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Quote Of The Day
By Ed Driscoll · May 15, 2008 12:12 PM · Bobos In Paradise · The New Puritans · The Newspeak Dictionary · The Return of the Primitive
Slightly sanitized below, but pithy nonetheless: For many, many years I wrote cover lines, ad copy, captions, pet copy, and many other assorted items for Penthouse Magazine. From this experience (which is seared, seared!, into my memory), I think I am more qualified than 99.99% of all the human beings that have ever lived to know pure, prime, steaming hot bulls*** when I see it, and this sign delivers. As a former bulls*** artist second to none, I know power bulls*** when I see it, and I have to say this placard contains enough high-velocity bulls*** to drop a charging rhino at fifty yards.Read the whole thing. The Wild, The Innocent, And The Barack Street Shuffle
By Ed Driscoll · April 19, 2008 08:08 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · The Making of the President · The New Puritans
So many on the left seemed perpetually trapped in the past, usually in the 1930s, '60s, or the 1970s, but recently, Jonah Goldberg spotted the slightly more recent epoch that has made Barack Obama so bitter: There’s always been a certain cultural lag time to Barack and Michelle Obama, a kitschiness that’s hard to pinpoint. But I think I’ve got it: They’re self-hating yuppies straight out of the 1980s, which were to the Obamas what the 1960s were to the Clintons.And as Abe Greenwald of Commentary writes, so does someone else with a Brilliant Disguise, whose artistic career peaked just before the decade the Gipper made: It’s true that Obama speaks to the America Springsteen usually writes about. But I’m not sure what he’s referring to in this description. Springsteen’s America is a soot-covered wasteland of junked cars, violent townies, shotgun weddings, racist cops, closed factories, and endless unemployment lines. If you think Obama was tough on small town mentalities, consider the lyrics of Springsteen’s “Born to Run”:Sadly, as Slate of all publications once noted, Bruce's second manager, Jon Landau, who went from Rolling Stone critic to rock Svengali, took that Springsteen away from us, transforming Bruce in his formative years from an exciting quirky apolitical musician to just another leftwing product on the showbiz assembly line.Baby this town rips the bones from your back (And speaking of Slate, nice of them to create a fun anti-Obama ad, which will have a little traction even after this week's PA primary has passed.) The Ominous 49th Parallel
By Ed Driscoll · April 12, 2008 01:32 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · Liberal Fascism · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
From The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff (though also quoted here, not surprisingly): The only person who is still a private individual in Germany," boasted Robert Ley, a member of the Nazi hierarchy, after several years of Nazi rule, "is somebody who is asleep."Ghost of a Flea's take on academia up in the 49th parallel (to namecheck a superb movie about a much more humanitarian Canada long since gone), sounds remarkably ominous itself: People wonder why I quit university teaching. Imagine an office - all your colleagues and all your supervisors and anyone with a say in your tenure prospects, your research funding and your publications - where everyone organizes their careers in such a way that a "human rights" commission would have no reason to object. Their teaching practices, their research, their political views; everything they think and do including and especially their "private" lives from the television they (do not) watch to the fast food they (do not) eat to the sex lives they (do not) allow themselves to have. Even the concept of a "private" life dismissed as reactionary and/or illusory and in any event subject to the scrutiny of any undergraduate with internet access and a grudge. That is the life I escaped.Can't say I blame him--though I imagine life in America's elite universities probably isn't much different. Like the man said: "1984 -- A user manual for lefties; a warning for the rest of us." (H/T: SDA) The Crotch Inspector
By Ed Driscoll · April 06, 2008 01:37 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · Liberal Fascism · The New Puritans
Jacob Sullum writes that "There are two kinds of people in the world": The kind who think it's perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, who in 2003 forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing Advil in her crotch or cleavage.Add the zero- Back And To The Left
By Ed Driscoll · April 04, 2008 11:30 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Making of the President · The New Puritans
