from more fundamental issues.
The organizer of Recreate 68 (a Ward Churchill buddy) is already sparring with the City of Denver over the permitting process for protests. It seems like there's real potential for this to get ugly.

The obsession with calls for "Action" is a topic that Jonah Goldberg thoroughly explores in Liberal Fascism, which appropriately dubs fascist the more violent, often paramilitary elements of the late 1960s, such as the Black Panthers, and Weather Underground, and the often surprisingly respectable veneer of their enablers.

But instead of trying to "Recreate '68", isn't it time to move beyond a year that's forty years in the past? Trying to relive the 1960s today is as pathetic as trying to recreate the era of Benny Goodman and Bing Crosby in the 1970s.

Or as Daniel Henninger wrote in November:

What fell out of 1968 was a profound division over what I would call civic vision.

One side, which took to the streets in Chicago or occupied Columbia University, concluded from Vietnam and the race riots that America, in its relations with the world and its own citizens, was flawed and required big changes. Their defining document was the March 1968 Kerner Commission report, announcing "two societies," separate and unequal. The press, incidentally, emerged from Vietnam and the riots joined to this new, permanent template. That, too, has never stopped.

The other side was, well, insulted. It thought America was fundamentally good, though always able to improve. The Voting Rights Act passed in 1964 on a bipartisan vote, opposed mainly by southern Democrats. This side's standard-bearer called the U.S. "a shining city upon a hill." But after 1968, no Democratic presidential candidate would ever speak those words. Nor will Mr. Obama ever repeat Mr. Sarkozy's explicit repudiation of that era.

If it's Hillary versus Rudy, McCain or even the placid Mitt Romney, we will be in those streets again. Besides, her candidacy comes with Jumpin' Jack Flash himself, Bill Clinton. Would it be a good thing if the country's politics said bye-bye baby to the children of 1968? Probably. But it won't happen this time.

Will it happen, ever?

Update: "First the Times Square bombing, now this. How does Rove do it?"

Fluoridation, no doubt.

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What Happens Next?

By Ed Driscoll · March 6, 2008 12:40 AM · The Making of the President

While some pundits may wish to go into suspended animation between now and the Keystone State primary on April 22nd, in the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove has some thoughts on what happens next:

A long Democratic battle doesn't automatically help the Republicans. In fact, it hurts the Republicans in certain ways. Mr. McCain becomes less interesting to the media. Stories about him move off page one and grow smaller. TV coverage becomes spotty and short. There are not yet big and deep and unbridgeable differences between the two Democrats and there is plenty of time to heal most wounds (except, perhaps among the young if Mrs. Clinton were to win). Continuing to build a profile and lay the predicate for the short fall campaign against either Democrat becomes the challenge for Mr. McCain while the Democrats battle it out.

So what must Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton do, especially in the seven weeks before Pennsylvania?

Both need to focus on Mr. Obama's biggest weaknesses. One is the Illinois senator's claim to be the new "post-partisan" leader to bring Republicans and Democrats together. Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton have earned reputations for doing that, though Mrs. Clinton rarely mentions it. Mr. Obama has no real record of voting and working across party lines on high profile issues like judges, immigration, intelligence reform, troop funding and energy.

Both can ask why Mr. Obama has failed to engage on these issues since his election to the Senate, while they have well-earned scars from tackling many of them.

Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton also need to continue highlighting Mr. Obama's lack of experience. Mrs. Clinton's surrogates and ads effectively hammered him on this. But voters were also encouraged in a subtle way by Mr. Obama himself to take a second look. His inspiring, but nearly substance-free, rhetoric is now raising questions. Sure, his Web site has position papers drafted by academic geeks galore, but voters may ask: "What has he done?"

Mrs. Clinton also must show more of the personal warmth and humor that came across in appearances on Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show and Fox. She needs to be disciplined. And she needs to stop worrying about appearing to be to the right of Mr. Obama.

Take, for example, Mr. Obama's declaration that "true patriotism" consists of speaking out on the issues, not wearing a flag lapel pin, a practice he has given up. Mrs. Clinton could say people can do both and if Sen. Obama decided not to wear a flag pin, he shouldn't question the "true patriotism" of those who chose to wear one. The blue-collar/lunch-pail crowd who've given Mrs. Clinton critical support would respond to that.

Mr. McCain, on the other hand, will have to work harder to get attention and prepare for the general election. And without a specific opponent, his principal focus should be on himself.

He needs to share a personal narrative about his life, values and inner beliefs in a way that is often uncomfortable to this private man. He must also follow through on his pledge of Tuesday night to carry his fight to every community and corner of America. It was a smart thing to say; it is a critical thing to do. Voters want candidates to ask for the vote of every American, not just the people who look and sound like the candidate.

