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Archive for the 'Waaah!' Category

Gov. Palin Shoots, Field Dresses Unicorn

Posted by scott on September 8th, 2008

sharon2.jpg

According to right wing talk show host and prolific online columnist Sharon Hughes, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate has, among her many other accomplishments, the power to irritate mythical creatures, such as manticores, leprechauns, naiads, and Liberal Chris Wallace:

Chris Wallace uncharacteristically gave Barack Obama’s Chief Strategist, David Axelrod, carte blanche during his interview today on FOX News Sunday.

Failing to challenge Axelrod’s avoidance in answering questions directly over and over again, and allowing him to go on and on with the standard Obama talking points, was strikingly different than the treatment Wallace gave to John McCain’s Campaign Manager, Rick Davis, who he continually interrupted to challenge, sometimes even argued with, such as regarding when the McCain campaign was going to ‘allow’ Sarah Palin to be interviewed by the media.

Judging by the two interviews, Axelrod was arguing on behalf of his candidate while Wallace was trying — not very subtly or successfully — to trip him with talking points, including asking his guest to defend the Obama campaigns “strategy,” while using “Karl Rove’s latest electoral map” as a basis for discussion.  Davis, on the other hand, merely proved that while FOX News doesn’t mind serving its viewers a tender and flaky puff pastry filled with bullshit and drizzled with contempt, the hosts themselves prefer to order off the menu.

And on Saturday’s Beltway Boys, Morte Kondracke referred to Palin, McCain’s VP running mate, as “that Wacko Right-winger.” So much for ‘fair and balanced’ from the liberals at FOX News.

If you’ve developed a taste for gallows humor over the past eight years, you no doubt enjoy those rare occasions when one of the soggy centrists FOX employs to create the illusion of contrast actually says something that contradicts the multitude of wingnuts who make up the rest of the panel.  Because when something like that happens, it’s a threat to the very idea of “balance.”

I don’t want anyone to think we’re picking on Governor Palin, though, and in the interests of fairness and balance, we should mention that her voice doesn’t merely cause Harpies to drop from the sky like Norwegian Blues, and Balrogs to massage their temples and hiss, “Would you please.  Shut.  Up?“  For much like Snow White, her song can also call helpful woodland creatures to her side, or at least bring them within range of her .30-06.

Please Baby Pleasebaby Baby Baby Please

Posted by scott on July 27th, 2008

According to Mona Charon, the real tragedy of George W. Bush is that his memory will be forever linked to the War on Terror, when what he really ought to go down in the history books for is a smokin’ hot case of Jungle Fever:

a poignant aspect of this president’s two terms is his unrequited love for blacks and other minorities.

Like Erik in Phantom of the Opera, Bush pours out his yearning heart in song to the naive and nubile Christine.  But in the end, she will reject him for her own kind, and Bush, crazed with torment, will drop a chandelier on Iran.  But perhaps the saddest aspect of the President’s heartbreak is that it need not have been.  For like Desdemona in Othello, Bush’s pure and faithful love has been unjustly maligned by men of fell intent:

George W. Bush was painted as the devil by many black leaders. It’s remarkable that this was so, considering Mr. Bush’s steadfast and unwavering interest in the poor and minorities, but there it is. When no other opportunity for tarring President Bush presented itself, his detractors seized upon Hurricane Katrina as the catch basin for all the free-floating bile against the president.

I remember those days; sometimes the bile was so thick it was hard to see all the free-floating bodies. But in retrospect it’s clear that minority leaders were trying to break up Bush and blacks by spreading wild rumors and somehow making it seem like Katrina was the President’s fault, until the two lovers were helplessly entangled in a simple, but wacky misunderstanding, much like Gary Collins and Mary Ann Mobley in the Love American Style episode, “Love and the Sex Survey.”

Remember the way George W. Bush first campaigned? He was the “compassionate conservative.”  He visited so many black churches he could have applied for membership in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He telegraphed early and often that if elected he’d choose Colin Powell for Secretary of State (and that was only the beginning of his promotion of blacks and Hispanics to high office — he might as well have believed in affirmative action).

Because he certainly didn’t hire Condi Rice for her mind.

He boasted (en Espanol) of his excellent record winning the votes of Hispanics in Texas. He lamented the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

He obediently mouthed other catch-phrases his speechwriters had coined for him, just like the ardent Christian in Cyrano.  But he wasn’t all talk; Daddy showered his baby with promises of expensive baubles in the afterlife, too, like…

[T]he faith-based initiative that was aimed at helping all of those who for one reason or another fall into economic or psychic woe. As his former speechwriter Michael Gerson recalled, “He [wa]s deeply committed to the idea of helping the poor through community and faith-based institutions.”