In the Grauniad, Oliver Stone asks, "How did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?" I don't know--how does anyone recover from a substance abuse problem and successfully rebuild his career in a brutally competitive industry? STONE: I think drugs are very much a part of my generation's experience. We were not only the Cold War generation, we were the drug generation, And marijuana, with its origins in the Sixties, was good. It was a force for good. As was acid. It transformed consciousness. And in Vietnam, it certainly kept us sane.But assuming that Stone's movie hits theaters before November, it might serve as a key teachable moment for the left. It could reinforce the lesson they've been so gently trying to teach voters these past eight years, so that they won't elect another president this fall who both didn't serve in Vietnam, and who has admitted a youthful dalliance with not just alcohol, but other controlled substances as well, as ABC's Jake Tapper wrote last year: In his 1996 memoir, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," Obama wrote candidly about his high school-era drug use: "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though."And note that Obama may still continue to ingest what most on the left consider the most dangerous, evil, vile drug on the planet, as Tapper noted yesterday. (HT: LGF) Update: Related thoughts from BeldarBlog: Recklessness is a quality that Americans voters should and do try to weed out of their presidential candidates, if you'll excuse that pun.Found via Glenn Reynolds, who quips, "Call it coffin-nailgate." Heh, indeed.TM The Very Definition Of "Slow News Day"
By Ed Driscoll · April 04, 2008 12:34 AM · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The New Puritans · The Substance of Style
Easy Riders, Raging Nannies
UPI reports, "More die because helmet laws repealed": U.S. motorcyclist fatality rates have increased in states that repealed their universal helmet laws in the past decade, researchers said.The nanny state doesn't understand that freedom is also the freedom to potentially stupid things. Or as P.J. O'Rourke once said, "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." 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? 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?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. 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. Fun City Derangement Syndrome
By Ed Driscoll · February 12, 2008 09:10 PM · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The New Puritans
Johnny Carson was once quoted as saying, "New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most of it unsolved." Not the least of which is how this staggeringly idiotic anti-Big Apple screed came to be published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Mayor Mike's Global War On Global Warming Terror War
By Ed Driscoll · February 12, 2008 02:04 PM · The Assault On Reason · The New Puritans · War And Anti-War
A couple of years ago, Julia Gorin wrote: It's a peculiar thing that as the threat of global terrorism reaches a crescendo, so apparently does the threat of global warming - at least that's what some would have us believe.And no one conflates the two like the Ultimate Nanny Stater, Nurse Bloomberg. This Just In
By Ed Driscoll · January 25, 2008 08:44 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Muggeridge's Law · The New Puritans
"A U.S. study suggests marketing plays a role in how often parents buy fast food for their children." Beware The Metric Jihadis!
As David Frum, our guest this week on PJM Political wrote in How We Got Here, the 1970s was an era loaded with bad ideas (not to mention even worse aesthetics). One of the few bad ideas that America dodged was converting to the metric system--but that's not the case in EU-ifed England. Debbie Schlussel warns, "Beware the metric jihadis. Consider me a fellow member of Al Anti-Metricaeda." Footloose: The Next Generation!
As part of his series with Reason's TV division, Drew Carey notes that the Nanny State has no rhythm: It's Now Official
By Ed Driscoll · January 14, 2008 01:58 PM · The New Puritans
The anti-smoking brigade's work is now complete. (Forewarned is forewaxed: Accompanying photo not for the faint of heart.) News From 1955
By Ed Driscoll · January 13, 2008 11:25 AM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Muggeridge's Law · The Memory Hole · The New Puritans
"Obesity now a 'lifestyle' choice for Americans, expert says": "Obesity is a natural extension of an advancing economy. As you become a First World economy and you get all these labor-saving devices and low-cost, easily accessible foods, people are going to eat more and exercise less," health economist Eric Finkelstein told AFP.I need a "health economist" to tell me this? Fifty years ago, in those less enlightened times, less obssessed with counterknowledge, this was called "common sense." "Warning! This Is Not Underwear!"
