Freedom of Press is limited to those who own one - H.L. Mencken

Friday, January 15, 2010

The usual suspects in the MSM have been all over Pat Robertson for his comment about how the earthquake happened because the Hatians made a pact with the devil to get rid of the French - a myth I had actaully heard in some caribean enclaves, decades ago, and which even Hatians sometimes say is so, I should add - and are being punished, and thaqts good because this stuff is idiotic, but I wonder how much coverage Danny Glover will get for saying that it was caused because Gaia is pissed that Copenhagen was botched?

Says Glover: “When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?”

This will likely not be news. The left is replete with people that agree with Danny. The same people that tell us hurricanes and such happen because of AGW when we all can see that’s bunk. They may not mention Gaia, but that’s were this crap comes from..

Monday, November 16, 2009

Is anyone - and I do mean anyone, right, left, center, under, over, I don’t give a rat’s hairy ass what side or surface of the aisle you claim - surprised by this little revelation?

More than ten percent of the jobs the Obama administration has claimed were “created or saved” by the $787 billion stimulus package are doubtful or imaginary

I am going so far out on a limb here...I mean, this is really one out-there prediction, but here I go:

MORE THAN 70% OF THESE SAVED OR CREATED JOBS WILL BE NONEXISTENT OR IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVE.

I know, crazy, right? Can you imagine such a thing? Especially from Captain Hopeyful Changitude? The One? Jesus Barack Kennedy Obama is lying to us? Perish the thought. Unpossible!

Now: as far as I am concerned, any Republican or Independent that helped make this happen - and I mean any - deserves to lose their job. Cast a vote in favor of Porkulous? Goodbye. Didn’t show up to vote against it? Just as effing guilty. I’m sick of compromising and playing realpolitik. This is what we get when we go along to get along. So, each and every election you need to make a choice: Are you going to keep taking it, or are you finally going to find your political balls and throw the bums out?

Because ultimately, that is where we are at. Either stop complaining and accept the inevitable or vote new people with the right ideas and ideals into office. It’s up to you as individuals to decide what those ideas and ideals may be. I know mine, and every vote I cast from this day forward will be in faith to my ideals, not a realpolitik act of gamesmanship designed simply to regain - or retain - power for establishment Republicans.

Hat tip: Ace at Ace of Spades HQ

Saturday, November 07, 2009

I have little patience with the Democratic Women’s Caucus or any other supposedly “feminist” liberal organizations.  To my mind, their primary purpose is to inject gender into every possible issue, regardless of whether it belongs there.  And given that I believe liberal policies to be destructive to American liberty and prosperity—including that of American women—I think, on balance, they are destructive to the interests of women.  My experience is that their ideal is that women should be weak, helpless and completely dependent upon the beneficence of government.  Anything that might truly empower women—free enterprise, protection against eminent domain, gun ownership—is opposed.

This morning, they decided to have an hour-long session explaining why healthcare reform would be good for women.  Among other things, they’re pissed that women pay higher insurance premiums just because they use more healthcare.  The Republicans objected, Dingel said they could object to the individual speeches and damn if they didn’t jump right into that briar patch.

That mash-up is from Thinkprogress and isn’t exactly fair to the GOP.  But regardless, the GOP comes across as bullies

How would I have responded?  Let them speak their piece and then get a response that has conservative women detailing why the bill is, on balance, very very bad for American women.  We could explain that it will slash physician salaries just as women are infiltrating the ranks.  We would wave around cost-benefit analyses from socialized countries that argue against routine mammography (which is efficient if you want to save lives, but not if you want to save money).  We would talk about the death of innovation and the needless condemning of future generations of women to drug-resistant infections, cancers and Alzheimer’s that might be cured by an innovative market. We would talk about how the current healthcare bill will pay for woo like therapeutic touch and prayer therapy—such woo being heavily targeted at women.