“It wasn’t just a cynical way to seem sensitive to poor minority communities while funneling payoffs to the white evangelicals who’d gotten out the vote.  No, baby, you know me better than that.  Baby I’m deeply committed to the idea of somebody else helping you out sometime.”

Perhaps we’d all have been better off if Black America had just given Bush a pity fuck and let him get it out of his system.  Instead, he’s running up debts and selling off parcels of the family estate just to buy trinkets for this saucy and elusive coquette:

When President Clinton traveled to Africa, black Americans rejoiced at the recognition. Poor President Bush practically bankrupted the treasury by spending on AIDS treatment in Africa.

We could have won the the war in Iraq already if Bush hadn’t blown the Federal wad by flooding the Third World with life-saving drugs and condoms.

The excitement at the prospect of the first African-American president is natural and understandable. But the total contempt shown by the African-American community toward this president is a staggering injustice.

Because no President since Thomas Jefferson has loved blacks more.  Or at least tried to.

My Pope Can Beat Up Your Presidential Candidate

Posted by scott on July 24th, 2008

From The Corner

PHEW   []

I read that Obama had 200,000 people at his rally today. The pope has him beat — my friends at The National Catholic Register tell me “nearly 300,000″ went to see B16 last weekend in Australia. It’s not that my faith would have been tested had Obama managed more. But I can’t speak for stricter numbers watchers, so I like the safety in bigger papal numbers.

I assume this competition will follow the usual path of escalation:  trash-talk, shoulder-shoves, then the whole thing will climax with Senator Obama and Pope Benedict drag-racing for pink slips.

Andrew Breitbart IS…”The Red States Pimpernel”

Posted by scott on July 15th, 2008

In a haunting and heartfelt cri de derrier, “Mr. Spielberg, tear down this wall,” Andrew Breitbart claims that in Hollywood, conservatives must lead secret lives, hiding their true convictions, never daring to speak out against the liberal shibboleths.  You may find this a tarnished accusation and be tempted to demand proof, which he provides — by listing a bunch of people in Hollywood who are openly conservative.

While it is true that the ratio of Obama-to-McCain bumper stickers in West L.A. is about 250-to-1, there are untold closet Republicans in the entertainment industry who dare not advertise their beliefs in movie studio parking lots. (Unfortunately, car keying is a tactic wielded liberally by the self-described “tolerant.”)

Yeah.  I’d love to see the FBI statistics on liberals keying the BMW Z4 roadsters of admitted conservatives in the Paramount lot.  (By the way, if you notice a change in tone from now on, it’s only that I’ve realized Andy and I are in the same business — making shit up — so I feel he’s entitled to a bit of professional courtesy.)  So,  in Hollywood, the car key has become a symbol of tyranny, much as the Guillotine was during the reign of Terror in Revolutionary France.  Got it.

Since the communist-sympathizing Jane Fonda aerobicized her way into the mainstream of Hollywood politics, and about the time that John Wayne died, most Republicans in Hollywood began to shut their mouths.  Other Republicans attempt to win over the bullies by referring to themselves as “moderate,” “libertarian,” “independent,” “classical liberal,” “pragmatist” or “JFK Democrat.”

Well, let’s be fair.  Given the way “Republican” has become toxic throughout the known universe, a lot of people — not just Hollywood conservatives — have adopted this dodge.  According to Wikipedia, Dennis Prager “sometimes labels himself as ‘passionate centrist’ or a ‘JFK liberal,’” and Glenn Reynolds is perhaps the world’s foremost libertarian who apes the positions of a Bush Republican except he’s more frank about his yen to ditch the missus and fuck robots.

The tandem of social and vocational ostracism usually shuts down even the strongest voices.

Except, apparently, for Robert Downey, Jr. and Clint Eastwood, and Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Joel Surnow, and Mel Gibson and David Mamet, and…

The Hollywood dinner party test strongly hints that the talented actor [Downey, Jr.] has lurched rightward during his long road to recovery. Playwright David Mamet recently expressed a similar Road to Da Masses conversion…They join an elite brunch that includes Adam Sandler, Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton who also brazenly wear the Scarlet “R” in the middle of the school cafeteria.

How much do you suppose these poor beleaguered people spend on automotive touch-up paint every month?

Michael Crichton – who, to the chagrin of Al Gore, exposes “environmentalism as a religion” -

He also writes about , that give people super-powers, and that can fax people to medieval France without smudging (but beware!  You must return before the toner runs out!).  Anyway, nothing against Crichton’s oeuvre, I’m just saying — “environmentalism as religion” isn’t the only goofy idea he’s ever had.

