Is Rush racist?

Every conservative discovers, sooner or later, that to criticize liberal ideas is to be adjudged guilty of some "-ism" or diagnosed with a "phobia." Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of race.

Steve Benen has one of those "a-ha!" moments with a segment of a recent Rush Limbaugh monologue:

"The [economic] deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps. But in the Oval Office of the White House none of this is a problem. This is the objective. The objective is unemployment. The objective is more food stamp benefits. The objective is more unemployment benefits. The objective is an expanding welfare state. And the objective is to take the nation's wealth and return to it to the nation's quote, 'rightful owners.' Think reparations. Think forced reparations here if you want to understand what actually is going on."

RAAAAACISM! (Remember, bloggers, there are five A's in "RAAAAACISM!" Some of you have been slacking off and trying to get by with four.) Benen pronounces Limbaugh's suggestion "nauseating," but as always, we must ask the question, "Is Rush right?"

Would any honest "progressive" deny that the aims of their redistributionist economic program -- to tax the evil "rich" for the benefit of the sainted "poor," in Robin Hood fashion -- are motivated by notions of "social justice"?

Is it not a fundamental tenet of this "social justice" ideology that the wealthy gain their riches by the exploitation and oppression of the poor? And is it not furthermore true that, vis-a-vis the racial aspect of "social justice," progressives believe that black people have been especially victimized by capitalist greed?

From such a chain of premises, it follows that a policy that purposefully hinders the private free-market economy and expands government entitlement programs -- the "Cloward-Piven Strategy," as it has been called -- is to some degree intended by the authors of the policy as "forced reparations," just like Rush says.

In other words, is Limbaugh being denounced as a racist merely for describing this policy accurately?

In The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell describes how liberals employ "mascots" and "targets" to advance their policy aims. By positioning themselves as defenders of "mascots," liberals set a rhetorical trap whereby any attack on their policies is denounced as an attack on the (allegedly) victimized and downtrodden people whom those policies are supposed to benefit. Ergo, anyone who criticizes the cost of Medicare is accused of wishing to deprive the elderly of health care, and anyone who criticizes affirmative action is accused of hating women and minorities.

The problem, of course, is that this prevents rational discussion of policy. Limbaugh would surely argue that black people would benefit more from a flourishing private-sector economy -- which offers them jobs -- than they would benefit from an expanding program of entitlements, which offers them only government handouts.

Furthermore, we have seen that the "Cloward-Pivens Strategy" brings disastrous results for the poor people its architects claim to care so much about. Go read Fred Siegel's The Future Once Happened Here if you want to see how this kind of liberal policy has devastated America's great cities and brought misery to the urban poor.

If liberal policy is demonstrably bad for black people -- as Limbaugh, Sowell and Siegel would argue -- then in what sense is it "racist" to oppose liberalism? In fact, given the clearly evident socio-economic disaster inflicted on the black community by decades of liberal policy, is it not liberals themselves who ought to be attempting to defend themselves against such accusations?

The real problem with modern liberalism is the concept of "social justice." As Friedrich Hayek explained, "social justice" is a mirage, a will-o'-th'-wisp that, however enthusiastically pursued, can never be achieved. And "social justice" harms those it aims to help, in part because it destroys the only legal and economic system -- free-market capitalism -- wherein the downtrodden have ever been able to improve their fortunes to any great degree.

The great irony of all this is that, even if you favor government aid to the poor -- or perhaps, especially if you favor such aid -- the health of the free-market economy should be paramount in your considerations.

After all, government can't conjure money out of thin air. Ultimately, government can only spend on aid to the poor what it takes from the private economy in taxes. So if liberals pursue policies that harm the private economy, they're killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. (Anybody tried applying for food stamps, health care or student loans in Zimbabwe lately?)

So the accusation of "racism" against Rush Limbaugh is transparently false, its entire rhetorical basis being the liberal conceit that only mala fides (bad faith) can motivate opposition to liberalism.

Economics is not a popularity contest

Yesterday I posted about the idiocy of NRSC endorsing Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in the Senate race against conservative Marco Rubio.

Greg Sargent, who has apparently gone from Talking Points Media to a Washington Post site, gets all snarky about Rubio's first TV ad:

Another mark of just how far to the right the GOP has moved:Barely moments after the news broke that Governor and stimulus-supporter Charlie Crist has entered the Florida GOP primary, his conservative opponent already has a new ad attacking him -- with an image of President Obama, whose performance is supported by strong majorities and by Independents. . . .
It isn’t every day that a politician seeks to turn a race into a referendum on his opponent’s support for a President with an approval rating in the 60s, but these aren’t ordinary times for today’s GOP.

Let me see if I can explain what Greg Sargent evidently doesn't understand. It doesn't matter how popular Obama or his policies are, if his policies bring disaster. Remember how high Bush's numbers were in 2002?

At this point, Obama is popular for being Not Bush. But there is a sell-by date on that commodity, and I'm betting that the Not Bush brand won't have much value on the first Tuesday in November 2010.

The biggest problem Obama will face going forward is that the deficit-spending Keynesian approach that he and the Democrats have embraced cannot produce recovery. It never has and it never will. It Won't Work and The Fundamentals Still Suck.

Greg, try to wrap your mind around what Megan McArdle is telling you about the bond market. And I'd say Megan is a wee bit on the optimistic side. After all, with trillions of dollars in new government debt soaking up so much scarce capital, what will the resulting shortage of private credit do to the already weak housing market? Unemployment is already near nine percent and will not decline soon, and without new buyers entering the market, the mortgage-default problem will likely get much worse in the near future.

None of these economic problems (and I've merely scratched the surface) can be solved by pointing to Obama's poll numbers. As it becomes evident that Obama's policies are making matters worse, that there is no magic to Hope, those poll numbers will decline, and being seen as associated with Obama's policies will be political poison.

Snark all you want. Crist is a "dead man walking" politically speaking, and Rubio is making the smart bet by vocally opposing Obamanomics.

Oh, and not incidentally, remember that promise about "tax cuts" for everybody earning less than $250,000 a year? Well, now we have the details. Just a big fat lie:

40% of the value of new "tax cuts for families" is actually new spending, not new tax cuts. . . .
Families with taxable income of $230,000 and individuals with taxable income of $190,000 will see their income tax rate rise. . . .
By limiting tax breaks for the production of domestic energy and a raft of other energy tax hikes, the Obama budget blueprint will raise American families’ energy bills by $105 billion over the next decade. . . .
Small businesses will shed jobs to pay for the higher small business tax rates. The Obama budget blueprint calls for the top tax rate to climb from 35% to 39.6%, and for the second-highest rate to climb from 33% to 36%. . . . These tax rate hikes would be devastating for small businesses, which pay taxes on their owners’ tax forms. $2 out of $3 in small business profits pay taxes at these tax rates.

Good-bye, Hope! Hello, Change!

UPDATE: Thanks to Michelle Malkin for reminding us that the recession has accelerated the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare.

Like the lady said, the fundamentals suck. And, as Jimmie Bise reminds us, the Obama administration is "creating jobs" in much the same way Jayson Blair "reported news" -- they're just making stuff up.