But that would require a GOP that isn’t taking the wrong lessons from the tea parties.  The idea, guys, is to focus that anger into constructive policy, not mimic it on C-SPAN.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Good Lord.  This weekend saw the “Take Back America” conference.  A number of prominent Republicans were in attendance, aiding and abetting what looks like a big steaming pile of crazy:

The “How to Take Back America” conference was no place for soft critiques of the Obama administration. It was a weekend of speeches and training sessions that were laden with doom, cries of mounting fascism, and long prayers for salvation. It was the kind of event where Schlafly, a conservative icon who’s often seen as a leader of the movement’s far right flank, could take the role of a pragmatist, sticking to the sort of criticism of the Obama administration that might appear on Fox News and asking activists to elect a Republican Congress in 2010. And Schlafly succeeded in bringing big Republican stars to the conference. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) was the biggest draw, but six members of Congress attended, too–Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), and Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.). Several 2010 Republican candidates hosted workshops, including Ed Martin and Vicky Hartzler, both running for Democratic-held U.S. House seats in Missouri. But some of the rhetoric went beyond partisan politics. At worst, the speakers argued, fascism was on the horizon. At best, this was a pivotal time in a war on Christian values. Some of the speakers split the difference.

Read the whole thing.  It’s an indulgence of every repulsive faction of the GOP.  Birthers, hysterical anti-gay rhetoric, branding of Obama as both fascist and communist, a far right Christian agenda—all cheered by Republican politicans.  Here is Mike Huckabee riling the crowd with mindless anti-UN rhetoric—the same week the UN served to expose Gaddafi as a deranged lunatic and Ahmadinejad as a pathological liar.  Here are the religious nuts claiming that people who refuse the H1N1 will be put in internment camps and suing schools over Harry Potter books. Here they are saying that we need to be more explicit about what homosexuality entails to fight the “gay agenda”.

You can contrast that against the tea parties, which barely mentioned cultural issues at all and focused heavily on the economy.

What is most amazing is that the GOP clearly believes that this lunatic fringe is going to propel them back into power. Even the most generous assessment would be that they feel the need to cater to this rabble.  Bachmann may be the YouTube Darling of Right Wing Lunacy, but Huckabee isn’t; he finished second in the 2008 primaries.  McClintock is the governor California should have instead of Arnold.

It’s going to be a long eight years, guys.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

It’s frustrating to read the amateur armchair pop-psychology posts at various left-wing blogs trying desperately to link any criticism of Obama to his skin color.  It’s really gotten bizarre.  Now it’s not even the rejection of Obama’s ideas that prove racial malice in the opposition.  That meme is becoming untenable since it’s not like the opposition would be embracing national healthcare and big deficits under other circumstances.  No, now it’s the level of rancor that proves a racist motive.  Because we all remember the incredible dignity with which the public treated Bill Clinton (and George Bush for that matter).

But it’s even more frustrating when certain elements of the conservative movement are determined to hand Obama’s defenders a few truckloads ammunition.  Such as Rush Limbaugh.

Hey, look, folks, the white kid on that bus in Belleville, Illinois, he deserved to be beat up.  You don’t know about this story?  Oh, there’s video of this.  The school bus filled with mostly black students beat up a white student a couple of times with all the black students cheering.  Of course the white student on the bus deserved the beating.  He was born a racist.  That’s what Newsweek magazine told us in its most recent cover.  It’s Obama’s America, is it not?  Obama’s America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now.  You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, “Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he’s white.  Newsweek magazine told us this.  We know that white students are destroying civility on buses, white students destroying civility in classrooms all over America, white congressmen destroying civility in the House of Representatives. 

(Race was not a factor in the bus incident; it was simple bullying, which is bad enough.)

The most generous possible interpretation of those remarks is that Rush is saying that since criticism of Obama is seen through the lens of racial agitation, we should see the bus incident through the lens of racial agitation.  He’s basically parroting Al Sharpton with the colors inverted.