…and comic genius Dennis Miller…

I see these words less as a burst of cackling insanity, and more as a poignant cry for help.

…show that there are cracks in the wall artificially separating Hollywood from much of America.

I think you’ll find that the cracks, dear Andy, are not in our stars, but in your skull.

Jonah Goldberg Asks: Dishonest Or Stupid?

Posted by scott on July 9th, 2008

…but the mirror remains tactfully silent.  Nevertheless, Jonah goes on to bemoan the kaleidoscopic inconsistencies in Obama’s remarks about polyglot education.

“Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.”

[I]t seems to me the central point is that this is either staggeringly dishonest or stupendously dumb.

As your high school composition teacher advised you, Jonah, “write what you know.”

Obama has a great gift at sounding insightful when he insipidly changes the subject to something completely different and more helpful to his cause.

“I just wish I knew how he did it!”

But, if Obama honestly thinks the argument against bilingualism has anything to do with the importance of teaching kids a second language, he really has no idea whatsoever what the argument is about.

So, changing the subject is evil and stupid?  Got it.

After all he was able to put a black religious demagogue into his magic hat and with showy rhetorical prestidigitation pull back his own racist grandmother.

Which only strengthens Jonah’s central point.
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Pegging The Grabarimeter

Posted by scott on June 16th, 2008

I’ve just returned from an idyllic Sunday afternoon at the Mark Taper Imaging Center, where I was inserted head-first into a long, dark, narrow sheath, and treated to a series of vibrations and sounds of varying, but uniformly disquieting, frequencies. And from this experience I learned two things. 1) Thinking about baseball doesn’t help, and 2) It’s a good thing my penis isn’t as claustrophobic as the rest of me.

Anyway, the MRI is probably the worst carnival attraction I’ve ever been on — even worse than the thrill rides at Iron Lung Fantasy Camp — but after 20 minutes of being flayed with electromagnetism while listening to a concerto for Inuit throat singer and diesel jake brake, I may have actually extruded sufficient spleen to power a brief blog post. So, before the narcotics return me to my now customary semi-comatose state, let’s see what we can pluck from Townhall’s Low Hanging Fruit Salad…

Ah! Perfect! It’s been awhile since we checked in on Temporary Assistant Professor of English and Slovenian folk dancing enthusiast Mary Grabar. When last seen, she was explaining how stupid atheists were to construe her previous column, “Letter to a Stupid Atheist,” as some sort of accusation that atheists were stupid. This time, the professor explains that when she wrote about her Yugoslavian relatives being raped by Russian soldiers during World War II, then followed that with a column claiming that Obama’s followers — his goosestepping shock troops of the Culture War — had “ravished our virgins,” she was merely going metaphorical on your ass:

It appears that my use of war metaphors in the opening paragraph of my last column confused a number of people

For the record, here’s that opening paragraph:

An Obama presidency would signal the final salvo by the Left in the culture wars. Obama’s advance troops have already taken over our college campuses, have bound and gagged our conservative professors, have ravished our virgins, have pillaged our stores of wisdom, and have ensconced themselves in the thrones of power in deans’, presidents’ and department heads’ offices.

However deeply swaddled in metaphor it may be, the point Professor Grabar’s trying to make here will be instantly recognizable to anyone acquainted with wingnut tropes, since she’s not actually writing so much as reciting from a text as venerable and unchanging as the Obergammerau passion play. Anyway, those few readers who might have been confused by her poetic use of language don’t seem to bother Mary nearly as much as those who were clearly amused:

[the column was] was circulated around the blogosphere and set off a chorus of chortling. The left-wing bloggers, especially, had a field day with my reference to “ravished our virgins.” They pointed out, in quite crude terms, that one must go to middle schools these days to find virgins.

When confronted with mockery, the best way to turn the tables on one’s irreverent detractors is to make a stiff and dignified appeal to the authority of Webster’s, or the Oxford English Dictionary. This proves you are not to be trifled with.

I will begin with a reminder from English 102 that a metaphor is “A figure of speech that describes something as though it actually is something else, thereby enhancing understanding and insight” (“Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing” Fourth Compact Ed., Edgar V. Roberts).

Ah, she threw us a curve and quoted a textbook instead. Damn her high-falutin’, cognitive linguistics. If only she’d get down off her semiotic pedestal and unpack her densely figurative language for us monosyllabic proles.

So let me, as my more fashionable colleagues in English departments say, “unpack” this:

Oh goody.