By Ed Driscoll · January 03, 2008 06:53 PM · Muggeridge's Law · The Future and its Enemies · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
Do not taunt happy fun trial lawyers; heed the important safety warnings that Laurie Kendrick has assembled. Decline Of Legacy Media, Western Civilization In Two Sentences
"Please do not bring any alcoholic beverages into the newsroom. Let’s go out like the professionals we have been these last, difficult weeks." Ben Hecht, Lou Grant and Ben Bradlee would simultaneously weep upon reading that, except they were real men (Well, OK, Grant was fictional, but you can't have everything, as they say in Cairo) who didn't do that kind of stuff. Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Gaia
By Ed Driscoll · December 27, 2007 11:11 AM · Muggeridge's Law · The Assault On Reason · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
Theodore Dalrymple writes, "Researchers from Michigan found that people in divorced households spent 46 and 56 percent more on electricity and water, respectively, than did people in married households. This outcome is not all that surprising: marriage involves (among many other things, of course) economies of scale": One of the interesting questions that this little piece of research poses is whether the environmentalist lobby will now throw itself behind the cause of family values. Will it, for example, push for the tightening of divorce laws, and for financial penalties—in the form, say, of higher taxes—to be imposed on those who insist upon divorcing, and therefore upon using 46 percent more electricity and 52 percent more water per person than married couples who stay together? Will environmentalists march down the streets with banners reading SAVE THE PLANET: STAY WITH THE HUSBAND YOU HATE?Well, yeah. "The Lights Are Going Out On Liberal Society"
By Ed Driscoll · December 26, 2007 09:16 PM · The Future and its Enemies · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
George Jonas writes "The newsweekly Maclean's and the brilliant Steyn are the best and biggest to find themselves in the jaws of [Canada's] Human Rights Dragon, not the first": In the summer of 1977, shortly after it came into being, Manitoba's Human Rights Commission took it upon itself to caution Maclean's for Barbara Amiel having used the word "Hun" with reference to Germans in an article about the war-years. The Commission felt it had a mandate to express a government-sanctioned disapproval over a journalist's choice of words. The post-liberal state's action against Maclean's and Steyn comes on the 30th anniversary of the post-liberal state's warning against Maclean's and Amiel. This doesn't show a liberal agenda hijacked or kidnapped; it shows an illiberal agenda that was there right from the beginning.Someone should write a book about this topic. The Nanny State Crushes All
By Ed Driscoll · December 18, 2007 12:54 AM · The Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name · The New Puritans
Megan McCardle looks back at America's wild and carefree recent history: The wild, drunken office Christmas party used to be a staple of television, books, and movies. Now I feel as if it's dropped pretty thoroughly out of the popular imagination; the only example I can think of recently is a fleeting scene in Bridget Jones' Diary. Were office holiday parties really that much wilder in the past? Or have we just stopped noticing, literarily?Something tells me that David Harsanyi can answer Megan McCardle's question. (By the way, note the reference to AMC's Mad Men series in the comments.) Backwards Ran The Progressives Until Reeled The Mind
By Ed Driscoll · November 24, 2007 12:03 PM · The Assault On Reason · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
Return with us now to the era of Woodrow Wilson, Carrie Nation and Margaret Sanger, as "Progressive" New Puritans continue their sweep through government, devouring your freedoms. David Harsanyi of the Denver Post and the author of Nanny State writes that it's the return of the most obvious form of puritanism--prohibition: Drinking is under attack these days in ways we haven't seen since the failed experiment with national alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. Indeed, for many neoprohibitionists, that experiment wasn't a failure at all, since it did cut alcohol consumption, which is all that matters. We can see that mentality today in policies that go beyond preventing drunk driving or punishing drunk drivers and aim to discourage drinking per se.But food is also under attack; in San Francisco, where the progressive dream can be seen in the US in its full glory: out-of-control vagrants harrass an otherwise shrinking but ever-so-environmentally correct population, fireplaces could soon be banned. (And they may already be banished in some Bay Area suburbs.) And then of course, there's the story making the rounds on the starboard side of the Blogosphere and cable TV this week: At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to “protect the planet”…Where it all ends only knows Gaia, but here are three examples of taking environmental absurdity to its most absurd destinations. Nanny Street