But the point of Al Sharpton is that he is race-mongering moron.  The response to that is not imitation.  Appealing to fears of anti-black racism may be misguided or wrong or foolish.  But appealing to fears of anti-white racism is an entirely different level of ugly.  It’s a deliberate and calculated baiting of mindless fear.  It plays into an ugly past when blacks were portrayed as predating on helpless white people and real-life racists like George Wallace had real-life power and could rally votes by defending segregation in most vile supremacist terms.

Let’s stick to the point, people.  Obama’s policies are bad.  Let’s leave the race-baiting to the liberals.

Update: The White House is disagreeing with Carter that race is a motivating factor for the protests and downplaying the race card.  It’s a smart move by Team Obama.  Of course, when the Bush White House did this, Sullivan called it the “slime and pivot”: right wing organizations would be nasty to Democrats and the White House would denounce it (see Truth, Swift Boat Vetarans for).  It’s easy to not play the race card when you have six million lefty blogs that will do it for you.  The real test will come when their facing re-election.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

I’ll have more on the President’s speech in the morning, when I’ve had time to think about it.  There was some stuff I liked and stuff I didn’t and some stuff that made me giggle.

But ... what the hell was up with Joe Wilson heckling the President?  I’m all in favor of calling the President out.  But there’s a time and a place, guys.  Could the GOP at least try not to look like a bunch of dipshits?  Please?

Update: I’m certain that this is not the first time a President has been heckled by a Member of Congress.  People’s political memories tend to be shorter than Leonard Shelby‘s.  I mean, for fuck’s sake, Senator Brooks once beat the shit out of Senator Sumner on the floor of the Congress (literally).  It was crass, no question.  But the “heavens to betsy” hanky-dropping, brow-clutching fainting routine is a bit much, guys.

Update: Wilson has apologized.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

So, only a month after Mark Sanford separated himself from the thoroughly hopeless Lindsey Graham, his potential Presidential campaign is, essentially, already over.

He and his wife can figure this out between themselves, and it’s to his credit that upon his return, rather than trying to weave an elaborate fiction and drag this process out, he came clean right away. Hiowever, this incident does really piss me off, simply because I’ve worked on campaigns in positions of sufficient responsibility to lead me to sympathize with how awful this must be for the people who depend on him for their livelihoods.

Reporter: “So, where is the Governor?”

Spokesman: “Hold on a moment, we’re still trying to come up with something plausible and unverifiable.”

Reporter: “What?”

Spokesman: “What I meant to say is, he’s hiking the Appalachian Trail.”

Reporter: “Where on the Appalachian Trail is he?”

Spokesman: “If I told you that, that would give you something to try to check out, and that would just raise further questions.”

Reporter: “Isn’t it Naked Hiking Day on the Appalachian Trail today?”

Spokesman: ”Whoa. Well, one thing I can say with absolute certainty is the Governor was completely unaware of that when we last saw him, completely unaware of that situation where the Governor is today, uh, on the Appalachian Trail. When he gets back, he’ll be just as surprised as we are, or, I mean, would’ve been surprised, when he learned of it, while he was there. Is there. Hiking. Now.”

Reporter: “We’ve just learned that the Governor was seen stepping off a plane from Argentina.”

Spokesman: ”Really?”

Reporter: “Yes.”

Spokesman: “Holy crap. I’m going to go update my resume and swing by Kinko’s. If any of your fine media outlets are interested in hiring a political analyst, you can get my email address at the door.”

The entire gubernatorial staff gets to go home and explain to their families why, instead of looking forward to a future in Washington, that there’s now a very good chance that they’ll be looking for new jobs at some point in the foreseeable future because the boss felt compelled to do, well, whatever it was, exactly, that he felt he needed to do with “Maria” without even bothering to try to figure out something workable with his staff before he left town. Meanwhile, the libertarian-leaning candidate that many of us were just starting to get used to is pretty much off the table.