“Obama’s advance troops” are the tenured radicals who have left their legacy on college campuses. Their takeover began in the 1960s, but their protégés now control hiring, tenure, and curriculum choice. They have dispensed with the study of dead white men unless it is in innovative ways, like a conference on “Faulkner’s Sexualities,” for which they pin up posters on their office doors.

Thus creating a hostile work environment for those colleagues who believe that Temple Drake had it coming.

William Faulkner, as you may recall, was the Nobel-prize-winning Southern novelist. Old-fashioned scholars used to study him for his innovative writing style, his mark on the modernist movement, as well as for the ideas he presented in his work.

But style and ideas are passé. Sexuality, or better yet, sexualities, is where it’s at if you are a scholar doing “cutting edge” research.

Well, if I were a Southern Literature scholar, and it was a choice between assigning “Intruder in the Dust” for the 23rd year in a row, or taking a sabbatical to study why Faulkner and New Orleans boho William Spratling painted Sherwood Anderson’s son’s penis green, I’d be filling out that grant application as we speak.

Were I able to make the case that the focus of my dissertation, the Southern Catholic novelist Walker Percy, had multiple sexualities, I would not have had my paper proposal turned down at that great fair of English professors, the Modern Language Association convention, where the hippest scholars are interviewed and hired to tenure-track positions.

Indeed. So-called scholars who are happy wallowing in the swine bog of godless deconstructionism make temp work uncomfortable for those aspiring academics who don’t want to know about Faulkner’s penchant for verdant phalli! This is clearly unfair, since Dr. Grabar has obligingly played the Publish or Perish game that all would-be professors must engage in, as a visit to her website will attest. Amongst her published works:

My Townhall Columns
Feminism’s Legacy: YouTube Catfights
The Cultural Illiteracy of Easy Atheists
Bush haters rain on our local parade (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Little Girls in Head Scarves (The American Spectator)
Are Terrorists Courageous?
Burquas give Muslims too much cover

Suck on that, Noam Chomsky!

Tenured conservative professors, as old as most of them are, of course are not literally “bound and gagged.” Most of them probably served in the military, and so tenured radicals would not be able to take them down in a physical way.

(TYING ON RAMBO-STYLE HEADBAND AND HEFTING .30 MACHINEGUN) What you call Hell, Professor E. C. Buehler, Director of Forensics at the University of Kansas, calls Home.

The actual violence on campuses is directed more at invited speakers like David Horowitz, Patrick Buchanan, and the Minutemen, by brave undergraduates who bear weapons of cream pies and bottles of salad dressing.

I guess since neither Horowitz or Buchanan served in the military, the hippies consider them soft targets.

Those who are bound and gagged (metaphorically) are afraid to differ in opinion for fear of losing our temporary jobs when the talk in the faculty break room or part-timers’ office turns to political elections. There is always danger, for your lack of assent may make you conspicuous and thereby invite an ambush of questioning.

Because the last thing someone who aspires to teach for a living wants to do is answer a bunch of questions, or try to defend her opinions. Besides, it’s a lot spicier to imagine the faculty lounge as a BDSM dungeon instead of a small, shabby room with two Naugahyde sofas and a Mr. Coffee.

Self-censorship also occurs at faculty meetings, and the sight of a middle-aged Shakespeare scholar (in tweed), a citizen in good standing, quaking at the directives of the feminist department head is deserving of Sophocles. A chorus should come on the stage to weep for such a man reduced to nodding in agreement to a unanimous decision to approve a new assistant professor’s proposal for a course, “Popular Literature,” that would include rapper Tupac Shakur’s lyrics as “poetry.”

Hey, she’s right! This is exactly like the central conflict in Antigone, with its tragic struggle between civic duties and private loyalties, except this version is spiced up with a bulldyke!

“Ensconced themselves in the thrones of power in deans’, presidents’ and department heads’ offices” is a reference to the fact that humanities departments veer left, as evidenced by records of voter registration and surveys. One study by Christopher R. Cardiff and Daniel B. Klein, as reported in 2005 in “Critical Review,” found that for every one Republican in the Humanities in California colleges there were ten Democrats.

Heavens! Well, it’s never too early to start wetting your pants in total panic. Unless the humanities represent some sort of outlier…

Abstract of Cardiff and Klein: The party registration of tenure-track faculty at 11 California universities, ranging from small, private, religious-affiliated institutions to large, public, elite schools, shows that the “one-party campus” conjecture does not extend to all institutions or all departments. At one end of the scale, U.C. Berkeley has an adjusted Democrat:Republican ratio of almost 9.1, while Pepperdine University has a ratio of nearly 1:1. Academic discipline also makes a tremendous difference, with the humanities averaging a 10:1 D:R ratio and business schools averaging 1.3:1, and with departments ranging from sociology (44:1) to management (1.5:1). Across all departments and institutions, the D:R ratio is 5:1, while, in the “soft” liberal-arts fields, the ratio is higher than 8:1. These results are generally in line with previous studies.

