Our commenters need to up their game

"I can't hear 'Moving in Stereo' anymore without having Phoebe Cates' naked breasts dance through my head. Which isn't really such a bad thing, but it can be distracting."
-- Slartibartfast, Protein Wisdom (comment #77)

Why aren't we getting these clever "Phoebe Cates' naked breasts" comments over here, huh?

I'm disappointed. You guys are slacking off. This is the "Rule 5" blog, remember?

I'm not saying that comments about Phoebe Cates' naked breasts should be on every post, but Slartibartfast is definitely onto something there, because now I've got that guitar riff from "Moving in Stereo" stuck in my head. And you do, too.

Rich Lowry can't write stuff this good

"Even if they all put their heads together, it’s doubtful they could beat a carnival chicken at Tic-Tac-Toe."
-- Jonah Goldberg, National Review

OK, for several months, I've been compiling evidence for the prosecution in the continuing case of Why Rich Lowry Should Have Been Fired No Later Than 2001, arguing that Goldberg should replace him. And this latest article of Goldberg's is excellent:

British historian Arnold Toynbee argued that civilizations thrive when the lower classes aspire to be like the upper classes, and they decay when the upper classes try to be like the lower classes. Looked at through this prism, it's hard not to see America in a prolonged period of decay. . . .
As part of this transformation, society has embraced what social scientist Charles Murray calls "ecumenical niceness." A core tenet of ecumenical niceness is that harsh judgments of the underclass -- or people with underclass values -- are forbidden. A corollary: People with old-fashioned notions of decency are fair game.

Which is why Lowry has to go. His "old-fashioned notions of decency" make him utterly worthless in any engagement with the progressive Left. What conservatism needs now is brutal, fearless savagery, and Jonah Goldberg's got that red-in-tooth-and-claw thing down cold.

Zoltar sees health care reform?

A frightening vision!

Katrina Vanden Heuvel can't afford to send Max Blumenthal to Pasadena

She's rattling the tip-jar with sudden fury:

This morning we sent out our end of year fundraising appeal. You can read the full text here but the gist of it is this: The Nation is facing a significant budget shortfall, at a moment when support for investigative journalism is collapsing. The definition of "journalism," and the debate over how people get their content, who pays for it and what form it takes is changing every day. As The Nation's Editor, these shifts in the media landscape are fascinating. As The Nation's Publisher, these changes are alarming. Reporting--real, gritty, hands-on journalism--costs serious money.

Bwaahahahaha. With an average daily traffic of 7,000 visits, I investigated the Sparkman case in Kentucky and covered the NY23 special election on tip-jar hits, and yet the biggest left-wing magazine in America (not counting Newsweek) can't pay their bills because reporting "costs serious money"!

C'mon, people, don't you want to send me in Pasadena to cover the BCS game? "Real, gritty, hands-on journalism" with college cheerleaders? Just to shove it in Katrina Vanden Heuvel's face? Isn't that worth $5 or $10 to you?

UPDATE: The left-wing blog BuzzFlash is angry because Vanden Heuvel's fundraising letter complains that bloggers "these 'aggregator' websites use our work without contributing a penny to support and produce the journalism we invest in."

Funny. That's kind of how some small-business owners feel about their federal taxes, but I thought Vanden Heuvel was "progressive"?

UPDATE II: John T. of Raleigh, N.C., just hit the tip jar. Earlier today Michael R. of Shawnee, Kansas, and Stephen N. of Plano, Texas, kicked in to help me beat those Empty Tip-Jar Blues. Among other readers contributing to the Pasadena tip-jar this week: Kenneth J. of Austin (!), Larry L. of Houston, Barry C. of Florrisant, Mo., Jeanne P. of Drexel Hill, Pa., and Nathan D. of Huntley, Ill.

UPDATE III: On Twitter, Dan Collins said I was mocking Katrina Vanden Heuvel, to which I replied:

Katrina Vanden Heuvel Should Be Mocked, and Often, and By Someone Who Knows How

Jimmie Bise liked that so much he re-Tweeted, and I apologized for recycling a joke. Jimmie then said it was good enough to deserve recycling. So I replied:

Good Jokes Should Be Recycled, and Often, and By Someone Who Knows How

Thanks for that shtick, Captain Butler.

UPDATE IV: Speaking of thanks, more tip-jar hitters have joined the effort to send me to Pasadena. Robert G. of St. Augustine, Fla., who was the first guy to hit the Pasadena tip-jar, hits me again, and Mike in El Segundo says I need another carton of cigarettes for Christmas. Christopher B. of Nova Scotia hits me to get me "at least halfway to the airport," and thus adds his name to Kathy Shaidle's on my Very Short List of "Good Canadians."

And a certain Steven G. of Santa Barbara hits the tip jar with a mention of USC fullback Sam "Bam" Cunningham. Cunningham scored two TDs in a 42-21 USC win over the Tide at Legion Stadium in 1970s.

That home-field defeat convinced the university's boosters to allow Bear Bryant to recruit black players (as he had wanted to do for years). One of Coach Bryant's assistants said, "Sam Cunningham did more to integrate Alabama in 60 minutes than Martin Luther King did in 20 years." Indeed.