I hope she was worth it.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Thought you folks would appreciate this. Despite the fact that I am no longer registered as a member of their party, the RNC sent us this silly, poorly written letter asking us to participate in a survey about Barack Obama’s agenda. First of all. FIRSTLY.

The entire introduction letter - THE WHOLE THING - Can you believe it? The whole thing was WRITTEN like this!

WITH DRAMATIC LINE BREAKS. DRAMATIC ones.

AFTER EACH SENTENCE and random things bolded and or italicized for emphasis. Also. Sentence fragments.

What should have taken a single side piece of paper and some of the back?

IT NOW TOOK...get ready for the shock of your life...did I mention the massive, ginormous amount of overblown hyperbole…

THREE PAGES!

Okay enough of that. The questions were as stupid and leading as you would expect. “Do you support illegal immigrants raping children while receiving free tax money to pay the rent in their McMansions while taking free courses at the local community center designed to teach them to be better rapists?” Well of course not you jackasses. Next time you want to lead me that hard you better put a god-damned bit in my mouth and a reach-around wouldn’t go unnoticed either.  Anyway. We answered the questions and mailed the stupid thing back:

Note the lack of a stamp. Hey, if the RNC were representing my interests maybe I’d feel more charitable toward them. As it stands I de-registered as a Republican in part because of the jackassery at the top of the leadership.  So no stamp. But we did include a personal message:

Like they care, right? Oh, and yes, they did ask for donations. And each survey has a tracking code, so I’m guessing my name is coming off that mailing list soon because A. I made them pay for the postage, B. I didn’t donate and C. I think Michael Steele is half a retard.

My apologies for using the “R” word there, but come on. That guy needs a frigging helmet.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

At the risk of sounding like I’m bashing the Republicans once again, allow me to bring you your daily dose of wingnuttery. Over at Balloon Juice, John Cole (boo, hiss, etc) notes that the Birthers are back. As he points out:

Putting aside the idiocy of the movement’s basis, but even their approach is wingnutty. If the idea is to pressure Obama and not give him a moment’s notice, why put up billboards in Des Moines and Seattle, when the man lives in Washington, DC? If you want him to see billboards, that would be the place to put them. Do the citizens of Des Moines have a special in with Obama? They can call him up and pressure him?

I suppose it makes some weird kind of sense since Iowa is an important state in the primaries. But even there, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless the would-be Republican nominee wants to throw themselves in with the kooks altogether. On a related post, Tim F. discusses how the fringe became the mainstream in the conservative movement, and how it has played out in conservative circles, especially on the Web:

At least since Palinmania! the same scene replays itself almost every time. For a while the commenters mostly agree that liberals are worse than cancer. Sadly, the happy reverie breaks as soon as some well-meaning board regular gently suggests that lining up behind such obvious idiots may prove less than useful, even taking into account that they piss off liberals. Inevitably commenter X (let’s call him ‘David Frum’) supported Republicans all his life and voted for Bush twice, for all the good that does him. Without fail the thread devolves into a prolonged search for why X can be dismissed.

Almost invariably the true believers bring up a wingnut litimus test that I call The List. D.F. must simultaneously oppose abortion (always), support torture, wiretapping and aggressive war, question evolution and doubt global warming, fear muslims, hate taxes and really hate government healthcare. If D.F. fails a single point on the list then he’s clearly a bogus conservative, anathema and unwelcome to taint the pristine boards with his heterodoxy. The question of the day (e.g., did Sarah Palin harm the ticket) usually makes a guest appearance on The List, conveniently anathematizing anyone who disagrees with the putative topic of the thread.

The List obviously isn’t just an internet phenomenon. Christopher Buckley, Colin Powell and, of course, David Frum faced more or less the same thing IRL. Heterodoxy is schism. That the DFs are perfectly right, and that true believers torment them for trying to save their own party* is what makes it so funny to watch.
....