Okay, so when you look at the whole picture, the situation’s not quite so dire.

The situation is dire.

Most of the conservatives writing about this issue have either abandoned the academy or have never taught.

…making them your best choice for informed commentary on modern academia.

One 24-year-old editor of a blog on higher education described the situation as being that academia only “occasionally represses conservative thought.” I can tell you that conservative thought in most humanities departments has just about been banished. And I could count in numerous ways how this has been done. Many studies, statistics, papers, and surveys supporting my first-hand observations are presented in articles; but these are read mostly by academics.

There’s gobs and gobs of empirical evidence, computer modeling, and exhaustive statistical analysis proving my gut feeling that the best shoes are made by dwarves living secretly in the Black Forest, but those peer reviewed studies were published in journals that are read mostly by cobblers, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Those who are still in the academy are too afraid to write about what they see and experience.

You never hear the cream pie that has your name on it.

The strategy of the leftists is to cast their critics as alarmist exaggerators.

Thank goodness that’s not working…

Soon, everyone will forget that there even was such a thing as a conservative intellectual tradition. Referring to conservative and intellectual in the same breath is likely to bring derisive laughter from humanities professors.

Let’s see if the bastard is still laughing after you box his ears with a copy of Liberal Fascism!

The radicals are winning this war. We need the help of the public and our political leaders to break through the barricade.

Yes! Heed the clarion call, people! This is exactly like the big, rousing Act II number “Upon These Stones” from Les Miserables, except in this case the barricade is manned by bitter temps who got dissed at an English Teacher Job Fair.

So…When we last spent some quality time with Mary, commenter R. V. Dump proposed a new standard for “measuring batshit crazy: The Graybar ( Usage: That essay was estimated to reach a force of 6.5 GrB (Graybars).” Personally, I’d give this one a 7.4.

Where’s Ben Stein’s Money?

Posted by scott on April 21st, 2008

From the weekend box office totals at Deadline Hollywood Daily:

The only other newcomer in the Top 10 was conservative commentator Ben Stein’s documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed which makes the intelligent design argument. Playing in 1,052 theaters, the pic distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures fell over the weekend from 8th to 10th place after earning $1.2M Friday and $989K Saturday for a $2.9M weekend. But the per screen average for Friday was a low $1,145 and for Saturday $940 (and $2,830 for the entire weekend), showing there wasn’t much pent-up demand for the film despite an aggressive publicity campaign on right-wing media. So much for the conservative argument that people would flock to films not representing the “agenda of liberal Hollywood”. (Just for comparison purposes: left-wing Michael Moore’s most recent Sicko did $4.4 mil its opening weekend from only 441 theaters, and his Fahrenheit 9/11 did $23.9M its opening weekend from 868 venues.)

That aggressive publicity campaign may actually be to blame for the disappointing turnout, setting expectations for an action-packed, high octane rollercoaster ride of a film that no adenoidal ex-Nixon staffer could possibly satisfy. For instance, World Net Daily’s story on the film was titled: Ben Stein to battle Darwin in major film.

Now that’s a movie I’d pay to see, even if the headline turned out to be literal, and the film involved nothing more than Ben Stein rolling around on the floor with Darwin’s worm-eaten remains for 90 minutes, because I’m pretty sure he’d still get his ass kicked. Instead, we get this:

In the movie, Stein, who is also a lawyer, economist, former presidential speechwriter, author and social commentator, is stunned by what he discovers – an elitist scientific establishment that has traded in its skepticism for dogma. Even worse, say publicists for the feature film

Well, I guess we’ll never know what was worse, because the preceding six words are the universal signal to STOP. READING.

Jonah Goldberg: Free, White, And Over 21 (I.Q.)

Posted by scott on March 19th, 2008

Shorter Jonah: Pastor Jeremiah Wright’s skin tone of voice makes me uncomfortable.

Thanks to the pinched nerve (which is getting a bit better, thanks for asking), I’ve been falling behind on my wingnuttery, so today I sat down with a bowl of Quisp and a mug of Ovaltine and pored over Jonah’s LA Times column from yesterday, in which he established the objectives Obama’s speech must meet if it was to be considered a success. But Jonah’s expectations were not unreasonable, and he took care not to set the bar too high:

Barack Obama will reportedly give a major speech this morning at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, addressing the controversy about his extremist pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

Obama needs to do two things. First, he needs to make it incandescently clear that Wright doesn’t speak for him in any meaningful way. If he won’t do that, his campaign is a fraud and he is not qualified to be president.