By Ed Driscoll · November 20, 2007 12:28 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted · Muggeridge's Law · The Future and its Enemies · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
This New York Times article on the upcoming DVD version of the first season of Sesame Street is on the one hand a hoot, and on the other rather depressing in terms of how badly the nanny state has made inroads into American society since 1969. Back then, it merely wanted to educate your kids about reading, writing and 'rithmetic (in the form of taxpayer-funded shows like Sesame Street). These days it wants to go much, much further than that: According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”Forty years from now, when the current season of Sesame Street is being assembled for release on whatever the successor format to the successor format of DVD is, how much of it will have to be reshot to comply with how much further the nanny state is sure to have expanded further? This Just--hic!--In
Yet another great moment in surveys--not to mention headlines: "Bars, nightclubs linked to more drinking". California Cupcake Cops
By Ed Driscoll · November 03, 2007 06:52 PM · The New Puritans
"You can have my Ho Hos when you pry them from my cold, dead hands!" is the rallying cry that seems to emerge from Andy Kessler's recent Tech Central Station piece. Which isn't the first time the Cali Cupcake Cops have reared their ugly new puritan heads--recall this post by Virginia Postrel from a few years ago on a very similar theme. Related: Gee, that only took about 15 years! NBC has only just now figured out that maybe, just maybe, there's a nanny state. More: Meanwhile, Iowans--particularly right around this time each year--fear the dreaded Pumpkin Police! New Puritanism Goes Through The Looking Glass
By Ed Driscoll · October 28, 2007 02:17 PM · The Assault On Reason · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive · The Substance of Style
Frank Martin explains why Harry Reid's poll numbers in Nevada are so low, even the crack forensic scientists of CSI: Las Vegas couldn't find them. Truth be told, I don't think that Reid actually believes any of this stuff, but when you're a spokesman for an ideology that's headed far, far to the left in recent years, you've got to toe the party line. The Nobel Prize Gets Gored
By Ed Driscoll · October 12, 2007 11:36 AM · The Assault On Reason · The Future and its Enemies · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
As Allah writes, "Look on the bright side: after Arafat, Carter, and Iranian marionette Mohammed ElBaradei, the award couldn’t possibly be more degraded." Steve Hayward has some additional thoughts on Al Gore's Nobel prize, and a bold prediction: "In 20 years Gore or his climate alarmist successors will be lucky to appear on cable access TV, and Gore’s Peace Prize will take its place alongside Le Duc Tho’s 1973 award as a Nobel embarrassment". If that sounds harsh, simply compare Gore with Paul Ehrlich, the most prominent Malthusian of the 1970s, when modern eco-hysteria began: It’s never a good sign when politicians declare a scientific matter settled; we all remember how well that worked out for the Vatican when they told Galileo 400 years ago that astronomy was settled. It is even more problematic to suggest that climate change is not a political issue, but a moral issue, but then to demand massive political interventions in the economy to fix the problem.Read the whole thing. Destination Reached
By Ed Driscoll · October 06, 2007 11:02 AM · Bobos In Paradise · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Future and its Enemies · The New Puritans
Glenn Reynolds writes that "in some quarters, patriotism is the highest form of dissent. Er, or it would be..." (Somebody should put that on a bumper sticker!) Back in 2004, Jonah Goldberg looked at the post-Michael Kelly Atlantic and wrote, "The Atlantic is still a great magazine, but it seems to be inching urther and further into official Liberal Magazine Land." That destination is concluded, with an article that begins: If the American idea was to subdue Native Americans and place them at the disposal of European settlers, to import several million Africans to the New World and subject them to a lifetime of slavery, to impose on Asian immigrants a lifetime of discrimination, then perhaps the American idea was not so admirable.And thus, the post-JFK strain of punitive liberalism rears its ugly head again. Or as Ace of Spades quipped a while back, "Call it the Ike Turner school of patriotism." What Would Barack Do?
By Ed Driscoll · October 04, 2007 12:59 PM · Bobos In Paradise · The Making of the President · The New Puritans
Thus winning the eternal support of Katie Couric, her fellow newscasters, Hollywood, and other compassionate head-tilters, "Obama Stops Wearing Flag Pin", AP and Drudge breathlessly report. In contrast though, John Stephenson isn't losing much sleep over this transnational tempest in a press release. Update: More from Pajamas HQ, Hot Air, and Michelle Malkin. Mister President, We Cannot Afford A Hookah Parlor Gap!