Lunatics running the asylum has become cliche, but that is exactly what happened here. Republicans made a series of short-term grabs for this constituency or that for the votes to repeal the estate tax, kill Social Security and increase taxes on the poor/middle class, but somehow the chump constituencies got hold of the keys and took over the main office. Now the money class doesn’t trust Republicans and a drooling hodgepodge of xenophobes, nativists, torture fans, religious fanatics, racists and militiamen camped out in the cafeteria kicked Christopher Buckley to the curb.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

It is exactly this rise of the wingnuts that drove so many from the party, and from a movement that once embraced them. So what is the solution? Certainly, solid, basic conservatism itself needs no reforming-the message of limited government, personal freedom, and lower taxes still resonates with many. But right now the kooks are driving this train. As a result, those who could bring it back to sanity-like Jon Huntsman, for example-are now either overseas where they don’t have to deal with this BS or otherwise laying low. Or they have become independents. It’s a long, hard, road back to respectability from here on. Please, for the sake of all conservatives who would like to be Republicans again someday, can we find somebody besides the kind of people who are having orgasms over Dick Cheney to lead the movement-and the Party that once inspired us-back from the abyss?

Friday, May 22, 2009

As if you needed any more evidence that Cheney’s defenders are basically a bunch of kooks, or at least becoming desperate in their attempts to defend the creepiest guy on the planet, here’s Peter Kirsanow at NRO:

It would be interesting to see the results of a more finely calibrated poll, one that compares how well-respected, competent, and effective the subject is perceived to be relative to similarly situated individuals. As a friend succinctly puts it, “When that big asteroid finally heads toward Earth, who’s the person you’d most want to be in charge?” I suspect Cheney would score at or near the top.

Er, somebody should tell this clown that Hollywood already did that. And it was the black President who saved the world, not the Veep (who was virtually nonexistent in the film). But I guess Cheney would at least start torturing the asteroid if blowing it up didn’t work.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

And while the Democrats wimp out, the Republicans seem determined to keep the stupidity going:

Members of the Republican National Committee appear to have reached a compromise that would let GOP leaders avoid a possible dispute over a controversial resolution that calls on Democrats to re-name their party the “Democrat Socialist party.”

Steele has come out against the resolution, calling it “not an appropriate way to express our views on the issues of the day.” One of Steele’s allies on the committee, Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer, told CNN the resolution is “stupid” and “ridiculous.”

However, New Jersey committeeman David Norcross, one of the sponsors of the resolution, told CNN the language is being massaged so that Steele and others on the committee will be more receptive.

I really, really hope Steele stands his ground and tells these goofballs what to go do with themselves. At a time when many Democrats are bcoming as unhappy with Obama as they are, you’d think they’d look for common ground somewhere. But instead, they’re retreating into Karl Rove mode.

This is what happens when you have no real leadership, and no real ideas. You rapidly descend into self-parody.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Senator Lindsey Graham is the biggest idiot in the room, thoroughly alienating supporters at a South Carolina state GOP conference:

One heckler yelled out: “You’re a hypocrite!” Graham snapped back: “I’m a winner, pal!” When Paul supporters started to boo, Graham took them on:

“I am not a libertarian. If you are, you’re welcome to vote for me and build this party, but we’re not going to build this party around libertarian ideas...[I’m] a Ronald Reagan, Strom Thurmond, Lindsay Graham, Carol Campbell Republican, and winning matters to me. If it doesn’t matter to you, there’s the exit sign.”

Strom Thurmond?

That’s the name he chose to use here (in addition, weirdly, to his own)? This genius, who once told critics of Harriet Miers to “shut up”, who, as a leader of his party has led them to total defeat, wants to bill himself as a “Strom Thurmond Republican”? What the hell does that even mean?

These people need to be cast out. For good.

Update: South Carolina’s Governor disagrees.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Cheney goes there:

Asked about recent verbal broadsides between Limbaugh and Powell, Cheney said, “If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh. My take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican.”

Powell, who was secretary of state under President George W. Bush and held the nation’s top military post under President George H.W. Bush, endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president last year. Nonetheless, since the election he has described himself as a Republican and a right-of-center conservative, though “not as right as others would like.”
....

