Olio: Shut Up And Buy The Fucking Light Bulbs, Lady Edition

• Newt Gingrich's staff quits en masse over vacation time? What did they think he was running for, again? Forget the Party of Lincoln; these guys can't even live up to being the Party of Reagan.

• Oh, Christ: Virginia Postrel, "Need a Light Bulb? Uncle Sam Gets to Choose: Virginia Postrel. By Virginia Postrel. June 10

Reader, I'm assuming you're an adult, which means you're just as flummoxed as I by the phenomenon of people over 25, with IQs at or above bathwater, openly proclaiming themselves libertarian. I'm assuming you're aware that every man-made object you've touched today involved some degree of regulation by government, and that you probably understand why, and perhaps are even conversant with 19th century fatality rates from railroad and industrial accidents directly attributable to laissez-faire. Or, if you've only been paying attention since the dawn of the 21st century, you might recall how large-scale domestic processors of meat, eggs, spinach or peanuts have behaved when they thought no one was watching, let alone how the Chinese believed a soupçon of automotive solvents added that certain something to pet food.

What I'm saying is there is no way you can believe this shit and claim to've thought anything out. And in a country which has seen armed international conflict over the shooting of a pig, mass panic over a science-fiction radio broadcast, injury to hundreds of its citizens who thought a picture of a lemon on a free sample bottle of dish soap meant it would zest up a glass of iced tea, and the career of Sarah Palin, the Great Light Bulb Rebellion is absolutely the stupidest political movement of all time.

However, we're nothing if not a resourceful race, and there's nothing so dire, misinformed, or risible that mentioning The Ol' Perfesser can't make worse:

One serious technophile, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, spent much of 2007 flogging compact fluorescents on his popular Instapundit blog, eventually persuading more than 1,900 readers to swap 19,871 incandescent bulbs for CFLs. To this day, the Instapundit group is by far the largest participant at OneBillionBulbs.com, a bulb-switching campaign organized by the consulting firm Symmetric Technologies. But Reynolds himself has changed his mind.

“I’m deeply, deeply disappointed with CFL bulbs,” he wrote last month on his blog. “I replaced pretty much every regular bulb in the house with CFLs, but they’ve been failing at about the same rate as ordinary long-life bulbs, despite the promises of multiyear service. And I can’t tell any difference in my electric bill. Plus, the Insta-Wife hates the light.”

In my youth I would regularly run into calendar illustrations, magazine fillers, or textbook padders entitled "Can You Spot The Mistakes?", a sort of Ur-Where's Waldo? where some bucolic scene would be rife with pictorial inconsistencies: a rope swing would be suspended from a branch but not tied to it, a passing auto would be missing a wheel or the town clock a hand. Often the publisher would provide an official count, or there'd be a legend on page 125 you could turn to for closure. What do we make of those two paragraphs? "Serious technophile Glenn Reynolds"--how many mistakes is that? Reynolds flogging CFLs; Reynolds disappointed in CFLs, just so soon as the barking right seized upon them. The anecdotal failure rate (I been usin' 'em for three years or more, now, and I've replaced two: the one in the basement I hit with a broom handle, and the early, slow-to-light 15 watter I put in the foyer which proved inadequate), the advanced technophile who wonders why his electric bill hasn't been slashed. Insta-Wife. The clown isn't wearing any pants.

On a scale of 1 to 500,000,000, just how important was "the warm glow of incandescent bulbs" to the Delightful Mrs. Insty before the chilling, Orwellian nightmare that is CFL invaded her life, do you think?

Four million injustices, large and tiny, pass under our noses every waking minute. It's not just telling that the libertoonians in this country choose to focus on how easily one can forget to remove the safety seal before attempting to squeeze some ketchup on his fried okra, or the frustrating thirty seconds required to correct the situation (1. return bottle to upright. 2. put bottle down. 3. unscrew cap. Hey, who decided that had to be counter-clockwise, huh?); they have to choose to defend the free market imperatives of the very people who invented planned obsolesce in the first place. Edison's light bulb still burns. Assholes. Nobody got to vote on that, either.

(This just happens to be the day that Roy writes "I grow more convinced every day that libertarianism only exists to give young Republicans something marginally less repulsive to call themselves when they're trying to get laid." I checked Postrel's c.v. at the Wikithing, and was amused to find, yet again, the handwork of whatever dedicated Wikiaste who seems to follow every mention of someone's libertarian leanings with "or classical liberal". So I'm suggesting that "classical liberal" is what you call a libertarian who can't get it up anymore.)

• By the way, I liked the insta-punditry which claims that Gingrich's staff desertions clear the way for Rick Perry. First, because it's the sort of analysis that only analysts could believe; remember when Haley Barbour's insufficiency of belly-fire was going to benefit Mitch Daniels? Second, because of the "he's a Southerner" routine; there are plenty of reasons to disparage Southern politics without needing to invent any. Has Newt Gingrich ever won an election outside his home district? And, finally, the idea that there's some similarity between them other than Republican scumbaggery and the moral compass of a wharf rat. Perry may run--he may have already decided to run--and he might win--fuck, somebody has to--but if waiting for Newt Gingrich's staff to become available was part of that equation this couldn't have sped up his decision by more than a fortnight anyway.