Coach Bryant (and a lot of Alabama fans, my parents included) felt that the Tide was wrongly stigmatized for the state's racial politics, over which neither the coach nor the team had any control. In 1966, for example, the Tide finished 11-0 and won the Sugar Bowl, but was ranked only No. 3.

The fact that Mark Ingram of Flint, Mich., was willing to come to Tuscaloosa -- and became the Tide's first Heisman winner -- indicates that 'Bama may have finally shaken that decades-old stigma. Now if we could just get the NCAA to stop persecuting the Tide . . .

Boycott Connecticut?

Just when you thought Ned Lamont Party's absurd rage against Joe Lieberman couldn't get worse -- trying to get his wife fired? "punching the guy out"? -- now Michael Moore wants liberals to boycott Connecticut?

Great. All you liberals in Connecticut, move to Vermont. And then we'll rename Connecticut "Oklahoma."

Demonization, Inc.

My boast as a greedy capitalist is that "I Write For Money." It's rather odd that some people evidently get paid to write about me, in publications that wouldn't pay me a dime to write about myself.

If I'm such a damned fascinating subject, offer me 40 cents a word and I'll cheerfully deliver 1,000 words within 24 hours. (Leaving me plenty of time to goof off. Tuesday's 900-word column for The American Spectator was written in less than four hours.)

Nevertheless, publishers eschew this eliminate-the-middle-man efficiency, which brings us back to the subject of Barrett Brown, spokesman for the Godless Coalition. Yesterday I noted that Brown was promising to add a chapter about me to his forthcoming book, which I jokingly suggested he rename People That Barrett Brown Doesn't Like (Mainly Jews).

Today I received a courteous e-mail from Brown explaining that the context of his proposed chapter on me "involves the article you composed in 2002 regarding Jonathan Farley, as well as the activities in which you were otherwise engaged at the time in which you wrote that particular piece." To which I replied:

Thank you for the courtesy, sir. My first response was, "Jonathan Farley? Who is Jonathan Farley?" Then I looked it up and recognized him as the Vanderbilt University professor with the Che Guevara poster who waged a campaign to rename Confederate Memorial Hall, a controversy I reported about.
Shall I surmise the "otherwise engaged" as indicative of your belief that my reporting was not entirely objective? If I succeed in my fundraising drive to go to Pasadena to cover the BCS championship, do you suppose that I'll get the score wrong or misspell the players' names?
You are yourself an ax-grinder with a cause, Mr. Barrett. If your publisher wishes to provide you with the opportunity to advance that cause at my expense, that would be an interesting transaction, although I doubt it will prove very lucrative for either of you.
-- RSM

Honest commerce ought not be the grounds for personal animosity, and I try to be empathetic toward those who are paid to demonize me.

The SPLC's Heidi Beirich has practically made a career of writing about what a terrible person I am, yet I've promised her that we'll get together and sing karaoke next time I visit Montgomery to see my kin. Dr. Beirich has my sympathy because, evidently unable to obtain any respectable employment, she is compelled by misfortune to work for that treacherous bastard Morris Dees.

Here's the thing: Dees runs a tax-exempt non-profit, which was started with a mailing list of 1972 McGovern campaign contributors. He has amassed a $150 million endowment by convincing elderly liberals that, unless they send a check to the SPLC today, the brownshirts will be goose-stepping down Main Street tomorrow. It's a dishonest racket, and Dees gets away with such a scam only because his victims donors are convinced that by sending him money, they're engaging in an act of humanitarian charity.

If Brown and his publisher think they're going to make a profit by horning in on the SPLC's fearmongering racket, let them ask Max Blumenthal's publisher how much profit they've made from his book Republican Gomorrah. I just noticed a review of Blumenthal's book by . . . wait for it . . . Frank Schaeffer:

Blumenthal first came to my attention when he was doing his in-depth reporting on Sarah Palin. He was a guest on a TV program I was on too. There was something accomplished and in depth about the quality of his reporting on religion that I hadn't seen from other progressive sources. I've been following his work since. . . .
No one else has ever investigated this subject with as much insight into the psychological sickness that is the basis of the Religious right's power to delude other people who are also needy and unstable.
In another time and place the despicable (and sometimes tragic figures) Blumenthal describes would be the leaders of, or the participants in, local lynch mobs, or the followers of the Ku Klux Klan. But today figures such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson, (the late) Jerry Falwell, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin have led a resentment-driven second American revolution, not just against Democrats and progressives but against the United States of America itself. . . .

The market for this kind of Theocratic Hate Menace stuff is already glutted, yet it seems that publishers can't get enough of it. People are standing in line to buy Sarah Palin's bestseller, while the effort to cash in on anti-Palin sentiment yields . . . what? MSNBC?

Barrett Brown's book briefly summarized: Stuff people have written or said on TV that pisses me off.

Good luck with selling that. It's still a free country and people have the right to waste their money however they see fit. Hitting my tip jar to send me to Pasadena wouldn't be a total waste -- I guarantee the reporting will be more interesting than anything Max Blumenthal has ever written -- but still I've got those Empty Tip-Jar Blues.