Paglia: say the 'C' word!

by Smitty

Camille Paglia is never a bore, but she, as so many do, misses the obvious:

Troubled by the increasing rancor of political debate in the U.S., I watched a rented copy of Seven Days in May last week. Its paranoid mood, partly created by Jerry Goldsmith's eerie, minimalist score, captured exactly what I have been sensing lately. There is something dangerous afoot -- an alienation that can easily morph into extremism. With the national Republican party in disarray, an argument is solidifying among grass-roots conservatives: Liberals, who are now in power in Washington, hate America and want to dismantle its foundational institutions and liberties, including capitalism and private property. Liberals are rootless internationalists who cravenly appease those who want to kill us. The primary principle of conservatives, on the other hand, is love of country, for which they are willing to sacrifice and die. America's identity was forged by Christian faith and our Founding Fathers, to whose prudent and unerring 18th-century worldview we must return.

In a harried, fragmented, media-addled time, there is an invigorating simplicity to this political fundamentalism. It is comforting to hold fast to hallowed values, to defend tradition against the slackness of relativism and hedonism. But when the tone darkens toward a rhetoric of purgation and annihilation, there is reason for alarm. Two days after watching "Seven Days in May," I was utterly horrified to hear Dallas-based talk show host Mark Davis, subbing for Rush Limbaugh, laughingly and approvingly read a passage from a Dallas magazine article by CBS sportscaster David Feherty claiming that "any U.S. soldier," given a gun with two bullets and stuck in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, would use both bullets on Pelosi and strangle the other two.

How have we come to this pass in America where the assassination of top government officials is fodder for snide jokes on national radio? Davis (who is obviously a glib horse's ass) did this stunt very emphatically at a news break at the top of the first hour. It was from there that the Dallas magazine story was evidently picked up by liberal Web sites and disseminated, pressuring CBS to denounce Feherty, who made a public apology. The gravity of this case was unfortunately overshadowed by feisty comedian Wanda Sykes' clumsy jibes at Rush Limbaugh the next night at the Washington Correspondents Dinner. Sykes (who is usually hilarious) was rushed and inept, embarrassing herself and her hosts. But what Mark Davis did, in irresponsibly broadcasting Feherty's vile fantasy, was an inflammatory political act that could goad susceptible minds down the dark road toward "Seven Days in May."

"Increasing rancor", Camille? Having just finished reading America's Constitution: A Biography, I can safely assert that there is legitimate, dispassionate concern amongst "We the People" about the direction that the country has taken. This is not to say that your emotional characterization of the problem is wholly inaccurate. However, what is sadly absent from your hormonal analysis is the word "Constitution". Modern Liberalism seems wholly rooted in the present tense. Neglectful of history, except as a weapon against the opposition. Ignorant of the future, except where it can be used to mine fear and guilt (medical costs, anthropogenic global warming).

We should instead see "an invigorating simplicity to this political fundamentalism" rather than concern for the foundation and historical direction of the country. Are you sure, Ms. Paglia, that there is no wisdom in "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." (Amendment 10) Heeding that Amendment, however bereft of nuance, would have been significantly cheaper than the Community Reinvestment Act. Or did I miss something, Oh Condescending One?

The Pelosi-Reid line bit, besides the sad attempt at apologizing for the inexcusable (Sykes), is more glaring in its omission of another movie: Death of a President. Now, I haven't seen DOAP or SDIM, but it seems obvious to me that, unless you have a modern liberal non-command of proportion, that a movie wherein the sitting president gets snuffed might be more destabilizing than a tasteless joke about The Doltish Duo.

So, Camille, can we expect you at a Tea Party on 04 July? Are you afraid to circulate amongst "just folks"? Would your ivory tower crumble to confront the greatness of the country in its simple, positive, Constitutional, laughing-at-the-DC-idiots form? What if, for all their lack of polysyllabic locution, the common people are packing greater wisdom than you?

Basic HTML code for bloggers

I'm currently helping someone learn to blog, and this is a post to explain that learning a few simple HTML commands is very useful in blogging.

Why? Because the "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) interface doesn't always give an exact rendition of what the page will look like. Sometimes the coding gets screwed up, and if you don't know how to fix the code, the page will look like crap. Every blog software has an "edit HTML" that lets you go in and alter the code yourself. Eventually, every blogger has to learn to use HTML.

Don't be intimidated by thinking, "Oh, that's high-tech geek stuff. I don't know what I'm doing. What if I screw up?" The answer is, if you screw up, you'll go back and fix it. It ain't rocket science, and your computer is not going to blow up because you used the wrong code on your blog. Besides, nobody's reading your blog yet. So relax.

The Bare Bones Guide to HTML is a good place to start. Most of those codes you don't need to know. Basically you need bold, italic, "link to something," blockquote, paragraph and line break. But go ahead and print the whole thing out, staple the pages together, and keep it handy.

Those treacherous bastards!NRSC to endorse Charlie Crist?

Politico reports that the recto-cranial inversion cases at GOP-HQ are planning another atavistic blunder:

Even as Gov. Charlie Crist comes under fire from Florida conservatives, he will be getting some important political backing today as he announces that he’s running for the Senate in Florida.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee will be endorsing Crist, according to a senior Hill operative, marking the first time it has taken sides (for a non-incumbent) in a competitive GOP primary this election cycle.

(Via Memeorandum.) Why would any conservative ever send another dime to the NRSC after this? Marco Rubio is the conservative in that primary, and it was Charlie Crist whose endorsement of John McCain help deliver Florida to that dingbat loser.

To hell with Charlie Crist and to hell with the NRSC. Go give some money to Marco Rubio.

UPDATE: At AmSpecBlog, I quote the chairman of the Conservative Republican Alliance:

"In case the NRSC forgot, it was Governor Crist that openly supported the Obama 'stimulus' plan, and gave the plan political cover here in Florida," CRA chairman Javier Manjarres said in a press release. "Why does the NRSC issue an endorsement without even waiting to find out where the respective candidates stand on the issues?"

Here's Marco Rubio's first ad hitting Crist:

UPDATE II: Mitch McConnell endorses Crist, prompting John Hawkins to ask:

Can endorsements from Kathleen Parker and Colin Powell be far behind at this point?

Hawkins is calling for Cornyn's resignation as NRSC chairman. Just don't send 'em money, whatever you do.

UPDATE III: Oh, good: Now Ed Morrissey hates me, too.

UPDATE IV: Lots more negative reaction from conservatives, including Erick Erickson of Red State, who calls our attention to Dan McLaughlin's Red State blog post, "Charlie Crist picks a fight Republicans don't need."

Dan Riehl is more approving, but perhaps he hasn't studied the situation in Florida in the detail McLaughlin has. Basically, the old wobbly moderate, Crist, is stepping on the career of the promising Latino conservative, Rubio. It's the exact opposite of what we need. It's a triple disaster: Crist will forego a reasonably safe re-election bid as governor, to waste NRSC money running for an iffy Senate seat, creating an expensive GOP primary in the governor's race. It's just bad basic politics, all the way around, and only an idiot like Cornyn could think this was a smart move for the NRSC.

Jimmie Bise Jr. at Sundries Shack doesn't want any of what John Cornyn is smoking.