Also, and I’m paraphrasing here, since Obama aspires to be a “post-racial” candidate, he must rip open his crisp white dress shirt and reveal the solid state electronics concealed behind his factory-made abdominals, or forfeit all trans-human credibility.

Second, he needs to explain to black America why Wright’s views are so poisonous.

Because black America plainly seems unable to grasp the problem when white people point it out — even when they go to the trouble of prefacing their explanations with compliments on one’s bling, or solicitous inquiries about who may have been careless with the gate latch, thus allowing one’s dogs to roam free.

By now, if you’ve paid any attention at all, you’ve read the quotes and seen the video clips of Wright at the pulpit…He suggested that America had it coming on 9/11.

Much as I hate to admit it, Jonah makes a fair point. The reverend is condemned by his own words:

The ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this…And, I know that I’ll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen’.

Talk about blaming the victim. I agree, it’s not enough that Obama denounce, even “incandescently” denounce Wright. The pastor should be exiled to U.S. warships and held incommunicado for the rest of his life like Philip Nolan, never again to set foot on U.S. soil, or even to read or hear the word “America.”

Oh wait. Sorry. Got the wrong pastor.

Obama and his surrogates are denouncing attempts to link the candidate and the views of his pastor and mentor.

“But they’re as tightly entwined as the liberals of today are with the Fascists of 80 years ago, and as Tony Snow would say, it’s only logical to tar these babies with the same brush.”

More implausibly, Obama claimed that he’d never heard his mentor say anything of the sort, in public or private.

Obama has been a member of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years. Wright baptized Obama’s daughters; he officiated at Obama’s wedding. The title of Obama’s career-making book “The Audacity of Hope” is from a Wright sermon. Wright worked with Obama as a community organizer. Saying you were out back catching a smoke during one sermon or another won’t cut it.

Although it did seem to work for Vice President George Bush during the Iran-Contra scandal.

The issue isn’t what Obama sat through, but what he stands for.

Okay, that’s fair. The real issue isn’t what Obama may have heard, but what he’s said.  After all, Wright is only a bystander.  It’s incumbent upon us as informed voters to focus on Obama’s views – his policies, his convictions, his vision for the future –

Even Wright’s tone is poisonous.

– or not.

Obama righteously deplores “divisiveness.” And yet he literally worships at the altar of division.

I tried that once, but had to give up. The tithing involved too much math.

He wants to transcend race, but his black nationalist church and his liberation theology pastor consider race permanent and central issues.

“Look, you got a whole history month to brag about the guy who invented peanut butter! Alternate side of the street parking regulations are suspended on Martin Luther King’s birthday! We even let Clarence Thomas marry a white woman! What do you people want?!

A 2005 study by the Rand Corp. and the University of Oregon found that nearly half of African Americans say they believe that HIV is man-made. More than 25% think that it’s a government invention, and one in eight say it was created and spread by the CIA. Just over half believe that the government is purposely keeping a cure from reaching the poor.

And please, spare me the rationalization that blacks have reason to be conspiratorial.

Wait, blacks are conspiring to spread man-made HIV to the poor? Wow. I bet they were behind the Tuskegee Experiment too! Suddenly it all makes sense!

In the 2005 issue of Social Science Quarterly, Sharon Parsons and William Simmons tried to explain why conspiracy theories like these persist in the black community. Part of the answer, they concluded, is that black politicians have no interest in dispelling them. Paging Sen. Obama!

So in addition to shaking hands, giving stump speeches, and participating in debates, a candidate for president (if he’s black) is also required to run around the country debunking urban legends. Because if black people vote for for an African-American because they think the government is, say, disproportionately punishing black people for drug crimes, then before you know it, otherwise rational white people might vote for an outsider because of wild rumors about government tapping the phones and reading the emails of ordinary citizens.

If he wants to be taken seriously as a candidate for the highest office in the land, then Obama better get his Snopes on.

Obama preaches unity. Well, real unity requires real truth-telling and the ability to tell right from wrong…

Which, as Jonah would point out, isn’t nearly as much fun as TPing the neighborhood with Talking Points, then sneaking downstairs to eat all the Früsen Gladje.

…and Wright from right.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, explains why Jonah is a columnist for a major American newspaper.  You don’t get that kind of writing from some obscure blogger whose only claim to fame is a laptop and a mother who never blew John Mitchell in the White House pantry.