A friendly note to James Wolcott

Jeff Goldstein could kill you with his bare hands. And probably should, but I doubt he will. However, it would be unfortunate if I were to log on one day and see this top headline at Memeorandum:

MANHUNT FOR GOLDSTEIN
Police Seek Blogger in Columnist's
Brutal Dismemberment Slaying

Don't hate the player, hate the game. The viciousness of online discourse has been pondered from many perspectives, but it really comes down to the fact that people think they can say anything they want and never get their asses kicked for it.

Remember the Sparkman case? Sully was wetting his pants over "Southern populist terrorism" and Rick Ungar was screaming "Send the Body to Glenn Beck." In that atmosphere of fear-mongering pundit panic, I decided one Saturday night to try to do some actual reporting and, after a couple of calls, managed to get a law-enforcement official in Kentucky on the phone:

"You'd be surprised what some of these morons write on the Internet . . . that they wouldn't say to somebody's face," the official said in a brief telephone interview.

Exactly. I guarantee that under no circumstances would you, James Wolcott, taunt Jeff to his face. But you have no compunction about sitting there at your computer, on Conde Nast's dime, making fun of a guy you've never met and whom most of your readers never heard of.

Pretty, Popular and Vicious
This "Mean Girls" vibe is an unexpected consequence of online discourse. When I was a kid in school, I used to marvel at the way girls were always doing that evil gossip-clique thing: "You can't be her friend because she said such-and-such to so-and-so and I hate her."

Girl culture is so much more vicious than boy culture because boys are naturally prone to settle matters with their fists. The biggest boy in third grade may be an obnoxious jerk, but his superior potential for violence means that other boys are faced with a choice:

• Stay out of his way;
• Try to be his friend; or
• Form an alliance with other pipsqueaks so that if the big kid gets mad at you, he'll have to fight more than one of you.

Because girls don't routinely risk violence in their conflicts, their viciousness toward each other is unrestrained, and the clique mentality reigns in girl culture -- back-biting gossip, secret rivalries and all the rest.

Girl culture can also be described as the "culture of niceness," because popularity among girls is so largely a function of who is superficially "nice," in terms of appearance and comportment. This is why girls are so keen on fashion and grooming, whereas boys don't care about that crap. If you score the winning touchdown, nobody cares about your hairstyle.

Mean Girls in the Intelligentsia
Now, to bring this back to the blogosphere, you see an extreme example of a problem that is ubiquitous in intellectual life and more generally in "civilized" white-collar environments, where physical violence is considered an impossibility.

When a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation gets upset with a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, the one outcome that can be ruled out in advance is that the Heritage guy will jump in his car, drive over to Cato, storm into the office of his antagonist and invite him out to the parking lot to settle their argument like men.

This is all for the good except that, absent the possibility of an occasional ass-kicking, denizens of the think-tank world start behaving like girls on the third-grade playground, constantly backstabbing each other and forming snobby little cliques.

Steiner's Law -- "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" -- expresses the essential bogusness of virtual discourse, where a flame-war between rival bloggers passes for a Titanic Struggle for the Soul of America, even though it's merely a collection of words posted online and read by a few thousand people in a nation of 300 million.

People don't like to be insulted and, in a real-world setting, civilized people refrain from insulting others directly -- especially if the person they're insulting is someone who might kick their ass. In the real world, Jeff Goldstein is not accustomed to being insulted and if you, James Wolcott, had ever met Goldstein, you sure as hell wouldn't be taunting him with lyrics from a Village People song.

It's extremely unlikely that Goldstein will show up on your doorstep, brandishing a blood-spattered arm -- torn from the corpse of a California Jew-hater, prior to driving cross-country to confront you -- and bellowing in murderous rage: "Wolcott, you cowardly bastard, come out here and meet your doom, or I'll kick down your door!"

Extremely unlikely, I say. But crazier things have happened.

UPDATE: Moe Lane's Quote of the Day. Moe is an easygoing, mild-mannered guy. Most people don't realize that Moe's day job is ninja warrior.

Meanwhile, one of the glories of the post-racial Obama Age is that it's once again safe for guys named "Schultz" to suggest violence against guys named "Lieberman":

What is the feeling towards Joe Lieberman? I mean how do you, you know, go into a room without punching the guy out after what he’s done to the progressive movement in this country?

Ed Schultz is speaking on behalf of the progressive movement, so he can't be held responsible if somebody actually does a beatdown on the Jew. I'm sure Joe will be deeply moved when he and Hadassah get a Happy Hannukah card from their progressive friends at MSNBC.

UPDATE II: Little Miss Attila is upset that I haven't linked her. Donald Douglas at American Power links with some vintage punk rock, and Jimmie Bise at Sundries Shack also links (but without punk rock).

Empty Tip-Jar Blues

By R.S. "Speedo" McCain

Well, it's Christmas time, baby,
And the traffic's sucking bad.
Even though it's slightly better,
With the 'Lanche that Smitty had.
But I need a trip to Pasadena,
And my car payment's overdue.
I'm just another blogger with those
Empty Tip-Jar Blues.