Fortune Favors the Bold

Inspired by the musings of a new-minted ex-Democrat at The American Thinker, I wrote a little bit for the American Spectator blog:

A projected federal deficit of $1.8 trillion, borrowing 46 cents for every dollar they spend. The Secretary of Heath and Human Services announces she'll save $2 trillion in health care costs, but the numbers don't add up. It's mere "political theater," as Megan McArdle says. The "Underpants Gnome" approach. There are only two things standing in the way of health care reform, says Cato's Michael F. Cannon: Math and politics. Obama and the Democrats may have the political power, but they can't overcome the math problem.

Everybody on the Right nowadays is talking about how to fix the problems of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. The problem with a lot of this talk is that most people on the Right have been Republican all their lives. They don't have the experience of becoming an ex-Democrat, so they don't understand what kind of messages cause such conversions, and they get it all wrong.

The GOP's problem is not that it is too "extreme" or "mean-spirited." There is no need to yield ground on social issues, global warming, health care or anything else. The Republican Party elected as president George W. Bush who, as Bruce Bartlett extensively documented, was never really a conservative. The GOP then nominated John McCain -- short, old, grumpy and bald -- who was even less of a conservative than Bush.

Yet when this abandonment of sturdy principle yielded the inevitable electoral disaster, what did the likes of David Brooks tell you? "Blame conservatives!" But what did I tell you?

Conservatives who sought to prevent McCain's nomination cannot be blamed for his defeat. And it is his defeat, not yours.
Ideologues tend to see election results in ideological terms. Right now, "progressives" are congratulating themselves on the triumph of progressivism. But Obama will be the next president because millions of non-ideological "swing" voters -- those I call the Ordinary Americans -- saw him as the superior candidate. A vote for him was not, in the eyes of those key voters, an endorsement of any ideology. . . .
Good candidates win elections, and bad candidates lose. John McCain was a bad candidate and he lost. Those who try to put an ideological spin on this election will miss that basic point.

With the GOP "brand" at low ebb, reaping the harvest of ex-Democrats is crucial now. And that harvest will not be reaped by fearful, defensive RINO squishes peddling an apologetic message of moderation: "We're Republicans, but we're not really so bad. Please don't hate us, OK?"

That wasn't the message that made me an ex-Democrat in the 1990s. It was the economics, stupid. Whatever the spark that causes someone to become disaffected with the Democrats (and most Democrats are Democrats because, like me, they inherited their parents' partisan loyalties), the ultimate weakness of the Democratic Party is that its agenda flunks the test of basic economics.

This bold truth is why Meltdown is a bestseller, why sales of Atlas Shrugged are soaring and why you're hearing a lot more people talking about Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. The Democrats are in charge, the numbers don't add up, we're heading toward a stagflation trap, people are starting to figure out that It Won't Work, and they're seeking answers.

The answer is not those "new ideas" that people keep telling us the Republican Party needs. No, what the GOP needs is some very old ideas: Limited government and economic freedom.

The GOP also needs something else: Courage. Without the courage to speak boldly in favor of solid political and economic principles, all else is in vain.

The pathetic whining of a spoiled brat like Meghan McCain, the intellectual elitism of Ross Douthat -- these are of no use to the conservative cause in this crisis. We need to "cowboy up," mustering the courage to speak plain truth, in the confidence that there are still enough Americans with the good sense to prefer truth to lies.

Nothing succeeds like success. The Tea Party movement succeeded in bringing hundreds of thousands together on April 15, and plans to bring that success to the nation's capital on Sept. 12 for the Taxpayer March On Washington. That's 120 days from today. What are you doing to make it a success?

Let the elitists and the moderates keep wringing their hands and whining. Conservatives need the courage to speak the truth, and speak it boldly, because fortune favors the bold.

UPDATE: In reaction to the talk of Gary Sinise as a GOP leader, Michelle Malkin says:

Mimicking the Left's idolatry isn't the path to GOP salvation. It's the path to permanent ruin.
The rebranders have it ass-backwards. The key isn’t rebranding the GOP. It’s rebranding Obama.

Not to argue with The Boss, but:

• A) It is important in politics to have attractive, articulate candidates.
• B) I've heard very good things about Sinise from Andrew Breitbart.

That doesn't mean Sinise is The Real Deal, or that Nicolle Wallace has a freaking clue. And MM is certainly right that the "rebranders" are strategically mistaken about the nature of the GOP's problem. But having sharp candidates doesn't hurt. I'm thinking Marco Rubio is looking pretty sharp right now.

PREVIOUSLY:
3/21: Patterico: 'The final word'?
2/28: Tea Parties, Defeatism and Wolverines
2/23: Rick Moran takes counsel of his fears

Can we talk about stereotypes?

"It's time for you to find someplace new to recruit your henchmen. We're getting back to our business of beauty," says Miss California USA pageant direct Keith Lewis, setting the gay rights cause back at least 20 years with his portrayal of the vicious, catty drama queen stereotype.

Via Townhall, where Greg Hengler says that Lewis is "openly gay," which is a term of art in such a case. I mean, some guys are gay and you'd never know unless they told you. But Lewis? It's like he's emitting a gaydar homing beacon or something.

Gay Patriot notes Lewis's over-the-top bitch act:

Why must he so attack Maggie Gallagher? And why do so many gay lefties use the word "shame" to describe the actions of their ideological adversaries? . . . Why can't these people show some class, some grace, in confronting their adversaries? Why must they adopt so harsh a tone and so vitriolic a vocabulary?"

It's who they are: Angry at the world, externalizing their own unhappiness by projecting it on scapegoats. Lewis's attack on Maggie Gallagher grates because it is a non sequitur. In fact, the whole press conference was a non sequitur, as far as any official business of the Miss Calfornia USA pageant was concerned.

This was Lewis, the preening narcissist, venting his personal rage against someone (Gallagher) he's identified as The Enemy, inflated in his mind as the dehumanized embodiment of his every disappointment and of everyone who has ever disapproved of him.

However, such is the Movement mentality -- if you've ever read Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, you understand -- that all of Lewis's comrades will congratulate him: "Yeah! You sure showed her!" The viciousness is reinforced by this echo-chamber effect.

Meanwhile, well-meaning people will watch the video and say to themselves, "What was that about?"

UPDATE: BTW, if you actually know Maggie Gallagher, you know she's hardly the Evil Hate Monster of left-wing imagination. If it is true -- as Keith Lewis says -- that a large share of the contributions to the National Organization for Marriage goes for Gallagher's salary, benefits and expenses, then that is surely with the knowledge, and perhap by design, of her supporters.

Her organization is a small one, and if she had a larger budget, then a smaller share of the contributions would be required for her salary. (Question: What is David Brock's salary at Media Matters? What is the budget of Media Matters?) John Hawkins of Right Wing News recently interviewed Gallagher:

[L]ook at what they're doing to Carrie. Okay, I mean look at what they're doing to a nice girl. She's a beauty pageant contestant. All she did was say when asked, "Hey I think marriage should be between a man and woman," and they're reacting and dumping on her and trying to destroy her as if she had said something shameful and controversial.
So what we need to learn from Carrie is that they're dumping on people who believe that marriage means a man and a woman because they don't want to debate the consequences of gay marriage. They don't want you to think about what it means when your government adopts a law that says you're like a bigot if you disagree with the government's definition of marriage.