Bill Bradley and I will also be discussing several of these topics on this week's edition of PJM Political on XM Satellite Radio and Pajamas Media, coming later today.

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Confusing Politics And Religion

By Ed Driscoll · March 5, 2008 10:18 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Making of the President · The Return of the Primitive

A few years ago, Umberto Ecco wrote:

G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.

Hey, somebody should write a book about this topic!

Related: Victor Davis Hanson presciently notes the gloomy subtext of Obama's message, but posits that--who knows?--"Maybe America is finally ready for a black McGovern."

And to rather tenuously connect Steven Malanga's new article with VDH's, New Jersey, with its crushing taxes, bloated state government, and shortage of individual rights seems primed to vote for the next McGovern. The state happily voted for his 2004 equivalent, of course.

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Saul Bass's Star Wars

By Ed Driscoll · March 5, 2008 08:13 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted

Jonathan Last of Galley Slaves posts "this fantastic video, a send up of what the Star Wars title credits might have looked like if done by legendary '60s designer Saul Bass":

Just to be fair, I wonder if someone is redoing the titles to North By Northwest or Spartacus with a Lucas-style crawl opening? "A Long Time Ago, In A Madison Avenue Far, Far Away..."

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Best Of The Ed Today

By Ed Driscoll · March 5, 2008 03:36 PM · Ed On The 'Net · The Making of the President

We were mentioned yesterday by James Taranto in his Best of the Web Today column at the Wall Street Journal, which is certainly a nice way to kick off our sixth anniversary in the Blogosphere. Scroll down to Taranto's item on Gloria Steinem's huge Gucci-in-the-mouth gaffe regarding Senator McCain's service in Vietnam, and his link to our post from Monday, which contrasts Steinem's remarks on McCain with her thoughts four years ago on another Senator who also, by the way, served in Vietnam.

Or as Mark Hemingway puts it at NRO, Hillary needs Steinem's endorsement "Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle".

Update: Related thoughts from Michelle Malkin.

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"Separate But Equal At Harvard"

By Ed Driscoll · March 5, 2008 12:26 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · The Return of the Primitive

Glenn Reynolds spots creeping Sharia in the Ivy League school, but then, there's been a growing back to the future trend towards the notion of "Separate But Equal" in general on campuses throughout America. Michael Graham's Redneck Nation remains as prescient as ever.

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Civilization And Its Discontents

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 10:56 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · Liberal Fascism · The Future and its Enemies · The Return of the Primitive

Todd Seavey writes:

Why, then, the eco-maniacal insistence on maintaining the ban, even in the face of massive human suffering caused by the elimination of DDT?

Around the time of the DDT ban, Dr. Charles Wurster, chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, may have revealed how some environmentalists really feel about human beings when he was asked if people might die as a result of the DDT ban: "Probably...so what? People are the causes of all the problems; we have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this is as good a way as any."

He's not the only academician to posit such nihilistic fantasies of course; National Geographic has even produced a supersized snuff film just for this crowd.

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McCain Thanks "Independent Thinking Democrats"

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 08:55 PM · The Making of the President

Say what you will, that's a lot smarter than this approach.

(Clip via Hot Air.)

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Top Gun

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 07:00 PM · The Making of the President

Maverick clinches; Bush to endorse; Huckabee concedes.

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Is There Nothing That Can Permeate That Impervious Puss?

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 06:27 PM · The Making of the President

~~Mel Blanc~~, err Jeff Greenfield, explains "Why voters always choose the wascally wabbit for president."

(H/T: VP)

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Guns And Butter

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 04:39 PM · War And Anti-War

As Orrin Judd points from time to time, after World War II, via the Marshall Plan, America put Europe "out of our misery":

The point at which Europe could have been saved was immediately after WWII, when it couldn't afford its cradle-to-grave welfare systems and faced a threat from the USSR. But America--to what degree consciously is a subject for argument--chose to enervate Europe instead, sending Marshall Plan money to prop up their socialist states and taking over their defense. In effect, after getting drawn into three European wars we put them out of our misery.

And in that regard, it continues to pay big dividends to this day!

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The Return Of The Circular Firing Squad

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 02:47 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole

As former CNN correspondent Bryce Zabel wrote a couple of years ago, back in 1994, Time magazine was attacked by the left for darkening the arrest photo of O.J. Simpson when the magazine used it to illustrate its cover story:

Almost immediately after hitting the stands, Time was accused of racism by minority groups for its photographic alteration of the famous O.J. arrest photo. The editors defended their choice by saying that they had taken that creative license to show the shadow that had descended on his reputation that week. Illustrator Matt Mahurin was the one to altern the image, saying later that he "wanted to make it more artful, more compelling." Enough readers, however, said that they saw the white man stacking the deck by "demonizing" the black man, that Time did something it had never done before and has never done since. They issued a second cover and pulled the first one. Essentially this meant that only mail subscribers ever saw the first cover.