There's this guy name Lance Mannion,
Although I never read his blog.
But he got on Memeorandum,
'Cause his glasses got ate by his dog.
Three weeks before the BCS,
I'd love to be blogging the news,
But I'm just another blogger with those
Empty Tip-Jar Blues.

I'm the dude Charles Johnson blamed
For his departure from the Right.
A simple misunderstanding:
I just want Christmas to be white.
Yes, I love all God's children --
Especially you Jews.
Still I'm just another blogger with those
Empty Tip-Jar Blues.

This crazy thing all started
When Dan Collins made a dare:
"If you want to see the BCS,
"Your readers will send you there."
Well, I made that tip jar rattle,
On the day Tim Tebow cried.
"Give me $10 or give me $20,
So I can go to see the Tide."
Just need $2,000 total,
Although some extra could be used.
Now I'm just another blogger with those
Empty Tip Jar Blues.

Drove down to Kentucky
And up to New York 23.
Now if you folks would only hit me,
I'll go from sea to shining sea.
I'll fly to Pasadena,
Buy a ticket for the ride.
Neutral and objective? Hell, no,
I love that Crimson Tide!
Oh, it's Christmas time, baby,
And my kids ain't got no shoes,
'Cause I'm just another blogger with those
Empty Tip-Jar Blues.

Green mob riots in Copenhagen

BBC News reports:

Police have fired tear gas as hundreds of protesters tried to break through a perimeter fence at the UN climate summit venue in Copenhagen.
The Bella Centre, where the conference is taking place, has now been shut off, says the BBC's Sarah Mukherjee.
Activists have been angered by lack of progress on a new climate deal and also by restrictions on access to the talks.
The protesters had marched to the summit across Copenhagen and police said they had detained about 100. . . .

The Guardian reports even more arrests:

Around 150 people have been arrested this morning at various points around Copenhagen, where world leaders and officials are meeting for UN climate talks.
The news came as thousands of protesters set out in Copenhagen this morning in a bid to take over the conference centre where the talks are taking place. The organisers of the mass "Reclaim Power" march, the Climate Justice Action and Climate Justice Now! (CJN) networks of campaigners, said they hope to enter the Bella Centre today, where NGOs and activist groups were struggling to gain entry this morning, to hold a "people's assembly" in protest at the direction the talks are taking.

Compare these left-wing Green protesters -- aiming to "take over the conference centre" -- to the peaceful citizens (including Smitty) who attended yesterday's Code Red Rally in DC.

UPDATE: When in doubt, blame the Pope!

Whereas Stacy and I were not bright enough to think of this

by Smitty (h/t Little Miss Attila)

Ace has the details of that whole pesky 'accuracy' problem over at the Daily DogDish.

That mindless 'integrity' thing seems a real disadvantage. When we keep things as accurate as possible, admit fault when it occurs, and seek to spread the credit as much as possible, it really gets in the way of building an air of invincibility.

Stacy, should we consider a bout of cretinism, for purely scientific purposes? It worked for Al Gore, didn't it? Maybe this fetishing of fact is foolishness.

UPDATE: Credit Where Credit Is Due
By Robert Stacy McCain
Last night Aleister at American Glob called me to talk blogging and during the course of our conversation, I mentioned that Ace of Spades and Allahpundit were the two bloggers whom I most strived to emulate when I began blogging.

It's the irreverence toward Big Shots, see? Also, the self-deprecating humor, the running jokes, and the knowing attitude toward the interests of the readership. Beyond the value of the news aggregation and commentary, there is a shtick, so that regular readers feel themselves part of the gang, sharing the inside jokes.

Blogging is by its nature a collaborative effort. No blog is an island, and to pretend that one blogger is omniscient and omnicompetent is a pretense that won't fool anybody who pays attention.

Did I notice Patrick Appel's response to complaints from Sullivan's readers about the guest-blogging situation? Yes, it was briefly noted here Tuesday morning.

Did I give it the Mother Of All Fiskings that Ace has provided? No, I didn't. And considering that he actually beat me to it by three hours or so, thanks to Smitty for giving Ace props for making the most of the motherlode:

Because like a lot of people who never had any particular talent, Sullivan was endlessly promoted far beyond his abilities, and now that he is a "name," he intends to sell the only thing of any value he has -- that name -- and simply pay some hacks intern-level wages to ghost-blog for him while he conducts in-depth examinations of Sarah Palin's upper fallopian tubes.

Among the Daily Dish hacks paid intern-level wages? Conor Friedersdorf. Just sayin' . . .

And just sayin' is, of course, also stolen from Ace. The hacks here are unpaid, not even intern-level wages.

The Pope goes Green?

Glad I'm a Protestant:

Industrialized nations must recognize their responsibility for the environmental crisis, shed their consumerism and embrace more sober lifestyles, Pope Benedict said on Tuesday. . . .
"This means that technologically advanced societies must be prepared to encourage more sober lifestyles, while reducing their energy consumption and improving its efficiency." . . .

"More sober lifestyles"? Next thing you know, he'll be talking Jimmy Carter "malaise" stuff. (Via AmSpecBlog.)

