Okay, Brooks, The Genie Grants You One Wish: Hippie For A Night Circa 1967, Or Teabagger Backstage At A Lee Greenwood Show. You Have Five Seconds.

David Brooks, "The Wal-Mart Hippies". March 4

I'M not sure which it is. For one thing, I'm so old now that I've long-since dealt with the dealing with the middle-aged (for me) recognition that Freud was, if anything, a hopeless optimist (and that, whatever else was wrong with that 30-volume fairy tale he spent his life on, it wasn't the Theory that Zum Dickvads neffer git ofer ze potty training). The fact that a goodly proportion of people on any given bus would lie to you, outright and without the barest hope of surviving minimal scrutiny, and just for the exercise, I learned so long ago that I don't remember exactly which junior high school girl gave me my first lesson. And that, of course, is just the amateurs.

On the other hand, even the withered charlatan observer of today's Wal*Mart of Ideas has to ask himself whether these time-honored behaviors really have increased exponentially over the past three decades, as it appears, or whether this is just an artifact of not confining one's time and attention to the Sane, Rational, or the Mildly Interesting, coupled with the de-advancement of communications technology. And no, we do not mean "Mildly Interesting" as in "it's mildly interesting that a sniveling, talentless, careerist hack gets a prime spot on the Op-Ed page".

(Brooks was pretty damned painful on Colbert this week, for that matter, something that wasn't helped by Stephen choosing to play up Brooks' "moderate" credentials. For some reason this must have appeared, if not Comedy Gold, perhaps the one way to get Brooks to play it straight. This failed miserably, of course, merely encouraging Brooks to join in the quipping contest, with increasingly dismal result. If that was the idea it was a complete misreading. Treating Brooks as though he is, rather than plays, a "moderate conservative" just puts him in his element, which is nowhere you want to be if your purpose is entertainment. Or information, but that's another matter. It was like having Foster Brooks as your guest, and warning the audience beforehand that you saw him backstage, and he might be a little inebriated. I suppose there's no chance at this point that Brooks will ever stop simpering--maybe it's the most natural thing there is about him; I don't know--which just highlights his passive-aggressive faux-moderate routine in a way that reminds you that some kids on the playground deserve to get picked on. Brooks doesn't just deserve a punch in the nose; he'd be improved by one, by the taste of his own blood in his mouth. He waltzes unscathed through the Newshour; he gets to write about how "serious" Afghanistan had become seven years after he'd been the worst whooping warflogger in print, the pep band kid taunting the losing football opponent from row 27, in between hits on his asthma inhaler. Honestly, Brooks doesn't deserve the Pass, and god knows phony "moderate conservatism" doesn't. )

Everybody know about this POS by now? Teabaggers are just like Hippies--I mean the New Left--because they don't like The Establishment and their tailors are de trop. Hating the Establishment, to Brooks, is the same thing as not knowing the Establishment, which he's sure they'd love if someone could just teach 'em enough manners that they could be invited to the Hamptons for the weekend.

There are many differences between the New Left and the Tea Partiers. One was on the left, the other is on the right. One was bohemian, the other is bourgeois. One was motivated by war, and the other is motivated by runaway federal spending.

Y'know, Dave, the anti-war movement opposed Vietnam when a Democrat was running things, and then when a Republican-Psychopath was. When the Teabaggers demonstrate their opposition to federal spending of whatever stripe, while Bush III is running it, not after he's become a liability to Their Side, then the similarities will be more striking than the differences.

One went to Woodstock, the other is more likely to go to Wal-Mart.

One wore Tea Shades; the other carries Tea Bags. One failed Drug Tests; the other passes Purity Tests. One "grooved" on "Free Love"; the other is a collection of knuckle-walking Troglodytes with handguns in place of penises. Thanks, I'm here all week.

But the similarities are more striking than the differences. To start with, the Tea Partiers have adopted the tactics of the New Left. They go in for street theater, mass rallies, marches and extreme statements that are designed to shock polite society out of its stupor. This mimicry is no accident. Dick Armey, one of the spokesmen for the Tea Party movement, recently praised the methods of Saul Alinsky, the leading tactician of the New Left.

Okay, one: if there was some way to put Dick Armey, Dick Cheney, and Phil Gramm in a cage and determine who was the biggest lying shitbag, preferably involving the death of the other two, who would you bet on? How would anybody handicap that? Two: I keep hoping someone with the rights to the Alinsky estate will pull a Graceland™, and start suing every goddam wingnut who mentions him for copyright infringement. Seems like poetic justice.

But mostly this: that "extreme statements designed to shock". This is how the "moderate" Republican chooses to portray the ill- negatively-informed gun-tottin' chuckleheads who've overrun his party after they spent twenty years as sure votes and credulous consumers. They're performance artists, is what. It's like guerilla theatre, except in place of Left wing politics you have utter cluelessness, marching orders taken from disingenuous loons on th' teevee, and a belief that Barack Obama is the Kenyan Hitler. Seems like a reasonable comparison.