Cheney’s remarks on CBS’ “Face the Nation” were the latest step in his slow-motion estrangement from Powell since the two worked closely together to manage the Persian Gulf war in 1991 — Powell as the Army general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Cheney as defense secretary for the elder Bush.

Under the younger Bush, Powell initially backed action against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and delivered a famous U.N. speech laying out the U.S. case. But Powell and Cheney increasingly parted ways over the Bush administration’s policies on the war and terrorism, with Cheney usually prevailing. Powell left the administration after Bush’s first term.

Wading into the debate over the GOP’s future, Cheney called efforts by George W. Bush’s brother Jeb, along with Cantor and Romney, as “a good thing to do,” but set a limit on how far the party should go.

“The suggestion our Democratic friends always make is somehow if you Republicans were just more like Democrats, you’d win elections,” Cheney said. “Well, I don’t buy that. We win elections when we have good solid conservative principles to run upon.”

Does Powell deserve some criticism for being against the Iraq war after he was for it? Perhaps. And Cheney is right in that the Republicans could win with solid conservaive values-if they still had any. But this kowtowing to Maha Rushie is starting to get ridiculous, if not downright pathological, although I’m sure it will feed Rush’s ego even more. The Republican Party needs leaders if it wants to survive-not cranky old men declaring Maha Rushie as the spokesman for their party-or deciding who gets to be a member, and who doesn’t.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

I know I tend to oscillate on the issue of “purging” the GOP.  But that’s because I’m still thinking through where we need to go now that conservatism is in ruins as a political force.  Can we rebuild a big tent with the Religious Right and the big-government neocons?  Or is it time to smash everything to the ground and rebuild from scratch?

Up until recently, I favored the latter.  This was especially true because the “purges” were aimed at “RINOs” like John McCain—one of the few real conservatives in the Senate.  The big-government Religious Right didn’t want me and I didn’t want them.

But the game has changed over the last few months.  The Obama presidency—or more precisely, the unfettered Democratic Congress—is turning out worse than I’d thought.  For the moment, I’ll take votes against $17 trillion in debt from anyone.  That doesn’t mean I’m not going to punch when someone defends Bush’s record or unfairly attacks Obama or says something stupid (as you’ll see below).  But in purely practical terms, we need votes—even from the shitheads.

(I’ve been turning against “purges” for another reason.  I’ve realized that the biggest problem with the GOP over the last eight years had not been RINOs or the Religious Right, but leadership.  Reagan was able to get a conservative agenda through a mostly Democratic Congress.  He did this by controlling his own party and compromising with the Democrats without surrendering his principles.  Gingrich and Clinton were able to control spending with the same Congress that later went off the fiscal rails.  They did this through compromise and through Gingrich controlling his own party. A well-lead GOP could effectively oppose Obama’s worst policies, even with that asshole Arlen Specter as their 41st vote.  In the end, most politicians will follow any agenda as long as they can get re-elected.  The exact same Congress that went on a Bush-lead spending binge could have reigned in spending just as effectively.  But their leaders were uninterested, even after the 2006 thumping.  I’m still not convinced that their opposition to Obama is anything but pig-headed partisanship. But, at this stage, I’ll take what I can get.)

On the other hand ...

There are the occasional GOPers that I wouldn’t mind seeing on the next rocket to Pluto.  It’s not they are RINOs or that I’d rather have Democrats in their place.  It’s that any time they open their mouth, I want to hide under a table.  Rick Santorum was one.  Taking his place is House Court Jester and hand-picked crony of James Dobson, Michele Bachmann.  When not trying to figure out who is anti-American and who isn’t, she’s saying the dumbest things imaginable.  Here she is, telling us the global warming is fake because CO2 is natural.

Um, Michele?  Arsenic is natural too.  So is sulphur dioxide, sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid and blowfish poison.  In fact, water is about as natural as you can get, but thousands of people still drown in it.  There are many argument against global warming (and many more against liberal solutions to it), but “God made CO2” isn’t one of them.