Bingo. The gay left's eruptions of screaming intolerance are not accidental. As I keep trying to explain, the gay-rights movement is egalitarian, not libertarian, and that is an important distinction. Egalitarianism, which aims to re-arrange society so as to produce "social justice," inherently involves coercion, and therefore inevitably requires that the government assume vast power over the lives of the ordinary citizen.

It is this egalitarian appetite for power that produces the "Gay Rights, Gay Rage" reaction that we see in the reaction to Carrie Prejean. Those who don't understand the power dynamic of politics believe that it is possible to reach some compromise with egalitarianism. This belief is a fundmental error.

George Orwell, a socialist, wrote his two great novels, Animal Farm and 1984, after his experiences in the Spanish Civil War awakened him to the dishonesty and viciousness of Soviet communism. (Soviet-trained commissars played a key role in organizing the anti-Falangist resistance in Spain.) But Orwell died at age 46, and never made the next step beyond recognizing the evil of totalitarian tactics to understanding that such tactics are implicit in the egalitarian ideology of socialism.

This is why Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom is so important. Hayek understood that the egalitarian Left's promise of "social justice" is a lie, and that the Left's militant demands on the so-called "issues of the day" are mere ploys, tactical means to the strategic end: Destruction of the free society. If you don't understand this, if you think that the same-sex marriage argument is merely about being nice to gay people, then you have been deceived.

PREVIOUSLY: Latest 'Carrie Prejean Nude' News Update.

How to get a million hits, etc.

"Personally, I think the more topless photos, the better. But as a straight male, what do I know about beauty pageants?"
-- Professor Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

Video: Ann Coulter does 'Red Eye'

Chairman Ann says:

"This is a pageant in which the women are asked to strut in bikinis . . . It is owned by a well-known, renowned, open, serial adulterer, Donald Trump. It is judged by sodomites. And they are claiming they are shocked to see the sight of a 17-year-old girl's back."

'They said they were Democrats first'

by Smitty (hat tip: TOTUS blog)

ABC contributor George Will suggested former Sen. John Edwards was irresponsible to campaign for the Democratic Party nomination.
"Think about what a tragedy it would have been if he had won?" Will said.

Tragedy? Greek? The Book of Job? The current economy?

Several of [Edward's staffers] had gotten together and devised a "doomsday" strategy of sorts.
Basically, if it looked like Edwards was going to win the Democratic Party nomination, they were going to sabotage his campaign, several former Edwards' staffers have told me.
They said they were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign.

Look, if we're going to continue slouching The Road to Serfdom, then what difference does it make which stuffed shirt gets the credit/blame? Oh, right: non-worshippers of the POTUS are racist. OK, modulo the nebulous DNA difference, again: what's the difference?

'Democrats first' is as good as 'Republicans first'. How about 'Constitution first', ye losers?

I guess you know this means WAR, Attila?

On the recent collapse of Conde Nast's super-upscale business magazine Portfolio, Little Miss Attila approvingly quotes Virginia Postrel:

Portfolio worked -- for a while -- as an advertising vehicle, but it never gave readers a reason to care. And from what little I know from the inside, the stuff about editing the life (and glamour) out of articles is entirely true. Newspaper training isn't the ideal background for magazine editors.

Attila then adds her own snark about people from "a newspaper background," as if our inferiority were a self-evident fact known to everyone in the literary racket. Of all the insults I have to bear -- Michael Gerson is a twice-weekly columnist! -- this little put-down is just too damned much.

Postrel is the former editor of Reason, and her dig at "newspaper training" may be a backhanded jab at current Reason editor Matt Welch, formerly of the L.A. Times. The Gawker item Postrel links in blaming "newspaper training" for the demise of Portfolio is by former researcher/staff writer Paul Smalera, who aims his ire at the magazine's top editor:

[Smalera's colleagues'] resumes were dotted with long-term assignments from Time, The New Yorker, Fortune, The New York Times and other A-list publications. The most popular being the Wall Street Journal, the former home of editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman and much of her top staff.

OK, so Portfolio was directed by a former Wall Street Journal editor who brought a lot of Journal staffers along with her. So what? David Brooks, whom I loathe, used to work at the Journal. That coincidence is not even an indictment of the Journal, much less an indictment of everyone in the newspaper industry. What is Smalera's specific grievance against Lipman?

But if you have to say one thing about the failure of Lipman to create a successful magazine, it would be that dissent was not brooked by her. Not ever. . . .
When others at the magazine tried to inject their talents into the dialogue by questioning the wisdom of certain articles, certain cover choices, word choices, headlines, etc., Lipman was not interested in hearing from them if their ideas about those things differed from hers. . . . When Lipman took any advice at all, it usually came from the top deputies she brought with her from the Journal. Yet despite her tight grip on the magazine's editorial content, there was the obvious scattershot, disconnected mix of stories and covers, and the pendulum swung wildly from issue to issue. Lipman's means of survival and ascension at the Journal soon became clear with firings and departures and freeze outs at Portfolio: they had less to do with editorial acumen and more to do with knowing how to squash revolutions and power plays.

OK, fine. Lipman was a dictatorial ogre who surrounded herself with favored cronies, refused to listen to advice or suggestions from anyone else, and generally tyrannized the workforce. Let me see a show of hands if the same general description fits your boss.

Everyone? That's what I thought. In the immortal words of Elvis Costello:

Welcome to the working week.
I know it doesn't thrill you.
I hope it doesn't kill you.

Life sucks. Oh, and did I mention that I've got ties older than Paul Smalera?

I was a computer geek for several long years after college, and though I enjoyed it, it wasn't my calling. So I moved to New York and decided to become a journalist. . . . After writing some freelance articles and getting a foot in the door at another Condé Nast magazine, I found my way to Portfolio.

Right. The starry-eyed ex-geek moves to New York to be a journalist, because you can't be a journalist anywhere else except the most expensive city on the planet. And by age 30, or whatever, he knows everything there is to know about journalism, so that he is now qualified to tell us:

Readers got some articles written by really good writers who could've become A-listers, had their articles not been edited within an inch of their lives and rewritten mercilessly, as if not by magazine editors but rewrite men at the New York Post City Desk. They got some articles chock full of good raw reporting that should've been re-worked into something readable by those same rewrite happy editors. And they got some utter crap, written by hacks that should've never been there to begin with.
As for me, like a lot of the younger writers there, I was never really able to do much damage, or earn much praise. There were easily half a dozen writers under 30 there whose role was to be seen and not heard. Despite our hustling and trying to curry favor with our editors, in the hopes they could sell us to Lipman, we were up against the faceless contract contributors for space, and we -- especially me -- usually lost that battle.

Alas, Paul Smalera, God's gift to journalism! His talents unrecognized, aced out by "hacks" and "faceless contract contributors," his brilliant work editorially abused by wretched "rewrite men" who did not appreciate his every golden adverb.

Maybe everything Smalera writes about Lipman's blunders is true. But her most glaring blunder, I would suggest, was hiring punks like Smalera. If arrogance were talent, he'd have already won a Pulitzer or two. His article on "How Google Works," for example, obviously would have been an instant classic had it not be hacked to pieces by the editors.