By Ed Driscoll · September 27, 2007 11:09 AM · Muggeridge's Law · The Future and its Enemies · The Making of the President · The New Puritans · War And Anti-War
Thank you for smoking, Matt Lewis writes: But what about the growing Hookah Parlor Gap? Fly The Not-So-Friendly Skies
"Manolo says, Ayyyy! The Irony! One minute, you are looking like Hooters Girls, and the next you are escorting them off the plane for indecency." Don Draper wouldn't recognize today's world. Update: Now it makes more sense. But we'll do our best to follow-up with a response from Catherine Tramell ASAP. Greatest. Medical News. Ever
The BBC--and who could harbor a negative thought concerning such a well researched, unbiased news agency?--reports: Guinness may indeed be good for you. New Puritans, Unfiltered
By Ed Driscoll · September 07, 2007 02:19 AM · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted · The New Puritans
To understand how far to the puritanical left America has traveled since the Manhattan of 1960 depicted in AMC's Mad Man, it's worth revisiting this quote by David Frum: They lit rockets in their backyards on the Fourth of July. They bought their steak marbled with fat. They smoked. They bought cars without seatbelts. They gave boys .22-caliber rifles for their eleventh birthdays. How they would gape and stare at a contemporary playground, with its rubber matting underneath the swings, safety belts on the teetertotters, and three-year-olds strapped into crash helmets before they can mount their tricycles. How they would snicker at grown men girding themselves like test pilots to pedal through the park, at a Post Office that airbrushes the cigarette out of Humphrey Bogart’s hand lest some impressionable stamp-collector get the wrong idea about smoking, at the massive Range Rovers we buy so that we can commute to the office without fear. Back then, one did not show so much concern for one’s carcass.Compare that quote with the videos that AMC has uploaded to promote Mad Men--there's something like a half-dozen different clips on the dangers of smoking, not counting the endless hectoring of the show's premiere episode itself. Did Basic Instinct have warnings on the health hazards of unprotected sex? Superfly or Scarface on the dangers of illegal narcotics? A Christmas Story on firearm safety? (OK, I guess the constant warnings of "You'll shoot your eye out, Ralphie!" count.) And as Tim Blair notes, the bar has certainly been lowered in terms of scandal. Whereas Brian Jones and later Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones had to consume kilos of illicit drugs in the 1960s and '70s for the police to bother with them, all it takes now is for Keith to light up a Marlboro 100 onstage, and it's truly Exile On Main Street time. Most Honest Thing He's Said In Ages
Does it get any better than this for Michael Bloomberg? He just experienced the ultimate moment of nanny state auto-erotic nirvana, as he bans himself: "Nobody's going to elect me president of the United States." Bloomberg gave his scoop to a struggling cub reporter named D. Rather, at an little-seen TV network called HDNet. Considering where he made his fortune, I think it's great to see that Bloomberg is still supporting new and alternative media! Update: More good news! With Bloomberg out, "Accordingly, We Expect Much Less Discussion of Trans-Fats on the Campaign Trail". But it's not exactly like the Nanny State solely resides in him, of course. Pre-Traumatic Stress Syndrome When Flying The Friendly Skies
By Ed Driscoll · August 21, 2007 10:39 AM · Bobos In Paradise · The Future and its Enemies · The New Puritans
Dean Barnett asks, "What other industry goes to such lengths to make the vast majority of its customers know they’re second class citizens?" Meanwhile, Jules Crittenden notes that the paradoxically pacifistic Party of Rage can really get their freak on when they're treated like second class citizens: Rep. Bob Filner is facing an assault and battery charge after an incident at Dulles Airport where he allegedly pushed an United Airlines bag claim employee as first reported by ABC7/Newschannel 8.Jules dubs it "pre-traumatic stress syndrome", or rage induced by encounters with someone not up speed with their DYKWIA--"Do You Know Who I Am". Or perhaps its guilt-induced paranoia caused by a fear of committing the left's newest, and yet most heretical sin. In any case, thanks to the media, we may not know which party they are, when they emphasize their disapproval in such physical outbursts. Curiously, this rarely warrants the same response from these ordinarily ultra-sensitive souls. Update: "It’s easy to see why he’s so anti-gun. He thinks we all have as little self-control as he does." Purity Of Essence