Code Red healthcare protest summary

by Smitty

Today's Code Red protest was a small vacation-time investment that was well worth it. Nothing like gathering next to the Capitol with a couple thousand actual Americans and yelling "Kill the Bill" a few times over, of a lovely Fall/Winter afternoon, to re-invigorate the body.

When you consider the mindless, zombie-like advance of Progressivism, you have to realize that all of the time for being a typical American goof-off has been expended. The Tommy Boy narrative has run its course over the last century. The subtle, gradual collapse of the Constitutional separation of powers, fed by a deferential SCOTUS and an Imperial Fed means that the US has neither engaged in formally declared war, nor walked back dime #1 of the national debt since the Truman Administration. Get the falafel out of here, say I.

Thus, it is both tactically crucial to keep up the pressure on Congress, but also to drive towards a restoration of meaningful value in our three-tier, three-branch system of government.

Laura Ingraham and then Representative Bachmann, and Senator Coburn, were spot on today:

Rush Limbaugh expands on the disgruntlement with Senator Lieberman. Summary: the Medicare approach is a bait-and-switch. (h/t Rhetorican)

Now, I also think that this Medicare expansion was a ruse from the start. In negotiations, if you've ever been in any involving, say, your compensation or representing a company or something, you always, in preparing for negotiations, you put in what are called throwaways, things that you demand be included in the deal that you secretly will throw away or give away in order to get a final deal, and both sides do this. Except our side. We don't do anything but accept the premise and needle with it around the margins. And I think that this Medicare expansion was a throwaway from the get-go. I don't think they were ever serious about this, and I'll tell you why. Simple logic. There's no way in a bill that cuts Medicare $500 billion you can expand it to cover people down to 55 years of age. The two just don't go together. So what they do, they raise the Medicare expansion as an issue at the last minute when Dingy Harry is having problems, and then they kill it a few days later on the desires of Lieberman.

This gives them cover to get Lieberman on their side, and then others say it's now okay to vote for this, since they got rid of the Medicare expansion. As I say I think it was a ruse from day one, it was a strategy. You put out a false option, you have a Senator object to it, a Senator who is thought to be a moderate -- Lieberman -- with an independent party label instead of Democrat, and he says, "I can't vote for this. Why, there's no way I'm going to vote for that. I'm not going to vote for this with the public option in it, either." So you give in, you give in to Lieberman, you give in to the so-called moderates, you claim there's no Medicare expansion and no public option and you get your 60 votes, and you look like you're compromising, when you're not compromising at all because you never intended the Medicare expansion to be real in the first place. It was just designed to get Lieberman in there and it looks like it works.

Pictures follow, but the last one is the favorite:

This administration has given us so much to puke about. One cannot blame protestors for straying off topic:

The best was afterwards, though. On the steps in front of the Russel building, where many a Senator lurks, stood Death with the Obama/Pelosi/Reid try-dumb-virate. Nancy has a clutch of little embryos in her hand. Death was going on about how easy the was to subvert US leadership. The effect was shocking and revolting, but in a Halloween sort of way. It was provocative without straying too far into theological territory. A woman went up to Death, as he delivered his carnival dialog, and told him she found it offensive. He responded rather graciously that shocking imagery had a long tradition, going back to the Suffragette movement. The bad thing about this is the precedent. As with the Federal government itself, each little brick takes the political dialog further along. Even though I thought these four showed a modicum of restraint, less is more.

May the Almighty bless these United States. May the current passion find tangible expression, leading to the reforms we know we need, yet dread.

Update: Linked at American Power
also,
Tabitha Hale at Right Wing News attended.

Update II: Insta-lanch!

Update III: a few more pics at Left Coast Rebel.

Barrett Brown gets a book deal!

Reacting to a previous thread, the communication director of the Godless Coalition left a comment (now deleted) that included this:

I have decided to include a chapter on you in my upcoming book, which will be released in April and which deals with the structural deficits of the American information flow. You will be in good company.

Ah. A late addition to his forthcoming paperback, Hot, Fat, and Clouded: The Amazing and Amusing Failures of America's Chattering Class, which is described online thus:

A pundit is as a king. America replaces its presidents, its senators, and its generals, but a pundit made is a pundit forever. From this, we may determine either that every American pundit is so deserving of his position in the punditocracy that he ought to hold it forever, or that some pundits are in fact not qualified for their roles but nonetheless remain in place by way of inertia. This state of affairs is either very good or very bad for the public's understanding of crucial issues. Hot, Fat, and Clouded assumes the latter, and from this position serves as the most damning attack yet written on the failures of the opinion class. Ignoring the nation's more obviously ridiculous media figures, the book concentrates instead on America's "serious" commentators: The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, The Washington Post columnists Richard Cohen and Charles Krauthammer, and The New Republic editor Martin Peretz among others.

Hmmm. Friedman, Cohen, Krauthammer, Peretz and . . . me? A very interesting selection of subjects.

Also, a very curious arrangement Brown has with his publishers. Less than three months before the advertised March 1 publication date, Brown is permitted to insert into his manuscript a chapter on me.