Then there’s her latest and greatest—blaming Democrats for swine flu.  Because, you see, the last time Swine flu broke out was in 1976 when that famous Democrat—Gerald Fucking Ford—was President.  And since Obama is now President ... well, something.

I don’t want her purged from the GOP.  As repugnant as she is, we need her votes on certain issues.  But could someone please just stuff her into a closet and only let her out when we need a vote on something?  Every time she speaks, I can feel the GOP losing support in other states.

And will the residents of Minnesota please replace her in the next primary with someone less insane?  You fucking owe us, Minnesotans.  You’ve just about inflicted Al Franken on us.  You could easily find someone in her district with the same voting record and only 20% of the insanity.

Update: Today seems to be “Bash a Bachmann” day on the internet.  She was also denouncing FDR for the “Hoot-Smalley” tarriff act.  The real pain the ass?  She’s actually right.  Harding (not Coolidge) did respond successfully to a much sharper recession by rolling back government.  And Hoover’s (not FDR’s) Smoot-Hawley act was one of the most economically disastrous moves in American history.  But that salient point will be ignored by her mangling of history, reality and the English language.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Last week, George Will enrolled in The Peggy Noonan School of Misplaced Nostalgia with a bizarre column condemning those new-fangled blue jeans all the young hoodlums are wearing.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, [Akst] has denounced denim, summoning Americans to soul-searching and repentance about the plague of that ubiquitous fabric, which is symptomatic of deep disorders in the national psyche....Denim reflects “our most nostalgic and destructive agrarian longings—the ones that prompted all those exurban McMansions now sliding off their manicured lawns and into foreclosure.” Jeans come prewashed and acid-treated to make them look like what they are not—authentic work clothes for horny-handed sons of toil and the soil.

Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults ("Seinfeld," “Two and a Half Men") and cartoons for adults ("King of the Hill"). Seventy-five percent of American “gamers”—people who play video games—are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote. In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies (the six—so far—“Batman” adventures and “Indiana Jones and the Credit-Default Swaps,” coming soon to a cineplex near you). Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy’s catechism of leveling—thou shalt not dress better than society’s most slovenly.

Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. But the appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves.

Today it is silly for Americans whose closest approximation of physical labor consists of loading their bags of clubs into golf carts to go around in public dressed for driving steers up the Chisholm Trail to the railhead in Abilene. This is not complicated. For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don’t wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

Somewhere in there, Will has a legitimate point, in that lots of people are inappropriately casual. However, Will doesn’t say “at work” or “at church” or even “at the restaurant”. He’s not mad because someone wore jeans to a wedding or a funeral. No, he’s upset that he’s forced to endure seeing jeans anywhere “in public” at all, as if they were assless chaps.

Then there’s the subtle jab at the people who are, essentially, the conservative base. On one hand, Will seems to think that denim is the uniform of the man-child, tasteless and disrespectful. On the other, he proclaims it the domain of the manual laborer. If the only way you can reconcile those two claims is by reasoning that George Will thinks people who work hard for a living are, in turn, tasteless, disrespectful man-children, offensive to his delicate eyes, well, I’m right there with you.

Will even tries to suggest that his real point is that denim isn’t a practical necessity for routine life, and therefore should not be worn. In that case, though, I think he’d be hard-pressed to explain quite a few of Fred Astaire’s wardrobe choices.

Nevermind functionality: if you wore that hat or that bowtie in public today, you’d be waterboarded.

On April 16th, the day after tax day and the Tea Party protests, this was the nonsense consuming George Will’s column. If people want to know why the conservative movement is in disarray, all they need to do is look at the huge gulf between what typical American conservatives are worried about and what the Designated Conservative Thought Leaders (TM) are worried about that, somehow, leads them to share their daydreams about a return to an idealized 1950s that only existed in the movies.