The classic, though, is Smalera's dishy little tell-all about Portfolio which, in fact, tells us more about Smalera than it tells us about anything. His conclusion:

Essentially, it's hard to take principled stands when you work pretty much at the beneficence of a billionaire. And if you're wondering what's wrong with journalism these days, that's pretty much it.

Hey, I've got an idea: Let's start a business magazine for readers who resent rich people!

If Little Miss Attila wishes to indict those of us from "a newspaper background," she'll need a better witness than a dime-a-dozen punk like Smalera.

UPDATE: Does my vendetta against Smalera seem a tad personal, considering I don't know him from Adam's housecat? Trust me, I know the type: The junior staffer whose ambitions are more literary than journalistic, who thinks himself unduly burdened by the task of actually finding some news to report, who imagines that writing is superior to mere reporting -- a dime a dozen, like I say.

You run into this artsy-fartsy literary type too much in the news racket. They saw something in a movie (All The President's Men) or on TV (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) or read a magazine article about journalism and said to themselves, "I want to do that!"

What they didn't want to do was sit through a school-board meeting or write up a softball tournament or do any of the other crappy little jobs that (a) were the traditional training ground of journalists, and (b) are necessary to the production of a newspaper.

Which is to say, they don't want to pay their dues. Because they're arrogant punks. They don't want to work at a job, they want a "career," something glorious and wonderful like what they saw in the movies. If you ever hire somebody like that, they'll sit around brooding about how damned unappreciated they are, and how this work they're asked to do is beneath their talents, and they'll whine, whine, whine.

The only way to deal with such people is rudely. You're not going to alert them to the yawning gap between their skill and their ambition by talking nicely to them. Grab 'em by the scruff of the neck, get in their face, and tell 'em to shape up or find a new line of work.

Reality check, Paul Smalera: You suck.

UPDATE: Pouring salt in the wound left by Attila's insult, Smitty e-mailed me a link to this:

Dan Baum was a staff writer for The New Yorker for a time . . .
My gig was a straight dollars-for-words arrangement: 30,000 words a year for $90,000.

Nice work if you can get it. I can (and do) produce far more than 30,000 words in a month. My usual pace of original composition is about 400 words an hour, and I have never had a problem knocking out a reported 1,000-word news-feature in a single day, to wit. But the "No Conservatives Need Apply" sign hangs above the door at the New Yorker, so somebody else will have to do that $3-a-word work, I suppose.

Hewitt: Arnie gets to stand and deliver

by Smitty
Arnie gets to stand and deliver on the 19th:

If the tax hikes are rejected by large margins next week, the country's political elite ought to study that result closely. Despite huge spending margins and despite a thin veneer of bipartisanship, the tax hike gang is getting thumped because the electorate is saying --no, shouting-- "Enough!"
Everyone has a story of a state or county employee friend who is retiring at 55 with a guaranteed life pension of $75,000 or more plus gold-plated medical benefits. Almost everyone knows that massive amounts of money have flowed into Los Angeles public schools and still half of the kids drop out. Majorities realize that businesses don't have to operate here, and that places like Texas may lack the Rose Parade but let you grow a business and keep most of the profits.

The good news about that last sentence is that the ecosystem in the southwest really can't handle the population load. Crashing the California economy may bring some left-handed benefit to the rest of the Colorado River basin.

In the near term, the vote promises to be good fodder for the 04 July and 12 September Tea Parties. Plus, the Federalism Amendment. Truthfully, if a state like California or Massachusetts wants to tax itself into oblivion, that should be allowed. It's the borg effect of bringing that mentality to DC that we must oppose.

Pope walks out after Muslim cleric goes on anti-Jew rant during 'interfaith dialogue'

Via Instapundit and Gateway Pundit, the Jerusalem Post:

Chief Islamic Judge of the Palestinian Authority, Sheikh Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, launched a poisonous verbal attack at Israel at a Monday night gathering attended by Pope Benedict XVI. . . .
Taking the podium after the pope without being on the original list of speakers scheduled for the evening, Tamimi, speaking at length in Arabic, accused Israel of murdering women and children in Gaza and making Palestinians refugees, and declared Jerusalem the eternal Palestinian capital.
Following the diatribe and before the meeting was officially over, the pope exited the premises. Army Radio reported that the pope shook Tamimi's hand before walking out.
The Pope was immediately denounced as a "Eurofascist" and a "notorious Pamela Geller sympathizer" by the Little Green Footballs blog.

I might have added that last part.

How to save $2 trillion in health care

• 1. Organize a conference call with reporters.
• 2. Tell them you're going to save $2 trillion.
• 3. Details to be announced later.

Any resemblance between HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Underpants Gnomes is purely coincidental.

Corner: "45 cents of every dollar Washington spends this year will be borrowed."

by Smitty (h/t The Corner)

The president also talks of cutting the deficit in half from this bloated level. But even after the recession ends and the troops return home, he'd still run $1 trillion deficits — compared to President Bush's $162 billion pre-recession deficit. In other words, the structural budget deficit (which excludes the impacts of booms/recessions) would more than quintuple.

"Kidney failure?" said the Yorkshireman, as he spread the Dijon mustard on his bison sandwich, glancing past Frumdreher. Out the window of Air Force One lay Tent City IV. "Oh, how my cousins dreamed of such a noble passage, as they worried out their last days under yoke of that fascist, W. Our Hope and Change era combines all the best features of Huxley and Orwell, don't you think?

SCANDAL! A HETEROSEXUAL PRIEST!

Some of my Catholic friends may be shocked to discover that somehow a heterosexual made it through seminary and, indeed, there is scandalous photographic proof of his interest in women:

Father Alberto Cutie, known as "Padre Oprah," the nationally known Spanish language television host, advice columnist and bestselling author of the book "Real Life, Real Love," is creating quite a stir as he appears to be getting a dose of real love himself.
A Mexican magazine ran pictures of Father Cutie cuddling with a woman on a Florida beach and kissing her at a bar.
In an interview with the Spanish language network Univision, Father Cutie said that despite the scandal the photos have created, he doesn't want to give up either his collar or the woman he loves.

Yes, you read that right: Father Cutie, which is actually pronounced "Koo-tee-ay." When I saw the "Father Cutie" headline at Pundit & Pundette, I thought it must be a joke. But (a) he is kind of a cutie, and (b) the real joke is that this guy, who couldn't be faithful to his own vows, was on the archdiocese's radio show giving "relationship advice" to others.

Father Cutie is now reportedly considering leaving the priesthood. As I said at Taki's:

Of course, conservative Catholics can expect a spree of columns pondering "what this means" for the celibate priesthood, whereas liberal Catholics will wax nostalgic for the "good old days" when priests molested altar boys.

Being a proud Protestant means there is no ecclesiastical hierarchy to blame when these scandals happen. Jimmy Swaggart? Jim Bakker? Ted Haggard? They were never my leaders, and their scandals were their own embarrassment.

The Left won't let it go, will they?

When William Jacobson started blogging about "DijonGate," my reaction was one of amusement -- which, in case you haven't noticed, is my reaction to pretty much everything, including the Barack Obama dildo.