A decade later, a similar left-on-left controversy is repeated as farce, "Now with Throbbing Obama!"

Of course, as Allah notes, as bad as these attacks on Hillary Clinton are, consider the possibility that at least a few punches are being pulled in these internecine battles. Assuming that Obama does eventually win the nomination, the real fireworks won't occur until it's the left and a complicit media versus the GOP.

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NYC Building Collapse Disrupts Grand Central Service

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 12:41 PM · The Future and its Enemies

New York's WABC reports:

Metro North says traffic on all four of its tracks going through East Harlem and into and out of Grand Central Terminal has been stopped, due to the total collapse of a building which had partially collapsed earlier in the day.

Eyewitness Newsw is told the building is at 102 E 124th St near Park Ave.

Oficials say the five-story apartment building was vacant at the time. It lost its facade about 12:30 p.m., and by mid-afternoon, the entire building reportedly came down.

So far, there are no injuries reported.

Eyewitness News does not know how long the Metro-North trains will be in effect. The problems are affecting traffic on the Harlem, Hudson and New Haven Lines below 125th Street. That means nothing is going in or out of Grand Central Terminal at this time.

Thus putting even more fun into Fun City, as it follows an explosion near Grand Central that occurred last July.

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RIP D&D C-in-C

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 11:53 AM · Bobos In Paradise

E. Gary Gygax has left the dungeon.

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"The Absolute Best Reuters Headline Ever"

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 10:55 AM · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · War And Anti-War

Just click. And then ask Reuters when other religions should expect such a headline.

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The New York Sun Tzu

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 10:35 AM · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote, "the left treats politics like it's warfare, and warfare like it's politics." And nowhere is that more true than the front page of the New York Times!

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What's The Matter With The Kansas City Star?

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 10:14 AM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Future and its Enemies

As with most traditional newspapers, all sorts of things, Denis Boyles writes. Here's but a sample:

Royal Typewriter. Remember? Some working at the Star won't. Last week, Polaroid announced it was going to stop making Polaroid film. Many won't notice. That's how it goes in business: your old business gets ambushed in the tall grass of technology, the unthinkable happens, and if you're smart, or just lucky, you find yourself in a whole new business. Old news=old business. An old-fashioned newspaper is like a steam loom in a ready-to-wear world. I mean, nobody truly interested in the news of the day is going to wait until tomorrow’s Star to see what it is.

The new business of the Star and other papers is to provide reassurance to its community of mostly liberal readers who share the paper’s assumptions about the world and how it works. No wonder most people think it's out of touch. Like all mainstream American newspapers, from The New York Times on down to the Wichita Eagle, the Star has decided to create a product of huge interest to a shrinking market but of no interest at all to a growing one.

That's been the model for most newspapers this decade. And how is it working out for them? More from Boyles:

You folks working for McClatchy in Kansas City might have been better off if the Star had gone into the 8-track cassette business, because there’s no long-term hope for a newspaper that spends four years and almost $200 million to build a massive building to house the machinery of a shrinking industry, when it should have done was rent a room and fill it with a bunch of internet servers and a few computer geeks.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism began its 2006 annual report by asking, "Will we recall this as the year when journalism in print began to die?" The answer preceded the question. A business that exists solely to give credibility to a minority point of view just isn’t a smart proposition. The Pitch, KC's left-wing tabloid, already does a better job reaching the Star’s market than the Star does, and they do it for a lot less money. Meanwhile, newsroom Darwinists can look past the Pitch to craigslist.com and see the local paper of the future.

He concludes:

Newspapers are over. Why care about them? If you're a conservative, they laugh off your complaints, and if you're a liberal...well, you're not reading this. Besides, it’s not like anybody will ever have the satisfaction of saying to the Star, “I told you so,” because there’ll be nobody on Grand Boulevard to hear it.

Kevin D. Williamson of NRO's Media Blog calls it "Pithy and merciless analysis"; read the whole thing.

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Collapse Into Cliche

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 08:46 AM · Bobos In Paradise · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War

Back in 2002, Starbucks received plenty of grief over their "Collapse Into Cool" ad campaign, which appeared to take the symbolism described in Wilson Bryan Key's perennial 1970s back-catalog bestseller Subliminal Seduction into the 21st century.

Starbucks quickly pulled the ad, but six years later, this viral video from a Dutch travel agency appears to also use 9/11 as its subtext, if much less obviously:

Jumbo jet unexpectedly roars low overhead? Check.

Shaky handheld cinéma-vérité footage? Check.

Airplane banks into large urban buildings? Check.