And look, I understand why Brooks, like Douthat, feels really threatened, in a way he didn't when the purest eight-year test of an ideology in the nation's history--that's Mr. Brooks' ideology, as well as Mr. Friedman's, Mr. Reagan's, and Mr. Bush's--produced, well, the most colossal disaster in the nation's history. What I don't understand is, after Bush II cemented the final nail in the coffin of foreverness, who th' fuck is supposed to be listening, aside from the other shit-scared plutocrats who suddenly found out they're the bottoms?

IS there anything else in American cultural or political life to which Brooks affords this sort of innate seriousness? Certainly nothing on the Left has ever been entitled to it, unless he's doing one of those periodic "I read in Psychology Today pieces that explain why the Left is still wrong even if it is right" pieces. (Because "Conservatism" has its finger on the Truth about Human Nature, y'know. Sorry to give away the ending.)

These days the same people who are buying Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals” on Amazon.com are, according to the company’s software, also buying books like [blah blah blah blah Hillary Clinton George Soros blah blah blah]. Those last two books were written by David Horowitz, who was a leading New Left polemicist in the 1960s and is now a leading polemicist on the right.

Which goes to prove that the laws in the US governing the public use of "leading polemicist" are the same ones governing the use of "North Atlantic Cod".

But the core commonality is this: Members of both movements believe in what you might call mass innocence. Both movements are built on the assumption that the people are pure and virtuous and that evil is introduced into society by corrupt elites and rotten authority structures. “Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains,” is how Rousseau put it.

I will give the man his due: Brooks gets more out of a Cliff Notes tour of PoliSci 101 than any other Canadian-born practitioner of Right Wing Satyagraha* living or dead.

Because of this assumption, members of both movements go in big for conspiracy theories. The ’60s left developed elaborate theories of how world history was being manipulated by shadowy corporatist/imperialist networks — theories that live on in the works of Noam Chomsky.

Teabaggers have Ideas, however misguided; towering Left-wing intellectuals have theories. And outdated ones at that. And you just know Brooks was smiling that Retirement Community Salesman's smile when he typed it.

In its short life, the Tea Party movement has developed a dizzying array of conspiracy theories involving the Fed, the F.B.I., the big banks and corporations and black helicopters.

One: like those theories aren't the goddam building materials the Republican sump pump was constructed of fifty years ago. Two: like no sane person could imagine the Fed, the major investment banks, and Trans-Global Multi-Mega Butt Rape & Associates could possibly be involved in any shenanigans.

Because of this assumption, members of the Tea Party right, like the members of the New Left, spend a lot of time worrying about being co-opted. They worry that the corrupt forces of the establishment are perpetually trying to infiltrate the purity of their ranks.

So neither of 'em wanted you? We know. You wanted to go skinny-dipping with that hippie chick in '77, but Mater insisted you get home by 3:45 sharp, and, besides, she went with that Senior with the unicorn mural on his van. Let's move on.

Because of this assumption, members of both movements have a problem with authority.

And again, just like that problem with federal spending run amok, I'll believe this when the Teabaggers have a problem with authority being exercised over other people, not just themselves, their penis substitutes, and the corporations they admire.

Recently a piece in Salon astutely compared Glenn Beck to Abbie Hoffman

Zzzt…wha? Sorry, I must've dozed off there. Nothin' like getting the definitive history from some other guy who wasn't there, and you know you can trust a capsule biography of Abbie Fucking Hoffman written by some "Centrist" sinecure with a chip on his shoulder about the battle over Western Civ at Stanford. (And who, into the bargain, lets us know that this sort of lunacy associated with liberalism is why decent, middle-of-the-road Americans [such as, uh, himself] were drawn to the intellectual model of the Republican party, once William of Buckley slew the Birchers. In other words, he chose his political affiliation by the same method normal men use to choose the width of their ties or the style of their sunglasses. And we are not just supposed to understand this. We're supposed to fucking applaud it.)

Okay, fine. It doesn't deserve it, but let's just answer this. Hoffman was a huckster. Beck is a prostitute. Hoffman was a witty and occasionally wise one; Beck is a particularly shameless and successful one. I got to the party late, m'self, but I knew people who were in Lincoln Park in '68, and people whose politics were leftward of Tom Hayden, and I never knew anyone who claimed Hoffman (let alone Jane Fonda), as an inspiration, and certainly not a "leader". The only person I knew who owned Steal This Book was a steel-town trades union socialist who had, in fact, stolen it, or so he said. If I go to Barnes & Noble right this minute I'll find four feet of Beck's pickled puss staring back at me in the Current Events section, and if I follow the first person who buys one and engage him in a political conversation I guarantee 90% of what comes out of his mouth will be a Telephone game away from directly quoting the Big Man or his henchliars on FOX. And the length of time required to elicit either a racist remark, or some snopes-worthy lunacy, assuming I try, will be measured in seconds, not minutes, extrapolating from the ones I happen to know. The most doctrinaire Marxist of the New Left era may have been wrong, wrongheaded, or a terminal prevaricator, but the thing he couldn't be is smugly cocooned inside his own alternative reality. He didn't have the luxury. He trucked through a country where he and his kind were The Enemy. Your Teabagger, product of three decades of Reagan On The Fifty and fingers in the ears whenever the Impure were speaking, imagines himself to be The Real America.