Friedman is a columnist for the New York Times, Cohen and Krauthammer are columnists for the Washington Post, and Peretz is the longtime editor-in-chief of the New Republic. All might rightly be described as well-known "pundits" of the "chattering class," whereas I . . . well, this is very curious, to say the least.

Barrett's publisher should retitle the book, People That Barrett Brown Doesn't Like (Mainly Jews).

'Ridiculous homophobic . . . nonsense'

A commenter sent me a screen-cap of a post Charles Johnson put up last week, citing Media Matters (click to enlarge):

If you’re tempted to buy into the ridiculous homophobic "fistgate" nonsense currently all over the right wing blogs, trying to take down Obama education czar Kevin Jennings in a smear campaign right out of the McCarthy era, please read this: Anti-gay 'hate group' MassResistance is source for right-wing media attacks on Jennings . . .
Hate groups like Mass Resistance are now being promoted by Jim Hoft and Michelle Malkin and the rest of the right wing blogosphere -- out and out homophobic bigots from the Dark Ages.

Note CJ's pretzel-logic: Because MassResistance has been labeled a "hate group," anything they report should be considered "nonsense," and anyone who cites their reports is a "homophobic bigot." Nevertheless, you should ignore the potential for bias in CJ's left-wing sources: Media Matters and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Oh, and of all people to write about "a smear campaign right out of the McCarthy era" . . Charles Johnson?

CJ to claim that I am attacking him in 3, 2, 1 . . .

UPDATE: Rusty at Jawa Report says:

Look, we're no prudes around here. We like hot lesbian teacher posts as much as any one.

Right, but it's a different thing if you make "hot lesbian teacher posts" part of the public-school curriculum, as GLSEN evidently wants to do. Meanwhile, Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit says:

If you have a nasty sexual fetish and want to teach it to children, don’t worry -- Media Matters is there to defend you!

Media Matters had now done 27 reports in defense of GLSEN. It's like they were trolling for random Google traffic on "fisting" or something.

Web site owner goes too far

A commenter on an earlier post described CJ as "apoplectic," so I went over to look and saw that he was linking coverage of the Roanoke, Va., trial of neo-Nazi leader Bill White:

Leonard Pitts' blood ran cold when he realized he was being targeted by a neo-Nazi leader, the nationally syndicated columnist testified Friday.
"I feel like I have been violated," Pitts told a federal jury in Roanoke.
In June 2007, after the Miami Herald commentator wrote a piece about black-on-white crime, he received an electronic diatribe from William A. White, the self-described leader of a Roanoke-based white supremacy group.
Addressed to "N----r Pitts," the e-mail and subsequent online posts by White listed the columnist's home telephone number and address along with a passage about whites rising up to slaughter blacks.
Pitts said he took the words as a threat. "He is essentially inviting them and daring them to commit violence," Pitts said of the intended message to readers of White's racist Web site.
But in the end, the jury must weigh the testimony of Pitts, whose livelihood is based on the First Amendment, against the rights of a defendant who is seeking the very same constitutional protection.
Lawyers for White say he made no direct threats against Pitts or a half-dozen other targets. If so, then White's words -- however hateful -- fall under the safeguard of free speech.

As I explained three months ago, when I met Bill White in April 1999, he was a 22-year-old self-proclaimed anarchist. Over the course of two or three years, White's Web site, Overthrow.com, changed from being the online home of the "Utopian Anarchist Party" to the (oxymoronic) "Libertarian Socialist Party." He later became a neo-Nazi and moved to Roanoke.

When he lived in the D.C. area in 1999-2000, White was actually a useful source for behind-the-scenes information on, among other things, the anti-globalization protests and the effort of Pat Buchanan's supporters to take over the Reform Party. After the 2000 election, however, White got mixed up with the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi organization run by William Pierce. As I wrote in September:

This was nearly a decade ago, and the timeline is quite fuzzy now, but I remember in particular one night (was it in 2002?) when I met Bill White at the Dubliner bar near Union Station. During that meeting, he made repeated references to his conspiratorial anti-Semitic beliefs, and I tried to tell him, in effect, "Don't go there." But he was determined to do so, and clearly was not interested in being persuaded to the contrary.
Bill stayed in touch for a while by e-mail and occasional phone calls. He went off my radar until, one day, I saw him on TV at some kind of Nazi rally in a brownshirt uniform, doing all the Sieg-Heil stuff. He eventually became entangled in legal trouble and, among other things, appears to have harassed Charles Johnson back when LGF was a conservative blog.

By 2007, White had gone so far off the rails as to threaten a nationally syndicated columnist. Leonard Pitts is a professional journalist. Writing is what he does for a living. The more success you have as a writer, the larger audience you reach, the more likely you are to become the target of hate.

What happened to Pitts very much resembles what happened to Michelle Malkin and Jeff Goldstein when they were targeted by online harassers. It's wrong and I suspect that, despite what Bill White's lawyers say about the First Amendment, the Roanoke jury will find that he crossed the line that separates merely "wrong" and illegal.

The post here which made Charles Johnson "apoplectic" suggeted that he "went off his meds" and was suffering from borderline personality disorder. If CJ is not clinically insane, he is at least emotionally unstable.