I, for one, have no interest in being united with Wright or anyone who insists that America is an evil, racist, damnable nation bent on murdering black people — and I suspect neither will many general election voters.

I guess it’s lucky for us, then, that Wright isn’t running for office.

Obama’s power base is made up of black voters and the upscale left-wingers who condescend to them.

Yeah, yeah, the New Yorker may say it’s not for “the little old lady from Dubuque,” but that’s a load of crap. After Obama won Iowa it became obvious that the entire Quad Cities is infested with Regency fops who swan about the place sipping Typhoo, scrutinizing lepidopterans through a monocle, and condescendingly casting ballots for mulattoes.

Well, it is time he spoke truth to that power. If the eloquent, self-proclaimed truth-teller and would-be first black president can’t manage that, he should go straight from would-be to never was.

So there you have it: If Obama ever hopes to prove himself morally fit for the highest office in the land, he needs to throw down with Eustace Tilly.

Jonah Goldberg Says: Now You Can Be Almost As Smartest As Me Are!

Posted by scott on February 26th, 2008

In his Los Angeles Times column today, Jonah Goldberg bitches that former radicals who engaged in domestic terrorism in the 1960s are allowed to rejoin society and even obtain teaching positions at reputable universities, while neo-cons who sponsored terrorism in Central American in the 1980s can only get jobs in the Bush Administration.

But the real point of the piece is to reveal Jonah’s Two Patented Secrets to being a smartypants. Number 1: You don’t have to worry about being able to answer the question if you only ask questions that answer themselves!

“Okay, repeat after me in unison, and all together, at the same time: Us am smart!”

Here’s a few brief examples:

I don’t think such associations should cost people their careers or place in polite society. But shouldn’t this baggage cost something?

If you’re United Airlines, the cost is $25 for each bag. Unless your baggage contains cocaine designed to fund a guerrilla war in Nicaragua, in which case it’s on the house, and please enjoy the complimentary beverage service.

Why is it only conservative “cranks” who think it’s relevant that Obama’s campaign headquarters in Houston had a Che Guevara-emblazoned Cuban flag hanging on the wall?

Because the only other person likely to care whether you have a Che poster on your wall is your Mom, and once you move out of the house, she’s not the boss of you anymore. (By the way, Jonah, whinging about these kids today, with their inflammatory decor and their electoral support for mulattoes, is pretty much the job description of “conservative ‘cranks,’” at least according to the listings on Monster.com.

Indeed, why is love of Che still radically chic at all? A murderer who believed that “the U.S. is the great enemy of mankind” shouldn’t be anyone’s romantic hero.

You want romance? Do what conservatives do and stick with the classics: Abelard and Héloise. Apollo and Hyacinthus. Peggy Noonan and Reagan’s shoe…(I first saw President Reagan as a foot, highly polished brown cordovan wagging merrily on a hassock. I spied it through the door. It was a beautiful foot, sleek. Such casual elegance and clean lines! But not a big foot, not formidable, maybe a little …frail. I imagined cradling it in my arms, protecting it from unsmooth roads.)

Why are Fidel Castro’s apologists progressive and enlightened but apologists for Augusto Pinochet frightening and authoritarian?

1) Because the latter group is in authority, and they’ve made a frightening mess of it. And 2) Because none of Castro’s apologists, no matter how much they might admire him, want to see Fidel put in charge of Iraq: (I THINK ALL intelligent, patriotic and informed people can agree: It would be great if the U.S. could find an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet. In fact, an Iraqi Pinochet would be even better than an Iraqi Castro.)

Why was Sen. Trent Lott’s kindness to former segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond a scandal but Obama’s acquaintance with an unrepentant terrorist a triviality?

Probably because Senator Obama didn’t appear at William Ayers’ birthday party and declare, “I want to say this about my state: When the Weather Underground tried to bomb the Pentagon, we supported them. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

I have my own answers to these questions. But I’m interested in theirs.

Because that’s the second of Jonah’s Two Patented Secrets to being a smartypantload: Cheat off the other guy’s paper.

In the Democratic debate this week, maybe moderators can resist the temptation to repeat healthcare questions for the billionth time

…because who cares about that crap? Voters in this election must deal with issues of war, national security, civil rights, a ballooning deficit, a housing crisis, a deteriorating job market, skyrocketing fuel prices, and increasingly costly healthcare, and the only way we can determine who is best qualified to lead us through these challenges is for the media to stop dwelling on trivialities and find out who Obama sat next to at the board meetings of a local charity.

…and instead ask America’s foremost liberal representatives why being a radical means never having to say you’re sorry.