And you Reagantots believe this because it was force-fed you in infancy, and because you never bothered to distinguish between what you were told and the motives behind the telling. Like Randianism, this sort of thing can be excused through age twenty-two or so, for late bloomers, but no further. To suggest, in middle age and after most of the dust has settled, that Buckley and Goldwater are not forever tainted by a racism too vile to be excused even by the standards of their own day, or that the baldfaced history of the United States propping up European colonialism throughout the 20th century, or its willingness to use nuclear proliferation and nuclear brinkmanship to further economic aims, which were then divorced by Buckley/Goldreagan from benefitting 95% of Americans even economically is somehow beneath your notice because Abbie Hoffman wore shirts you wouldn't be caught dead in, is simply inexcusable. Even, or especially, for paid mouthpieces.

Sure, sure, it's the nature of the beast that you'll say anything to maintain the illusion that the people in power are doing your bidding. Might be worth a whirl or two around the dance floor, except it follows the pure and pervasive Goat Fuck of the past decade. (Not that I'm suggesting anyone needed to wait for the Bush-Cheney administration for an empirical test; it's just that thanks to the last administration, and Goldman Sachs, the Emperor's been caught on tape, tried, convicted and sentenced for Public Nudity.) It's just a mite curious how this "philosophy" predicated on Original Sin seems to be blind in one eye. Your vision's 20/20 when it comes to the Unintended Consequences of liberalism, but call up the results of unbridled capitalism and you can't see the blackboard. You're wise enough to lecture Teabaggers on their theological error, but too incurious to note the contribution of multiple wars and trillions in unnecessary military gizmos and axiomatic overkill to the National Debt. There was a time this Reagan worship was just a maddening tic of the improperly toilet trained. Today, with a cesspool the size of ten S&L scandals, and two more Vietnam-like defeats--two you keep insisting are successes so long as you say so, the way an earlier seraglio of warfloggers insisted we didn't lose Vietnam, we weren't allowed to win! later, revised for the next generation of indifferent student, as forced to pull out just when we were winning!--none of which can be blamed on Abbie Hoffman's bell bottoms, in which you have both feet planted up to the neck, it is simply contemptible. The Teabaggers are yours, in a very real sense, not the sense in which political opponents and conniving Scoop Jackson Democrats pinned the Hoffman on the Donkey. There's nothing at a Teabagger rally that Ronald Reagan wouldn't or didn't campaign on, though he, like you, would have scrupled at drawing Hitler mustaches on Obama in the daylight. Teabaggers embarrass you, now? Pity they didn't when you thought you owned their votes. Pity no one taught you, back when all that PolySci bushwa got caught permanently in your brain, that the one and only solution for being covered in shit is coming clean.

________________

* Right Wing Satyagraha differs from its better-known progenitor in that the practitioner vows to abstain from practicing violence himself, though he's free to encourage, cajole, or demand that others take care of it for him.

Over The Hump

Jessica Grose, "The Shame Cycle: The new backlash against casual sex". March 3

OKAY, before you say anything: it's Spring Training. Shagging fungos, a few limber-up tosses against the side of the barn, snorting at the latest Slate XX Factorish idiocy; get the juices flowing (oh, sorry) without any real exertion. Cycle of Life. Cycle of Shame. Vortex of Stupid.

Needless to say, Ms Grose, I'm not a member of your generation, with its hook-ups and its iPods and its apparently inability to write 800 words without referencing a plotline from Sex and the City, or some other piece of pop-culture flotsam, as though it were more real than what's real. I'm old. I've made it through five decades without confusing Universal Truth with the contents of your diary, and, forgive me, I intend to continue.

The current raft of regret seems to be a response to the Girls Gone Wild archetype of the late '90s and early aughts. Ariel Levy described the new era's version of sex positive in Female Chauvinist Pigs, "a tawdry, tarty, cartoonlike version of female sexuality has become so ubiquitous, it no longer seems particular." We were supposed to dance on tables like Paris Hilton and wear ass-baring chaps and hump the floor like 22-year-old Christina Aguilera did in her "Dirrrty" video, or at least find that sort of thing appealing, otherwise we were marmish prudes. We were supposed to go to strip clubs and wear Playboy necklaces around our necks—as Sex and the City star Carrie Bradshaw did.

Okay, hold up. You were "supposed to" ? I find this omnipotent They--ubiquitous Corrupter of Teenage Morality and Denier of Jonah Goldberg the Right to Dislike Negroes in Print--to be a major puzzlement, since I can't find hide nor hair of Them (although you and Douthat occasionally link to Feministing as though you think it's part of Their legal team), but you can't walk ten paces without tripping over someone They've corrupted. Yet no one ever seems to blame Christina Aguilera personally, nor her handlers, marketers, and puppeteers; they're engaging in commerce. They aren't They.

Who made you or anyone else watch, let alone like it, emulate it, accept it as anything other than Yet Another Consumerist Shitwad somebody hurled at you in hopes of making a buck? Nobody taught you to duck? Fer chrissakes, you were not a bobbysoxer forced to choose between Race records on the wireless and polite society, nor an Ur-feminist told to go fetch the coffee. You didn't suddenly find yourself in a world torn apart by global war, with centuries of racial and sexual prejudices crumbling around you, if not threatening to fall on your head. You found yourself in front of the teevee watching music videos and celebrity trash news. Christina Aguilera did not rise naked from the Sea; she came from the New Fucking Mickey Mouse Club. That wasn't enough to tip you to something?