By Ed Driscoll · August 15, 2007 10:43 AM · The Assault On Reason · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
As Victor Davis Hanson wrote back in June: When I was growing in rural California in the 1950s and 1960s, my FDR parents winced at the nut right-wing fringe. This was, remember, the era of bulk mailings on pink paper, crazy “Did you know?” unsolicited newsletters detailing the names of local and national communists, usually sent from strange addresses in the Sierra Nevada foothills. At seven and eight, we used to pick them up from the garbage and ask our parents, “Hey, Mom, are Lucy and Ricky really communists?”Needless to say, things have come full circle since: "It's a hugely beneficial liquid in a slim cylinder of plastic, but for US environmentalists, it is the new public enemy number one: bottled water." Goodbye Mr. (Pro-Israel's) Chips
By Ed Driscoll · August 14, 2007 03:52 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · The New Puritans · The Newspeak Dictionary · The Return of the Primitive
NRO's Phi Beta Cons blog links to Frederick Hess's article on the limits of what is commonly described in today's shorthand as "tolerance": Writing on NRO today, Frederick Hess examines the recent flap at the University of Maryland, where a student wearing a pro-Israel shirt was indignantly told by a cashier at the Maryland Food Collective that "Your shirt offends me. I won't ring you up."If history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes, here's the San Francisco counterpoint to the above east coast incident, which Cinnamon Stillwell recently linked to: Many Jewish customers have refused to enter Rainbow Grocery — the hippie-dippy worker-owned cooperative that preaches an "inclusive environment that is welcoming to everyone" — ever since two departments de-shelved Israeli products in an apparent anti-Israel boycott in 2002. (Store employee Naomi Jelks says it was done without store authorization, and the boycott was later shot down by an employee vote.)I worked in a retail store a couple of decades ago. Back then, the typical response to "Your shirt offends me. I won't ring you up", would have come from the store's manager and had the words "you're fired, schmuck" somewhere in the sentence. Of course, the above incidents could have easily have escalated into something even more insane: at least no latex balloons were involved in either transaction! (H/T: GR) Billy Graham And The Sulfurous Kultursmog
In the late 1960s, before his movie career launched, Woody Allen made several television specials, including one in which he interviewed Billy Graham. Late last year, when Ann Althouse linked to the YouTube clips of this somewhat surreal moment, "Dirty Harry" of the conservative Libertas film blog wrote: With all the acrimony and right against left and poisonous debate going on during this election season, I thought I’d pass on this very charming clip of Woody Allen interviewing Billy Graham. They’re both very funny and obviously enjoying each other’s company though they agree on little. (Letterman could learn something from this.)Such moments in which prominent members of the "Two America" publicly debate in a colligate spirit seem to occur much less often these days; Bob Tyrrell blames it all partially, and I believe somewhat tongue-in-cheek, on William F. Buckley: What claims the attention of major media today is a phenomenon called Kultursmog. It is the popular culture of the United States, polluted utterly by a weird politics, a politics that is often called liberal but is actually simply leftish and adolescent. It has no fixed values or ideas other than to disturb the peace, which the legally attuned will recognize as a misdemeanor in most jurisdictions of the civilized world. Kultursmog is a culture that mixes rock stars in with fashion models and the ideas of Al Gore. Occasionally the smog actually includes the Hon. Gore, along with those other "rock star" personalities, the Clintons. The Kultursmog is always politically correct, ever sensitive to the whims of the Democratic National Committee, and increasingly anti-intellectual.In any case, it's hard to argue that the gatekeepers of the overculture are infinitely more hostile to conservatives than they were a few decades ago. Case in point: Mark Finkelstein notices that "Time Puts Horns on the Reverend Billy Graham:" Just when you thought the MSM couldn't sink any lower . . .Is the juxtaposition purely a strange coincidence? Maybe, but then so was this, which received gallons of ink in 2000. And note how often these strange coincidences seem to occur in the MSM, and whom they frequently involve. Related: If you can't use 'em, bruise 'em. |