Becoming Johnson's particular idée fixe has not been a pleasant experience, but it has been instructive. For some people, life is a zero-sum game in which one person's success can only come at someone else's expense. Frustrated ambition fuels envy, which turns to rage and . . . Well, hate destroys people's souls.

The object of hate may be harmed (being repeatedly labeled a "white supremacist" by Charles Johnson hasn't been exactly what you'd call a career-booster for me) but the hater suffers far worse harm and, if unchecked, will ultimately destroy himself.

Being prosecuted in federal court for making threats (the Roanoke Times has continuing coverage of the trial) may actually be the best thing that ever happened to Bill White, if it causes him to step back and examine his own actions and attitudes. On the other hand, if he can't step outside the selfish zero-sum mentality, if he insists on viewing his experience from a standpoint of self-pity -- the Martyr Complex -- the judge might as well sentence him to life in prison.

As for Charles Johnson, I repeat that I have tried to heed the advice of Andrew Jackson's mother:

"Never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander, assault and battery. Always settle them cases yourself."

Good advice.

Define 'more intelligent,' please

"[F]or some readers this blog is primarily a more intelligent version of Google News."
-- Daily Dish contributor Patrick Appel, reacting to complaints from Andrew Sullivan's particularly dimwitted readers, disappointed to learn that not all Dish posts are actually written by Sully

Scoop Jackson is dead and . . .

. . . David Brooks is an idiot:

[President Obama's] speeches at West Point and Oslo this year are pitch-perfect explications of the liberal internationalist approach. Other Democrats talk tough in a secular way, but Obama’s speeches were thoroughly theological. He talked about the “core struggle of human nature” between love and evil. . . .
Obama has not always gotten this balance right. He misjudged the emotional moment when Iranians were marching in Tehran. But his doctrine is becoming clear. The Oslo speech was the most profound of his presidency, and maybe his life.

Tuesday's column was the most idiotic of David Brooks' week, but the week's not over yet.

Brooks seems to confuse speeches with policy, as if all Obama needs to do is begin a speech, "Fiat lux," and we will all be blinded by the brightness of a thousand suns. Brooks' paean to "the liberal internationalist approach" ignores the sequel to Woodrow Wilson's crusade to "Make the World Safe for Democracy," namely World War II, which ended with half of Europe under the Soviet heel, followed in turn by the bloody stalemate in Korea and the blundering "escalation" of Vietnam.

The fact that Brooks takes Obama at his word is no reason the rest of us should be so foolish. Nevertheless, given the actual consequences of "the liberal internationalist approach," if indeed this is what Obama is about, it shouldn't really be reassuring. Democratic Party foreign policy is not necessarily a straight line from Versailles through Yalta to the scene of helicopters rescuing Americans from the roof of the Saigon embassy, but it's a familar route nonetheless.

The Zeitgeist-sniffing Brooks shifts like the wind, yet is stubborn about exactly one thing, his refusal to acknowledge that liberals generally make a botch of whatever policy they influence. Brooks has probably been too busy admiring the crease of the president's pants-leg to notice anything else.

'The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy'

by Smitty

...to quote Sid Meier from the game Civ IV. Graphically depicted by Bob Gorrell:

See you at the Code Red rally today. (h/t Insty)

'Frankly, my dear . . '

Rhett Butler still doesn't give a damn, which is why women can't resist him, as I explain in my latest column for The American Spectator:

While those around him scrupulously obey the superficial social conventions of the age, Rhett scoffs at his own disrepute and brashly invites scandal, as when he shocks Atlanta society by bidding $150 for the honor of dancing with the recently widowed Scarlett. And while Ashley is torn by doubt, Rhett is the embodiment of decisive certainty.
He has a way with the ladies, but Rhett is indisputably a man's man. When his blunt skepticism toward the South's prospects in the impending war enrages the touchy pride of his hosts in the drawing room at Twelve Oaks, Rhett is insulted by young Charles Hamilton, but declines the challenge. "I apologize again for all my shortcomings," Rhett says as he excuses himself. The hot-tempered Hamilton imputes this to cowardice -- "He refused to fight!" -- only to be informed by Ashley that Butler is a notoriously deadly duelist, "one of the best shots in the country."
In an agrarian antebellum society obsessed with the noble ideals of ancient chivalry, Rhett's attitudes are shockingly modern. He is a calculating capitalist, shamelessly professing his pursuit of self-interest. When Scarlett reproaches him for doubting the Confederate cause, Butler memorably retorts, "I believe in Rhett Butler. He's the only cause I know." . . .

Read the whole scandalous thing, which doesn't shy away from the accusations of raaaaacism that plague Gone With The Wind today -- the 70th anniversary of the film's premiere in my native Atlanta.

Turner Classic Movies will show GWTW tonight at 8 p.m. ET. (You can read Washington Times film critic Gary Arnold's discussion of the TCM broadcast and the new 70th Anniversary Collector's DVD version.) Most media will either ignore this anniversary or else view it through a politically correct prism. ABC News airhead Ashley Hall managed to get Australian film-studies professor Deb Verhoeven to share this slice of feminist idiocy:

"Some people see the film and see an independent woman's struggle and her ultimate resilience and another person sitting next to them will see a terrible story about sexual subjugation."