Nothing--certainly not They--kept you from ignoring all that, as much as humanly possible. Nothing kept you from recognizing the cheap and tasteless for the sideshow it is. I realize that almost no one escapes unscathed; I myself once owned a paisley tie. But please, really, Paris Hilton made me do it? Then you fucking deserved whatever it was, and a horsewhipping after. Count your blessings.

But after a while, we did not really want to do any of those things anymore, as Tina Fey explained in an interview with Vogue earlier this year. We have been handed "a sort of Spice Girls' version of feminism. We're supposed to be wearing half-shirts and jumping around. And, you know, maybe that's not panning out." Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis was put in jail. Christina Aguilera married a nice Jewish boy and had a baby. She's been replaced on the pop charts by 19-year-old virginal chanteuse Taylor Swift, who sings chaste love songs about Romeo and Juliet. Paris Hilton is rarely in the tabloids and we haven't seen her nether regions in years. Finally, the fictional Carrie Bradshaw is wed and living a New York domestic fantasy.

Jesus Christ, Tina Fey is fucking forty years old; if she's jumping around in half-shirts and sleeping with drunken soft-drink reps there's something wrong with her the Spice Girls didn't have anything to do with.

So maybe no one's said this to you before, for some reason, but you're getting older. You're turning middle-aged. See if you can't do so with a little more grace and self-awareness than you evinced when turning into a sexual being. They made you dress like Mel C.; now they want you to be Taylor Swift (and look, ixnay on the Romeo and Juliet crap. Swift was a talented youngster snapped up, sadly, by the Country Music and Sausage industry. This means the odds are almost prohibitive that she'll remain chaste and virginal until her first album that doesn't meet expectations. Knock fuckin' wood, but ask Tanya Tucker. Ask the Chaste-Until-Marriage Britney Spears). Cover your ears. Avert your gaze. Go read a book that isn't a memoir or thinly-veiled novel about yourself.

But mostly, stop this:

After all, Klausner is a feminist who doesn't believe there is anything wrong with casual sex.

Kate H. Millet, I don't think there's much if anything wrong with 98% of the items on the Psychotropic Substances Act of 1978, either, but it doesn't mean I think they should be freely handed out to grade schoolers, nor that everybody who ever eats peyote will enjoy a technicolor dreamtrip to the stars. "Not believing there's anything wrong" with something is a far cry from insisting that Nothing Can Ever Gro Wong. Believing that traditional matrimony and gender stereotyping have been employed to bully and subjugate Women is not the same thing as deciding every female nurse is a tool of the Patriarchy, every woman lumberjack a lesbian, and the best thing one can do about it is sleep with anything with a pulse. Some might think all those things, but attributing that to Feminism just because you can't tell the difference between Paris Hilton and a real person is just full of it.

And for the life of me, I don't understand why. If an aging demirep decides to make a few bucks writing the autobiography of her cervix, what are her options? If she's a terrific writer she might get published. If she's got the goods on George Clooney or Eliot Spitzer, or, preferably, a half-dozen assorted, she will get published. Otherwise she hangs it on Society and schlepps it around. So what? She had it both ways (sorry, again), but only one of her gets to cash the royalty checks. The fact that Sadder But Wiser, Inc., gets the book deal doesn't mean the Happy Sluicer had the weaker argument.

Fer chrissakes, the fact that some woman somewhere slept with a bunch of losers at the behest of E! doesn't begin to counteract the number of people kept in loveless or brutalizing marriages this week by the Church. What Feminism fought to provide you is the right to choose for yourself. And you took the opportunity to watch some teevee?

And They Say Compromise Is A Lost Art

NEWS ITEM: Confederate Rep. Patrick McHenry, McNamesake of the great Southern patriot Patrick "Give Me Liberty, Or Give Me Death, And If You Happen To Need Me During The Actual Shooting Part I'll Be Home Straightening Out This Damnable Filing System" Henry, proposes replacing U.S. Grant on the fifty dollar bill with Ronald Wilson Reagan:

"President Reagan was a modern day statesman, whose presidency transformed our nation's political and economic thinking," McHenry said in a statement. "Through both his domestic and international policies he renewed America's self confidence, defeated the Soviets and taught us that each generation must provide opportunity for the next."

And, in the spirit of that convincing argument, and the accidental choice of the fifty ("McHenry says it's only logical for Reagan to replace Grant on the $50 bill because several historians have ranked Reagan as a much better president than Grant. McHenry specifically cites a 2005 Wall Street Journal survey of scholars who placed Reagan at No. 6 and Grant at No. 29.") I'm hoping to get in early on the design competition:



I've got a few other ideas, just in case that one doesn't meet with the same universal acclaim the Reagan Presidency has received from serious scholars:

1) Put him on a cardboard cutout of the fifty.

2) Create a $65.07 bill, since that's what it took to buy $50 worth of stuff once he was finished.