But, as I pointed out, DijonGate drove more than 100K visits Thursday and Friday for Professor Jacobson -- nearly an average month's worth of traffic in just two days -- mainly because the Left has gone wacko over this story. And they won't let it go.

Today, Pandagon's Jesse Taylor is back at it, arguing whether a $7 hamburger is a typical American lunch. Look, Jesse: I can get a junior cheeseburger, fries and a soft drink at Sheetz for about $4, total. But it's not about the burger price. It's not about the burger or the condiments or anything else.

It's about the fact that NBC News was afraid to let its viewers hear Barack Obama say "Dijon mustard," like he'd asked for a side order of Beluga caviar or something. As with their "reporting" on the economy, it's about elite journalism's obsession with safeguarding Obama's image.

So now there's a whole new Memeorandum thread, and Vox Day weighs in:

If you think that little of your potential audience's intelligence, you shouldn't be surprised that no one watches you; they clearly aren't capable of finding the on-switch.

Exactly. The producers who edited out "Dijon mustard" think Americans are stupid. Here's Ed Driscoll:

Obama and Biden's trip to Ray’s Hell-Burger in Arlington is remarkably reminiscent of Kerry and Edwards’ campaign photo-op at an New York State Wendy's. Mark Steyn's August 2004 Telegraph article is the definitive take on that classic faux-populist debacle. Much like the dangers of being photographed while wearing silly hats on the campaign trail, perhaps elitist politicians might want to think twice before slumming it at the local fast-food joint.

And here's Jehuda at the Rhetorican:

In this media environment it's easier than ever to point at the man behind the curtain, especially when the curtain isn't even hanging anymore.

What we are seeing on the Left is a fanatical devotion to the Politics of Perception. It doesn't matter that millions of Americans -- including lots of us who didn't vote for Obama -- share his preference for a burger topping that is neither exotic nor particularly expensive.

Dijon mustard can be purchased at any Safeway or Food Lion at a cost only modestly higher than the plain yellow variety. And, as Jesse Taylor accurately points out, lots of Ordinary Americans eat at Applebee's -- or TGI Friday's or similar chain restaurances -- where the appetizers are $7 and the entrees are $15 or more.

However, as regards DijonGate, none of this does matters. We've gone from DijonGate to Dijongeddon because what matters, at least in the minds of TV news producers and left-wing bloggers, is the careful maintenance of Obama's positive image.

The same is true of their reporting on the economy, where the question for elite journalists is not how many Americans are losing their jobs, but rather if Obama will be blamed for the job losses. We await the headline in the entertainment section of the New York Times:

'Star Trek' Breaks Box Office Record;
Film Helps Obama With Sci-Fi Voters

Is everything political now? Is news only relevant insofar as it causes people to vote Republican or Democrat? Will we soon see the TV weatherman telling us how the latest high-pressure system in the Midwest affects Obama's popularity? Will ESPN discuss the political impact of the Cardinals-Mets game?

Allow me the self-serving observation that when Professor Jacobson gets more traffic for a mustard story than I get for "Carrie Prejean nude," the politicization of news has gone too far. If Rush Limbaugh can't be allowed a laugh at the president's expense -- and if Bush-Cheney jokes are the only laughs allowed at the White House Correspondents Dinner -- Professor Jacobson's remarks about an Obama "cult of personality" may foretell a humorless future for American political culture.

UPDATE: At least the folks who make Grey Poupon haven't lost their sense of humor:

The Honorable Barack H. Obama
President of the United States
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20006
Dear Mr. President:
We applaud you, Mr. President, for exercising your freedom of taste when recently ordering a burger with Dijon mustard. We're always happy to see people use Dijon mustard to add flair and flavor to their favorite foods. The right to choose condiments freely is quintessentially American and embodies the spirit of our democracy.
So we urge you to respond to "Dijon-gate" by issuing a "pardon" to any American who has ever been criticized for putting a liberal spread of Dijon mustard on a burger or a conservative dollop on a ham & cheese sandwich. These "Pardon Me for Loving Dijon" proclamations will empower the millions of Dijon mustard-loving Americans to ask for their favorite condiment with pride.
Respectfully yours,
The GREY POUPON Team

See? Greedy capitalists have a sense of humor. Hat-tip to Legal Insurrection via Instapundit, who also links the latest on yellow -- or is that spicy brown? -- journalism.

President Obama Remains Popular; Women, Minorities Hit Hardest

Over at The American Spectator blog, I noted that elite journalists now view everything through an Obama prism:

The Jobless Rate, Slow to Improve, Tests Obama
On the economy, President Obama has a timing problem. Congressional Democrats may have a bigger one.
Nearly four months into his presidency, Mr. Obama has begun to describe a pivot from economic crisis to economic recovery. From stabilized consumer spending to higher construction spending, he said last week, "the gears of our economic engine" are "slowly turning once again."
The problem is that those gears are unlikely to churn out many new jobs anytime soon. . . .

"The problem," as the New York Times sees it, is purely about politics, and politics is now about a single person. Never mind the nearly 2 million Americans who've lost their jobs since Jan. 20. There is only one person in the world who really matters, and his name is Obama.

The White House Correspondent Dinner Routine We Should Have Gotten

Never heard of C. Brooks Kurtz before, but this is more like it:

. . .Meghan McCain appears to be writing down her phone number on a cocktail napkin -- no wait, she's grabbing scraps of food off other people's plates, putting them in cloth napkins and stuffing them into her oversized purse. She's showing some decent cleavage . . . The crowd is howling -- I want to ask the President if he still has any of his coke connections because this is going to be a very long night. . . .

There's lots more.

'Sleazy tabloid accusations . . .'

. . . have a predictable way of proving true:

When a person's image is a commodity -- as was the case with John Edwards, the millionaire of humble origins whose family life supposedly kept him grounded -- the ideas of privacy and good taste become part of the marketing effort. The tabloids, rude and prying, are able to break through such images to the truth behind them in ways the conventional media cannot. . . .
"False, absolute nonsense," an Edwards spokesperson told the Enquirer at the beginning of the Edwards-affair affair in October 2007, while the candidate was still working the heartland on his way to a second-place finish, ahead of Hillary Clinton, in the Iowa caucuses. Against that blanket denial, the paper cited "a source close to the woman" and "one bombshell e-mail message" to support what it called a "shocking allegation -- if proven true."

As previously noted, newspapers were generally more successful when they were more tabloid-ish, and before they gave op-ed space to dishonest twits like Frank Rich.

New video from Mary Katharine Spam

No relation to any other girls named Mary Katharine. Or at least not that we know of, anyways.

That was sent to me by a Canadian Who Shall Remain Nameless, for fear of provoking reprisals.

Brit Army Lasses Preggers in Iraq!

Sort of a Fleet Street headline for this story from the Daily Star:

At least 133 Brit servicewomen have been sent home from Afghanistan and Iraq after getting pregnant.
The Daily Star Sunday has learned 102 of Our Girls returned early from Iraq between January 1, 2003 and February 28 of this year because they were expecting. And at least 31 female squaddies were fl own home from Afghanistan for the same reason.
Of those, 50 returned early from Iraq or Afghanistan between April 1, 2007 and February 28, 2009.
A total of 5,600 women have been sent to war so far and the Ministry of Defence admitted there may be even more cases which have not been recorded.