Although you need subjugating badly, Professor Verhoeven. That's what's wrong with you. You should be subjugated, and often, and by someone who knows how.

Rhett Butler's offenses to feminism are extreme -- and extremely ironic, considering that he was created by a quite modern career woman, Margaret Mitchell, who remains the best-selling female writer of all time. It's easy to imagine Rhett laughing at feminist accusations of misogyny, just as he would laugh at the accusation of racism.

Fear and Self-Loathing
Coincidentally enough, I had a long phone conversation yesterday with Juliette "Baldilocks" Ochieng, the Luo-American blogger who asked her white readers why they were so afraid of being labelled "racist," and was surprised by the response:

I knew that there was fear out there, but I didn't comprehend the breadth of it.

As I told Juliette, there are both practical and emotional motives for this widespread fear. Practically, in the age of affirmative action and equal-opportunity employment law, the mere suspicion of "racism" can be a career-killer for anyone with ambitions of climbing the corporate ladder. Look at how Larry Summers' academic career was destroyed after he offended the feminists at Harvard, and then try to imagine what would have happened if he had similarly offended the racial grievance-mongers.

Vicious race hustlers who plague America's universities are a major reason an absurd flinch-reaction to the "racist" label is so commonplace among our educated elite. Just ask Sergio Gor what it was like when left-wingers at George Washington University perpetrated an anti-Muslim hate hoax against the campus chapter of Young America's Foundation. Or ask YAF's Jason Mattera about the reaction to his "whites-only scholarship" protest at Roger Williams University.

The cringing fearfulness Shelby Steele describes in his book White Guilt has to be "carefully taught" -- to borrow with obvious irony the famous lyrics from South Pacific -- and our educational system now teaches white guilt as fanatically as Nazi schools taught Aryan superiority in the 1930s.

Acknowledgement of racial guilt is now de rigueur among white bien-pensants who, if we may continue this impromptu French lesson, are required to prove themselves amis des noirs if they wish to preserve their amour propre.

Terrorized by the very real risk of denunciation and ostracism if they dispute the regnant racial orthodoxy, whites internalize this politically correct fear. As is often the case when fear is hidden in the heart, however, they seek to resolve the inevitable cognitive dissonance by projecting their inner angst onto scapegoats.

Whited Sepulchres
In recent years I've noticed that those who most relentlessly charge others with racism are white people who, by pointing the accusing finger, seek to make a public display of their own colorblind virtue:

Not only am I not a racist, but I am such an enlightened and courageous crusader against racism as to be able to detect the hidden hate of my fellow whites and to expose and fearlessly denounce it. Admire me!

To these self-righteous hypocrites, we may be tempted to reply with the two most famous words of Rahm Emanuel (hint: the second word is "you"), but instead we should remind them what Jesus said of their predecessors:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

"Whited sepulchres," indeed. They tithe the mint and cumin of racial self-righteousness, and when they make a proselyte, he is "twofold more the child of hell." (Sharmuta and Killgore Trout come to mind here.) They react with predictable fury toward anyone who calls them out for their pharisaical fraudulence, as the ugly reality of their dishonest hypocrisy contradicts the virtuous reputation they covet.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools

Read the whole thing, as the bloggers say. And then please read the rest of my American Spectator column about Rhett Butler, who knew how to make the most of a bad reputation.

Speaking of making the most of such things, I once more wish to thank readers who have already hit the tip jar to help send me to Pasadena for Alabama's Jan. 7 national championship game. (Howdy, Texas A&M fans. Go Aggies!) Remember, we need to average $70 a day for the next three weeks to do this, so that perhaps I can pay chivalrous respect to Baldilocks (and also Little Miss Attila) in person.

Update: (Smitty) Geller 'lanch!

'Emotionally driven . . . not really rational'

Guess who used that phrase?

Blogging was originally an alternative to mainstream media, but now it's kind of been dominated, especially on the right, by people who are emotionally driven, and not very rational about a lot of things.

It's Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, in the most unintentionally hilarious interview evah!

Actually, it had sort of been brewing in my subconscious for a long, long time. . . .

(Ever since he went off his meds.)

Something just triggered it off, I don't know what it was. . . .

(He ran out of commenters to ban.)

I actually fought against being classified as a right-wing blog for a long time. . . .

(He also fought being classified as a textbook case of borderline personality disorder, with less success.)

I began to read everything I could get my hands on about [global warming]. Scientific journals, books. And the evidence just piled up and piled up, until I could no longer be a denier. . . .

(CJ's next subject of intense study? Seppuku.)

What started the break for me was when I realized a lot of the right wing bloggers, the so-called anti-jihad bloggers, were making alliances with groups, in Europe, that I consider to have fascist roots.

("Pamela Geller's breasts taunted me!")

I wish that more bloggers would start to think critically about what they're writing.

BWAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHA! Excuse me while I wipe the coffee off my laptop keyboard, Charles, but you couldn't earn a living as a writer if your life depended on it. And is there any blogger less capable of critical thinking than you? By comparsion, Andrew Sullivan is the soul of self-aware rationality.