3) Create a bill that's 3.8 times larger than the present bill, since that's what he did to the Federal deficit. Insist you're making the bill smaller, while you do so. Gee I love nostalgia.

4) Announce that the fifty is now worth $70 when the bearer's personal wealth is in the top 1% .

5) Put Reagan on the fifty, but eliminate the Bureau of Engraving and Printing before you make any.

6) Just fucking announce that is Reagan on the fifty. Th' fuck does reality have to do with it?

7) Dye the damn thing orange.

Is It Too Soon To Start Talking About The Douthat Curse?

You see through the peephole that this

is the guy ringing your doorbell. You:

A) Look for the earplugs.

B) Try to figure out where your Poor Wife hid the ammo.

C) Open the door just long enough to say, "Thanks, I already know God's plan for my salvation."

D) Open the door and sell him a $ billion POS privatization of Indiana's Family and Social Services Administration, sweetening the deal, if necessary, with the possibility of a peek up Ann Coulter's skirt or an upgrade to Starfleet Admiral.

SO the same day the Teenager Who Co-Saved the Republican Party touts Mitch "The Bantam Menace" Daniels for President, local Channel 13 suddenly awakens from a five year, We Got Eastern Daily Savings Time and $ Millions of Daniels' Campaign Ad Buys-induced slumber to notice that the Daniels administration job creation numbers are, I believe the legal term is "like Twinkie filling, but with more air".

Those numbers are being husbanded by serial boondoggler E. Mitchell "Isn't This Enough Evidence To Keep Anyone Named 'Mitch' Th' Hell Away From Government, Ever" Roob (rhymes with "sociophobe"), Jr. (above). Roob's the guy who ramrodded the privatization of Indiana's FSSA to Affiliated Computer Services, which just happened to be his former employer; it was the deft way Mitch Daniels disassociated himself from that billion-dollar stinkbomb--two years later, and after the contract had been paid up--which so impressed Young Douthat the other morning. As is so often the case, sadly, in modern life, Poor Mitch Roob was scapegoated for that complete and utter disaster just because he was to blame, a situation the Governor remedied by finding Roob a niche as Indiana Secretary of Commerce. I admit this was a canny move, as I, for example, not only completely lost track of him, I can't say I ever remember that Indiana has a Secretary of Commerce, let alone why; this sort of thing always seems to escape the attention of keen-eyed, Business Model budget slashers and Big Gubment opponents, most of whom must realize that, as with most executives, the real work's being done by his secretary and the receptionist, and we could get the two combined to handle the job for just the raise Daniels gave Roob when he kicked him upstairs.

Anyway, the Indiana Secretary of Commerce (Roob's predecessor was a woman who designs handbags. And not the sort of handbag which makes you say, "Boy, was that handbag ever designed!")

is also CEO of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, which is a good deal, since basically that is what Daniels changed the name of the Indiana Department of Commerce to the minute he took office, on the grounds that "Commerce" is something a few behind the times--like all Daniels opponents--Constitutional scholars believe can be regulated, and because somebody in Legal talked him out of "The Ronald Reagan Department of Reaganomics Corporation". In other words, the Indiana Secretary of Commerce does not actually have a portfolio, just a "CEO" for his letterhead, a webpage, and steady work supervising the enormous number of apples which must be polished to overcome Mitch Daniels' personal loathsomeness.

And polish he did; Channel 13 says 40% of the jobs he touts are vaporwork.

Mitch refused comment on the story, until yesterday, which is really what I wanted you to see: the Cornered Rodent Petulance when someone dares question his superior brain is Back! The fact that Daniels was willing to risk breathing the same air as mere mortals, something he last did at the 2008 State Fair, just before Election Day, is highly suggestive that he still imagines he's got something to lose. And look, we keep tellin' ya it's Chief of Staff, unless Chamber of Commerce hod-humpers like Douthat and Rich Lowry don't wise up and stop feeding his Ego.

In case you weren't counting, Mitch made five claims there, and the only one which isn't total bullshit was "in a Recession some jobs don't materialize". It should be fun seeing him on the national campaign trail. I hope so, at least; it'd be the first time I'd ever enjoy listening to him. And you've got to wonder how many Daniels provocations Mitt Romney already has on ice, or how long Mitch could stay on his podium box if some Teabagger or other started making with the catcalls.

By the way, there's no truth to the rumor that I was planning on waiting until the end of the post to suggest that Roob's Nosferatu-like survival skills in the Daniels administration have anything whatsoever to do with his (Roob's) having been COO of the Indianapolis Water Company just when Daniels and a few dozen insiders unloaded the stock right before it--and thousands of its pensioners' retirements--crashed on news the city of Indianapolis was hell-bent on taking it over so it could be privatized. Daniels was the only one who emerged unscathed, because he was only following orders to unload the stock before he took over the OMB. Just like Cheney. Because I haven't a scintilla of evidence. And I can't plan that far ahead.