And if there’s one thing Jonah’s career has demonstrated, it’s that being an idiot means never having to say you’re sorry, either, since you can usually get by with “oops,” “Mommy!” or “here’s my column — oh, and that stuff that’s making the pages stick together is mayonnaise. Honest.”

Coulter Defends Romney Till He’s Black and Blue

Posted by scott on January 17th, 2008

Ann Coulter grouses that the Mud People were planning to throw their poll tax money away by quixotically voting in the Michigan Republican primary.

Unluckily for McCain, snowstorms in Michigan suppressed the turnout among Democratic “Independents” who planned to screw up the Republican primary by voting for our worst candidate. Democrats are notoriously unreliable voters in bad weather. Instead of putting on galoshes and going to the polls, they sit on their porches waiting for FEMA to rescue them.

So by “Democrats,” you mean, “the Sons of Ham.” Gotcha. Doesn’t exactly require a Captain Midnight Decoder Ring to figure out what Ann’s saying here, and it’s not “drink more Ovaltine.”

In contrast to Michigan’s foul weather, New Hampshire was balmy on primary day, allowing McCain’s base — Democrats — to come out and vote for him.

Providing an amazing margin for victory, considering New Hampshire’s population is 1.1% black (it used to be more, but then it rained and they all melted).

I’ve been casually taking swipes at Mitt Romney for the past year based on the assumption that, in the end, Republicans would choose him as our nominee. My thinking was that Romney would be our nominee because he is manifestly the best candidate.

Thus limiting myself to only casual, instinctive swipes, nothing too savage, nothing likely to pierce the flesh and draw a bead of blood to the surface of his alabaster throat where it would pool and catch the light like a single perfect ruby…

I had no idea that Republican voters in Iowa and New Hampshire planned to do absolutely zero research on the candidates and vote on the basis of random impulses.

Ann? Honey? That’s like on page one of the RNC playbook. You’ve got to start coming to meetings again.

Dear Republicans: Please do one-tenth as much research before casting a vote in a presidential election as you do before buying a new car.

Since consumer research shows that most people who bought a car in 2004 and also voted for George W. Bush in the presidential election wound up purchasing a Trabant.

Turn on any cable news show right now, and you will see Democratic pundits attacking Romney, calling him a “flip-flopper,” and heaping praise on McCain and Huckleberry — almost as if they were reading some sort of “talking points.”

Doesn’t that raise the tiniest suspicions in any of you? Are you too busy boning up on Consumer Reports’ reviews of microwave ovens to spend one day thinking about who should be the next leader of the free world?

What is Ann’s gripe with people researching a product before they buy it? If she’s aiming to take over John Stossel’s act, she’s going to have to grow a slightly better mustache.

Are you familiar with our “no exchange/no return” policy on presidential candidates?

Sadly, yes.

Voting for McCain because he was a POW a quarter-century ago or Huckabee because he was a Baptist preacher is like buying a new car because you like the color.

And people say Ann lacks the authorial skills to develop a metaphor, kill it with a heavy blow to the head and then slowly and laboriously flay it with a carpet beater. But personally, I think it’s much more like listening to a female pundit’s opinions solely because you think she’s vaguely hot and probably talks dirty in bed, and you enjoyed her 1978 disco smash, “Hot Child in the City.”

The candidate Republicans should be clamoring for is the one liberals are feverishly denouncing. That is Mitt Romney by a landslide.

Right. Ann, you do realize that the plan to screw with the Michigan primary involved Democrats voting for Romney? Right? To keep him from dropping out of the race? I mean, even Michelle Malkin figured that out.

Liberals claim to be enraged at Romney for being a “flip-flopper.” I’ve looked and looked, and the only issue I can find that Romney has “flipped” on is abortion.

Next time, Try Google! Now with Extra Stuff You Want to Pretend Doesn’t Exist!

When running for office in Massachusetts — or, for short, “the Soviet Union” –

Is it just me, or do you ever get the impression Ann writes her jokes by just flinging a handful of those random word magnets at the refrigerator?

Even when Romney was claiming to support Roe v. Wade, he won the endorsement of Massachusetts Citizens for Life — a group I trust more than the editorial board of The New York Times.

Me too. They’re anti-abortions nuts who oppose stem cell research and sex education, but at least they had more sense than to hire Bill Kristol.

And, of course, Romney is a Mormon. Even a loser Mormon like Sen. Harry Reid claims to be pro-life. So having a candidate with a wacky religion isn’t all bad.

I was conducting a scientific study on methods for determining whether Ann Coulter was attacking you or defending you, but I got distracted by this UL Product Safety Audit of “memory foam” mattress toppers.