Of course, the payoff is an emergency landing with kids ready to hit the beach instead of a fireball or terrorists emerging, but the buildup to that point seems pretty obviously designed to trigger all sorts of 9/11-themed subconscious messages.

I forget if it was CNN or Fox, but I saw the ad being discussed on at least one of the cable news channels last week while I was on vacation, and I'm reluctantly posting the clip above, but certainly not favorably. Will it ever be appropriate for those in the advertising business to use 9/11 imagery to sell their clients' products? Let history be your guide: other than movies and documentaries, do images of Pearl Harbor or the Civil War move any merchandise?

Related thoughts here.

Update: Oy.

Late Update (5/29/08): This post became the grist for Silicon Graffiti video shot a couple of weeks later:

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We Are Ready To Believe You, Part Deux

By Ed Driscoll · March 4, 2008 08:35 AM · Muggeridge's Law

Particularly given the state involved, here's a little synchronicity with the previous post: "Who You Gonna Call: Ghost Investigators Offer Services In New York".

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We Are Ready To Believe You

By Ed Driscoll · March 3, 2008 11:32 PM · The Making of the President

It's 3:00 AM and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing. Who ya gonna call?

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Lies And Consequences--Or The Lack Thereof

By Ed Driscoll · March 3, 2008 08:35 PM · The Memory Hole

Two recent authors claiming to have written autobiographies instead get caught cooking the books:

In "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.

The problem is that none of it is true.

Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed.

Riverhead Books, the unit of Penguin Group USA that published "Love and Consequences," is recalling all copies of the book and has canceled Seltzer's book tour, which was scheduled to start on Monday in Eugene, Oregon, where she currently lives.

In a sometimes tearful, often contrite telephone interview from her home on Monday, Seltzer, 33, who is known as Peggy, admitted that the personal story she told in the book was entirely fabricated. She insisted, though, that many of the details in the book were based on the experiences of close friends she had met over the years while working to reduce gang violence in Los Angeles.

"For whatever reason, I was really torn and I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don't listen to," Seltzer said. "I was in a position where at one point people said you should speak for us because nobody else is going to let us in to talk. Maybe it's an ego thing — I don't know. I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it."

The revelations of Seltzer's mendacity came in the wake of the news last week that a Holocaust memoir, "Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years" by Misha Defonseca, was a fake, and perhaps more notoriously, two years ago James Frey, the author of a best-selling memoir, "A Million Little Pieces," admitted that he had made up or exaggerated details in his account of his drug addiction and recovery.

The mistake that all of these authors made was attempting to simply write their fiction. Had they chosen to live their lies, they'd be enjoying endless congratulations and zero investigations from big media to this day.

(Via Glenn Reynolds, who writes, "Rigoberta Menchu Lives!" And so does Georges Sorel.)

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Gloria Steinem, Then And Now

By Ed Driscoll · March 3, 2008 03:22 PM · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War

Here's Gloria Steinem on presidential candidate and Vietnam War vet Senator John Kerry, from Time Magazine, on March 28, 2004:

As a man who knows what war is like, he has tended to be more restrained in his willingness to wage it.

Here's Steinem on the candidate in 2008 who is a Vietnam War vet and senator:

Steinem raised McCain’s Vietnam imprisonment as she sought to highlight an alleged gender-based media bias against Clinton.

“Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], ‘What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?’” Steinem said, to laughter from the audience.

McCain was, in fact, a prisoner of war for around five and a half years, during which time he was tortured repeatedly. Referring to his time in captivity, Steinem said with bewilderment, “I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so.”

Steinem’s broader argument was that the media and the political world are too admiring of militarism in all its guises.

“I am so grateful that she [Clinton] hasn’t been trained to kill anybody. And she probably didn’t even play war games as a kid. It’s a great relief from Bush in his jump suit and from Kerry saluting.”

Patterico's Pontifications notes:

Steinem also sullied JFK, stating “from George Washington to Jack Kennedy and PT-109 we have behaved as if killing people is a qualification for ruling people.”

It sounds like Steinem managed to offend just about everybody. What’s that old saying? ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman …’ Well, you know.

Speaking of which, 56 years ago, Lillian Hellman rather disingenuously told HCUAA, "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." But as we're seeing, those who played the "Chickenhawk" and Starship Trooper-esque "Absolute Moral Authority" cards earlier in the decade have absolutely no problem hitting the CNTRL-ALT-DEL buttons on their consciences when the need suits them.

Much more recently, Howard Dean claimed, "I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy." He might want to start by getting his own house in order before going on the road.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has very wisely distanced herself from Steinem's remarks, much as Senator Kerry had to four years ago when some of his more visible fans got too carried away with themselves.

Update:

"McCain POW Record Is Fair Game, but Don't You Dare Say 'Hussein'"

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