The Stupidest Thing Anyone Other Than Jonah Goldberg Has Ever Written

Rod Dreher, "Why I hate buying wine in PA". February 28

M. BOUFFANT points at this thing and laughs from the comments section of World O'Crap, which leaves me no choice but to read it. Dreher:

So here's what happened. A friend was coming over to for a drink last evening, and he said he'd like to drink some dry Riesling. I don't drink much Riesling, so I wasn't confident in my ability to find a particularly dry one. At least I know that Alsace makes some nice dry Rieslings. I stood over in the small German wine section, looking at the whites. I've had Trimbach before, which is pleasant and dry, but I wanted to ask the manager for guidance.

Okay, so it's probably easier if we just keep track of the idiocies as they occur. So, one, we're agnostic on the question of whether guests should name their poison, or accept what is offered with grace, though we personally tend to the latter. We believe, further, that the duty of a decent host is to have a reasonable selection on hand which covers the basic needs of guests known and unknown: vodka, gin, whiskey, all of mixing quality unless one is flush, or particular; rum, tequila, entry-level Highland malt, depending on whether one expects knowledgeable bibblers or late adolescents. We like the tradition of a House Drink: in summer here the casual drinker will be offered a vodka and pink lemonade, in winter tawny Port, or the specialities of applejack and gingerale or a Café Gates, respectively.

Not wine, generally, aside from that fortified warmer-upper. Chilled white (or Beaujolais) is a fine cocktail substitute in warm weather, but in cold, in the abominable blast-furnace heat of the standard American home it's counter-indicated unless you're in the habit of adding ice cubes. Have a Pepsi. For those who think young.

Or have what you like; I don't really give a shit. It's just that the propensity to treat wine like a low-alcohol cocktail blurs its enjoyment. Wine is food, not liquor, and even the simplest and most quaffable will improve from some reasonable food pairings. I am as unlikely to say to you, my evening's host, that I'd like some dry Riesling as I am to say I'll have Rouen duck, and I'll be listening to the Prague Symphony. If I want it too badly to go without I'll bring it. I'll bring two.

And wine is an agricultural product. There's no such thing as drinking "dry Riesling"; there's only drinking bottles of Riesling, some of which have been fermented dry or near-dry by winemaker's choice, most of which are sweet for the same reason. And the perception of dryness will be influenced by accompaniments, if any, the temperature of the wine, your mood, the (shudder) company, any number of things. In short, the first error belongs to Rod's guest, who should have brought his own, or, failing that, should not have sent Rod Dreher off with such scanty instructions, it being Rod Dreher an' all.

Second, faced with this dilemma, whether victimized by cruel fate, importuned by thoughtless guest, or hoist on your own petard, there's a little-known resource called The Internet, which sources tell me has already reached Philadelphia. Look it th' fuck up. There are three ways to buy Rieslings with damn near absolute assurance it will be, or come across as, "dry": buy Alsatian (it's part of France, Rod, not Germany, though the wine shop clerks might not realize it either); buy German wines marked "trocken" or "halbtrocken" (the latter will contain some sugar, but in small enough amounts the average palate won't detect it); or find a West Coast wine which you are certain is made dry, like Bonny Doon's. The problem there is, there being so many Californias to choose from, the odds of you finding the precise wine you're looking for are reduced. And the Germans might be a little problematic, too, since dry wines are a small proportion, and small market-share, of their production. You were right the first time. Th' fuck were you trying to accomplish asking "expert" advice?

And th' fuck did you assume that some guy in a liquor store was a wine expert?

The polite and eager to please man led me out of the German section and over to the American wine section, then pointed out two domestic Rieslings. Huh? Boy, that's uncharted territory for me. I told him I wanted a rather dry one. I made that crystal clear. He said that the Columbia Winery Cellarmaster's Riesling was the drier of the two. OK, I guess I'll take a chance on that.

Lessee, a guy you don't know ushered you away from the one area where you knew you could find what you wanted, took you someplace where you had no idea, where there were two selections, and he told you the one was "drier" than the other. You're in like Flynn, far as I can tell.

Opened it last night with my friend and took a sip. It was the sweetest white wine I've tasted since the last time I had dessert wine, and the sweetest white non-dessert wine I've had since my last bottle of Blue Nun my freshman year of college. I really don't like sweet wine at all, and this was undrinkable to me. My friend agreed, comparing it to Welch's grape juice. What does this wine store manager (!) drink if he thinks this is dry? Benadryl? I went to the vineyard's website to look up this wine, on the chance that as Rieslings go, this might count as dry, or at least semi-dry. What do you think the first two words used by the winery to describe this product are? "Sweet wine."

Okay, I don't drink wine like I usta. I don't go to tastings or hunt down new releases, and I never bought whites except as a specific match for a specific dish. So it's been a good decade since I had Columbia Cellarmaster's Riesling, and I've no idea what's happened to it in the interim, or what vintage Mr. Dreher and guest spat out. Back then, at least, it was a fairly notable bargain: apricot, honey, and floral notes with reasonable acidity, not something found in every North American riesling. I honestly don't remember how sweet it was, because I don't go into an OhmiGod, OhmiGod Blue Nun! freakout every time I taste some sugar; it was well within the range of Acceptable Winemaker Decision for the wine, or I'd've remembered that. Yes, if you were (foolishly or no) expecting dry a gulp of sugar would be even worse, but so far as I know that wine deserves high praise, not the opprobrium of idiots having a Class Panic attack.