Shocker! Send women to war and they'll be women, not warriors. And lads will be lads, after all . . .

Fear, Loathing and Smitty in Las Vegas

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold . . ."
-- Hunter S. Thompson,
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The photo above was one of several that arrived yesterday in a brown manilla envelope with no return address, accompanied by a cryptic note assembled by some maniac who had cut letters out of magazines and pasted them together to create a message so disgustingly obscene that even I would not reprint it here.

No matter what this anonymous extortionist claims, I refuse to believe that my dear friend Smitty could have engaged in the repulsive acts portrayed by these photographs. As far as I'm aware, for example, there are no teenage Ukrainian albino prostitutes employed in Nevada. Even if there are, I sincerely doubt there could be two of them -- identical twins at that and, to judge from the astonishing variety of poses, double-jointed bisexual acrobats who've spent years studying the Kama Sutra.

However, if these lurid scenes are genuine, Smitty is either racing toward the Mexican border or headed for a long spell in a federal penitentiary. He has no alibi, because everyone knows he spent the past week in Las Vegas, a place notorious for its decadent hedonism. Certainly I cannot be held accountable because, so far as I knew, he was merely going on holiday with his German in-laws. Granted, one occasionally hears bizarre rumors about elderly German tourists, but . . .

Forgeries or felonies, the photos were certainly interesting, although fearing an inquiry by the Postmaster General's office -- some kind of sting operation? -- I immediately destroyed all of them except the one relatively safe picture I scanned in and displayed at the top of this post. That is obviously Smitty at the right side of the photo. I'd recognize the bowtie anywhere, but . . . who is that woman on the left?

Little Miss Attila? Well, certainly some of the tales Matthew Vadum told of their CPAC escapades two years ago might lead me to believe she could do such things. And she does live in L.A., a reasonable driving distance from Vegas, assuming you have a radar detector and you're driving one of those big Chevy convertibles with a powerful V-8 engine.

For a few minutes, I stared at the photo while smoking a bowl of Kashmir's finest and decided no, it couldn't be Attila. Too tall. Which also rules out Cynthia Yockey who was, after all, still in Baltimore so far as anyone knew.

Who could she be? And then it hit me.

One of the photos I'd burned immediately after receiving the package had depicted Smitty participating in altogether despicable behavior with a certain breed of domesticated livestock.

Sheep? No Sheeples? Oh, Carol, you temptress . . .

Just call me Lucas, ma'am

A post about "cowboy values" at The American Thinker inspires Pundette to muse at the Hot Air Green Room:

So mamas, go git yurself some Westerns fur yur young 'uns to watch this weekend. Ah'm right parshull to the television series The Rifleman. In addition to the qualities above, Lucas McCain and the folks in North Fork believe in personal responsibility, risk-taking, hard work, and no cussin' in front of the womenfolk.

Ah, The Rifleman! Arguably (and yes, I know this will inspire fierce arguments from fans of "Gunsmoke") the best television Western ever. It debuted the year before I was born, ran for five seasons, played in re-runs forever, and the delightful coincidence of the protagonist's surname meant that I spent years answering to, "Hey, Lucas!"

For those too young to remember, here is the famous opening sequence, followed by the closing credits:

Like other frontier icons of that era -- Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, for example -- Lucas McCain was an ideal role model, a paragon of virtue. His actions were always just. His words were always wise. And the Rifleman was utterly fearless.

Manly courage was the essence of Lucas McCain. It didn't matter how numerous the bad guys were, Lucas was never going to be intimidated. Why? Because he knew he was fighting on the side of right.

Lucas McCain was always the friend of the helpless, always a defender of the weak, always the righteous avenger of those done wrong by the selfish and vicious. And the series took pains to show that Lucas was, by nature, peaceful and amiable. He had a cheerful sense of humor, and could always smile at the mischief of his boy, Mark. There was a poignant nostalgia in his heart for his late wife.

That Lucas was a widower -- a key scriptwriter's convenience he shared with many another fatherly protagonist of the 1950s and '60s -- allowed for the development of romantic subplots. There frequently seemed to be some lovestruck schoolmarm in need of rescue, and you could be sure that in his conduct toward her, Lucas McCain would be impeccably honorable, the embodiment of medieval courtliness transposed to the rustic terms of the 19th-century American frontier.

He was loved by women because Lucas was a man's man. This aspect of the Rifleman's character expresses a great truth that I would advise any young man to contemplate: If you wish to be admired by women, conduct yourself in such a way as to win the respect of men.

You will always notice that the man who is genuinely popular with women is not a selfish, dishonest, cowardly loner, but is the sort of frank, generous and cheerful comrade who is always a welcome companion to his fellow man. He is a team player, always ready in the hour of crisis, and modest enough not to care whether he receives public credit for his good deeds. He does what is right because it is right, confident that his true merit will be known among those courageous souls who shared the burden of his labors.

Lucas McCain was not a show-off, not a braggart, not a bully. He never lied, he never quit. His quiet confidence inspired others to hope that humble virtue must ultimately triumph over arrogant evil. He never started a fight, and always sought to avert violence, so long as it could be averted without dishonor or injustice. But when it was time to fight, he was never afraid, and when the fight was over, the bad guys were always vanquished. The good, the true and the right were vindicated. And Lucas was standing tall.

Which is to say, he was not remotely like David Brooks.

Having just completed the celebration of National Offend A Feminist Week, I should point out that I often fall woefully short of the high mark set by Lucas McCain. Yet I alway know where the mark is set, you see.

Therefore, I agree wholeheartedly with Pundette. If you want your sons or grandsons to have a role model of old-fashioned manly virtue, The Rifleman is the man for the job.

Rule 5 Sunday

by Smitty
Welcome back to another episode of Rule 5 Sunday, the most cheerful roundup of (cheese/beef)cake on the webbytubes, or somebody else gets a bailout. Submit links to Smitty for inclusion. And now to the post:

• We'll get things rolling with Three Beers Later. This comparatively recent blog features everything a knuckle-dragger could want. Beer: check. Feminist-offensive clip: check. Great blog intro, Sarah Palin, Carrie Prejean: check, check, check. Dude, you rock. Additionally, the character in question may irritate Stacy into trotting out old Brooks Rossington Frumdreher III, whose absinthe is enough to drive one to distraction.
• Bob's Bar and Grill picks up about the only thing Three Beers Later omitted: Milla Jovovich with cannons.
• And if Milla isn't enough, the Kuru Lounge has Sienna Miller as the Baroness. Kuru ups the ante with an Ewa Sonnet clip. Life is beachy-keen.
• Monique Stewart trades iron for fashion with Rachel McAdams, which is not such a bad deal. Monique was also getting her Columbo on WRT Carrie Prejean:

  What bothers me about this story is, why would an aspiring Victoria’s Secret model without a chest take nude photos in her pursuit to become a Vicky’s Secret model? I mean, has she ever seen a VS model?