Blue Nun! I drank that in college, when I wasn't nearly the connoisseur I've grown to be, or demand to speak to in wine shops. Don't confuse me with someone who doesn't know what he's doing! I mean, make no mistake: the reason for the bias against sweetness in wine is status-driven illiteracy; because cheap wine is made more palatable by sweetening, types like Dreher "learn" that dry is the "correct" choice, thereby consigning 95% of the great German wines, which stand with the best whites on the planet, the noble Sauternes and the voluptuous vin santo, bright muscat and demi-sec Champagne, to the dumpster behind Manny's Cork and Brew.

And, okay, the clerk shouldn't have pretended expertise where he obviously had none. If he'd've been honest about it you'd have written the same damn column, except about what an outrage it was that he couldn't help, but he'd have the satisfaction of knowing you couldn't bring it back and demand a refund.

And I've no idea whether you spoke the the manager or someone else, but I'm guessing even the manager of a Pennsylvania liquor store isn't planning early retirement. Do you imagine the state allows him to open any bottle of wine at will and "inform" himself about it? What did that bottle go for? Twelve bucks? If he buys at cost, how much would it set him back to sample every wine in the store, and how long would it take him? Do you imagine people with that sort of knowledge are lined up three deep hoping for clerks' jobs? Fuck that. I come from a teetotaling Midwestern family. Took me three years and several thousand 1970s dollars, plus some hard work, to begin to learn about wine. Why would someone do that for a subsistence-wage job? Just so their one meeting with you will be everything you expect it to be? A wild stab has it that the guy you foolishly relied on steered you to the most popular Riesling in the joint. And that the practice works for him 98.7% of the time. It's the obligation of the owner--here, the state--to make that info available to the people it hires and cannot expect to bring that knowledge to the job, or carry it around with them. Turning even store managers--it's not a lifetime appointment, is it?--into wine experts would be prohibitively expensive, and you'd be writing about how unfairly expensive the stuff is. It's reasonable to expect that a clerk won't pretend to know something he doesn't (but if you believe he's free to tell you the truth, rather than what his boss--state, corporation, or blessed entrepreneur--wants him to tell you I've got no idea how you made it to forty). And it's not reasonable to expect him to be a walking encyclopedia of wine knowledge--a subject worth a lifetime's study--any more than it's reasonable to expect a gas station owner to diagnose your engine problem over the phone, or, apparently, the Dallas Morning News to hire opinion writers who have opinions worth a bottle of dry spit.

But I didn't take this on just to air out my inner Andy Rooney. I can do that with much less provocation. It's this:

But there's a serious point here about economics and the law. The state's legal monopoly over the sale of wine creates a situation in which sales clerks don't have to know jack-squat about the products they sell. There is no competition to make them give better service to the customer. I had a bad experience yesterday that's going to result in me going back there today to ask for a refund; I'm still steamed over a ruined social event because the manager, whom I'd asked for advice, sold me the wrong wine.

Jesus H. Vishnu, what fucking idiocy. I knew Pennsylvania had state-run stores. I didn't know working in one was a Civil Service gig. There's always competition for jobs, especially all the ones where you don't have to give a shit, or know anything, or where you get to spit in Rod Dreher's food.

Just for the record: the reason Pennsylvania has state-controlled stores is that it has that right under the 21st Amendment. The reason there's a 21st Amendment is that there was an 18th Amendment. The reason there was an 18th Amendment--one of 'em, anyway--is the Methodist Church. Try to think back two or three cults ago, Rod.

But this is a lesson in Randian economic juvenetics? Because no one's ever gotten bad service or bad advice at a privately-owned concern, right?

Lemme tell you a little story. I do know a little about wine. Enough so that I generally get assigned "wine selection" for my Poor Wife's family gatherings, mostly because they think that'll shut me up and I won't sneer at their own choices, which is simply not so. Anyway, the Christmas gathering last year was in the second week of December, and I decided I wanted a Cru Beaujolais for the red, since it's easy to like. There are five wine/liquor stores within a mile-and-a-half of my house; Indiana is a licensed premises/ licensed distributor state. You can add three or four grocery stores selling wine to that list, but asking anyone in them for "a dry Riesling" would be like asking them for a quizzid forticulamen, preferably gray, size 72. The first place I went to was the little wine-only specialty store up the block. I looked around without seeing any, then asked the woman--she and her husband are the owners--if they had any Beaujolais crus. "No, they didn't bring me any samples this year." This meant she hadn't understood my question, had focused on "Beaujolais", and thought I was asking for that Nouveau crap they rush out three days after the harvest every year, even though I don't think I looked any more demented that usual. "No, no, cru Beaujolais," I said. "I'm not familiar with that," she replied.

That's the owner of a wine business, and so far as I know neither Stalin nor Obama sentenced her to work there. I went across the street to the newly-opened outlet of the biggest chain in Central Indiana. There I interrupted the radio listening of a young man with nothing to do. "Do you have any cru Beaujolais," I asked, feeling satirical. "If we did it'd be on the floor," he said. Philosopher.