• Pat in Shreveport calls in Condi Rice for the diplomatic take on Rule 5. Officially, she serves up the beefcake, as in this Steve McQueen example.
• HuffPo had something about the next Cindy Crawford. Because we're openminded about lefty blogs, and stuff.
• You can see Jennifer Ellison on Rollerblades over at Freeberg's blog. At least I think she's on rollerblades. For some reason, his interest did not extend as far South as her footwear.
• Jeffords ponders a Megan Fox/Scarlett Johansson imbroglio over handling "sex symbol" status. Me, I gave that up to be a Porch Manqué. The whole sex symbol thing involved too much math.
• Paco contributes his signature silver screen enticements.
• The Daily Gator babe is both far out and far East.
• The cheeky Troglopundit contributes a smiley.
• Carol at No Sheeples Here has some photoshop fun at my expense. For the record, I did spend $5 on gaming, but it was all pinball. Gambling involves too much math.
• Pax Parabellum brings us to a somber conclusion about beauty contests in other societies.
• And, finally, it's Mother's Day.

Quick, send more links to bring the buzz back to Smitty.

Update:

• The Clever S.Logan proves the name by coaxing some unintended self-advertising from Mitt Romney. Nicely done.
• Serr8d combines Rule 5 with a Star Trek review. I guess this means he liked it?

• Here is the Patriot Room featuring Miss Rhode Island, but that photo isn't of any part of RI I've ever seen. Presumably the Providence Plantations

Update II:

• We have a thoughtful, highbrow submission from the Skepticrats. Taste is such a moving target, no?
• Serr8d points us to someone code-named Wyatt Earp, who has some Mother's Day fare for consideration.
• American Power points to Heidi Klum. Viva Mother's Day!
• HotMES contributes Goldie Hawn/Kate Hudson. It sounds as though they may be related.

DijonGate: What have we learned?

"I'm going to have a basic cheddar cheese burger, medium well, with mustard. . . . You got a spicy mustard or something like that, or a Dijon mustard, something like that?"
-- Barack Obama, May 5, 2009

"The reaction proved one thing I already knew: The cult of personality surrounding Obama is real. And many of the cultists are demented, dangerous or both."
-- William Jacobson, May 8, 2009

Congratulations to Professor Jacobson. Traffic at his Legal Insurrection blog, which was about 37,000 visits in February, surged to more than 107,000 in just two days Thursday and Friday, because he dared to point out how dishonest news coverage has become.

The point was not that Obama likes Dijon mustard -- I do, too, as does the man who named it "DijonGate" -- but rather that MSNBC and other major media are no longer in the news business. They're doing public relations for the Obama administration and the Democratic Party.

What was the purpose of Obama and Joe Biden going to Ray's Hell-Burger in Arlington, Va.? It was a photo-op, to show O and Joe bein' Regular Guys, standin' in line, eatin' some burgers.

Obviously, reporters didn't think "Dijon mustard" fit the narrative the White House wanted, and so they fudged the quote -- and NBC even edited its own video -- to omit the offensive French phrase. Jacobson pointed this out, and it was like showing a Rorshach inkblot to Charles Manson.

Obama Mustard Attack Becomes Full-Blown Right-Wing Talking Point
-- Huffington Post

Ivy League Professor Wingnut Pens Masterpiece About Dijon Mustard
-- Wonkette

Dijon Derangement Syndrome: Conservative media attack Obama for burger order
-- Media Matters

Why was the reaction so hideously overblown? Gateway Pundit, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and others were just doing the same thing they did with John Kerry's ill-fated wind-surfing vacation or any number of other incidents in which prominent Democrats act in ways that conflict with their populist rhetoric.

A burger at Ray's Hell-Burger costs $6.95, so lunch at the Arlington restaurant isn't exactly the value menu at Mickey D's. If the White House believed they could show Obama as a Regular Guy by having him eat at a place where the burgers are seven bucks, maybe they need to work on their definition of populism.

Jacobson's posts, however, pointed out how news organizations were actively involved in the image-shaping function of the Obama P.R. machine. It would be like learning that Fox News provided the "Mission Accomplished" banner at Bush's famous 2003 aircraft-carrier event.

Exposure of the media role in the Obama phenomenon is what the Left fears most because, at some level, they understand that if the press were ever to report honestly on what the Democrats are doing, the game would change. So the Obama cultists, accustomed to only fawning coverage of their Leader, react with fury when the fawning coverage is demonstrated to be dishonest.

Obama's high level of public support is largely a product of his positive image the media have crafted. "DijonGate" exposed how this image-making role is played. And therefore William Jacobson is denounced as a "wing-nut" pushing "right-wing talking points."

Of course, there are no "left-wing talking points," and if you dare suggest that Media Matters and Huffington Post are participating in an orchestrated propaganda effort -- perhaps organized by Astroturf king David Axelrod -- this only proves you are a "wing nut."

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! My second 'Lanche this weekend. I suspect Professor Reynolds was watching what I was watching -- Ross Douthat doing "Q&A" on C-SPAN -- and thought to himself, "If I don't hit him now, there'll be another raving manic e-mail at 4 a.m."

Damned callow pretentious Harvard boy prattling on about Chesterton and Christopher Lasch and skinny-dipping with Buckley . . . well, never mind all that now. The raven's calling your name, Douthat!

UPDATE II: Paco quotes . . . Lionel Trilling? What the hell? Has everybody gone all Douthat on me? "As Jeanne Kirkpatrick once said to Daniel Patrick Moynihan . . . ."

Barack Obama dildo. And what would Jeanne Kirkpatrick have to say about that, huh?

UPDATE III: Hey, remember when John Edwards was the liberal media's idol?

UPDATE IV: The Left won't let it go, will they?

The Sambo Progressives

Why does TBogg get away with using a Sambo image? It's a question Donald Douglas is asking:

I've long documented the most vile bigotry and racism on the left end of the dial. During the 2008 primaries, we witnessed some of the most disgusting racism and sexism in decades. And across the blogosphere, the most reprehensible racial slurs and bigoted attacks on conservatives are considered fair game, penetrating social "commentary," and biting "satire."

You should go read the whole thing. The Left gets away with it, of course, because (a) they control the means of cultural production, (b) they claim to speak on the behalf of the designated victims, and (c) by defining their politics as synonymous with virtue, therefore they cannot be guilty of any vice.

Happy Mother's Day, Hot Mama!

OK, I've become notorious for that old Speedo photo, but brother let me tell you, Mrs. Other McCain could rock a swimuit back in the day:

That's at our apartment swimming pool, from the summer of 1990, when she was 26 and already a mother of one. Here's another photo from a year later:

In the background, you see the ruins of the New Manchester mill at Sweetwater Creek State Park in my hometown of Lithia Springs, Ga. And in the foreground, well . . . ain't she sexy? One more:

That's last summer at a Hagerstown Suns baseball game, with youngest daughter Reagan. Being adorable is a genetic hereditary condition. And you should hit the tip jar.

* * * * *

BTW, having crossed the million-hits threshold on Feb. 13, we topped 1.5 million yesterday, so we're on track to clear 2 million by Labor Day. But I gotta up my game, or William Jacobson will beat me to it. Who could ever have imagined that "DijonGate" would be more controversial than "Carrie Prejean nude" or "Marie Osmond's lesbian daughter"?

It's a dog-eat-dog world on the Internet . . . and it's Rule 5 Sunday!