I then went to Indiana's biggest wine seller, now located in a glorified dirigible hanger a mile from my house. Poked around the French wing, found nothing whatsoever, was finally approached by a guy with "Manager" on his nametag. Cru Beaujolais? "We're sold out." Excuse me, but how can you be sold out of cru Beaujolias? "There was a big run on it this year." Oh, you mean Beaujolais Nouveau. "Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. You wanted…?" Cru Beaujolais, just as I said twice before. I was feeling a mite peevish by now. How 'bout telling me what you usually carry? "I'll have to look that up."

I know, Rod, that meant nothing whatsoever to you, but a basic recognition of the ten Beaujolais crus is something which ought to be expected of anyone who knows enough about wine to own a store dedicated to it, or to manage one where that's the main part of the business. Somehow, though, I managed to walk out without ever once thinking of Ayn Rand.

But you wanna make it about politics, fine. How come the poor schnook punching a time clock merits your ire, but not the wineries who game the system before you walk in the joint? You coulda bought "champagne" that had never left North America, "burgundy" that had never seen a pinot noir grape, or "chablis" as sweet as that dry Riesling, and with more in common with table grapes than Chardonnay. You could go to the grocery--I assume those are corporately owned in PA--and walked down the meat aisle filled with items whose safety inspection and grading are largely controlled by meat packers and cattlemen, and whose names--"Flatiron steak", "English roast", or the ever-popular "Chuck filet" are designed precisely to confuse you. You could pass them by and head for the fish, where "cod", by law, means "anything underwater", and "Dover sole" means "anything you can sell for $18.99/lb." Not to mention that back in the Crunchy Era anything claiming to be "organic" was certified morally superior, in your book.

But you're gonna show the State of Pennsylvania what's what, huh? Faker.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Ross Douthat, "A Republican Surprise". February 28

FIRST, the news from the more neatly coiffed:

Sirens in Honolulu after the quake sent a tsunami racing across the Pacific.

-Tara Mergener, CBS News

This is not me poking fun at some wholly predictable extemporized flub from the latest Wall-to-Wall; it was a taped piece which involved some editor at some point listening to this while splicing in shots of big hotels as seen from whatever big hotel the cameraman was in when those sirens went off, and the two-foot white Bronco waves that followed. I wasn't even listening, merely in the same room while my Poor Wife checked out CBS Sunday Morning News for Invalids, and as the thing shot by I turned to her and said, "Th' fuck did she just say?"

We're convinced, by the way, that this is part of the Shift of Semantic Obligation away from the Speaker and onto the Listener, part of the Star Trek/Bahbwa Watahs-keyed Destruction of Western Enlightenment and Reasonable Expectation of Semi-Rational Behavior in Others which coalesced with the election of Ronald Reagan. (Step 1: Truth too unpleasant to stand anymore? Construct your own reality from paper mâché! Step 2: Reality now constructed of paper mâché? Time to have the nightly news read by a tenth-rate real estate shill with a speech impediment! Step 3: Reagan. Step 4: Reagan Airport. Step 5: No more need to give reporters big bucks for the willingness to shill, as no one knows the difference any more, thanks to Steps 1 and 2.) And we're pretty sure that there's some reason they can't erase the Tell, which is the replacement of the schwa with short "a", the substitution of "eng" or "ang" for the "-ing" of present participles, gerunds, nouns derived from verbs or adjectives, adjectives themselves--and occasionally prepositions and adverbs--derived from participle forms, and--especially--the maddeningly regular indication of a vaporous question mark in simple declarative speech ("Ring-ang an-dorse-mants for the PresidANT today? as he appoint-TAD Evan Bayh? to the new-lay crea-TAD post of Mor-als Czar?").

Fuck it, Ross Douthat just "wrote" a "column" touting Indiana's Angstrom Governor Mitch Daniels as the Official Republican 2012 Presidential Dark Horse, based, as always with Douthat, on someone else saying so first. I've been trying since I read it to figure out how to describe the emotion of seeing the World's Most Overexposed "Conservative" Thinker trumpeting the World's Most Ludicrously Over-Praised "Conservative" Executive; a fantasy scenario in which the Red Sox and Yankees mathematically eliminate each other from the playoffs on Opening Day, causing most of the Beantown sportswriting contingent to set each other on fire before hurling themselves out of the Press Box, only to land on Tony Kornheiser and Bill Simmons, both of whom are wearing ties made of C-4, is the best I've come up with so far, although "Canada beating US Hockey for Gold after a five-day Hubris Festival triggered by a semi-meaningless win in the Prelims" is running a close second.

Here're your walking papers, Governor:

Set a group of plugged-in conservatives to talking presidential politics, and you’ll get the same complaints about the 2012 field.
Mitt Romney? He couldn’t make the voters like him last time ... Sarah Palin? She’d lose 47 states ... Mike Huckabee? Better as a talk-show host ... Tim Pawlenty, Jim DeMint, Bobby Jindal, David Petraeus? Too blah, too extreme, too green, and stop dreaming ...

But murmur the name Mitch Daniels, and everyone perks up a bit. Would he win? Maybe not. But he’d be the best president of any of them ...

Okay, let's start here. Douthat--if it were someone else we might say "shrewdly"--is going to avoid some of the typical double-edged claims of the periodic national Daniels puff piece. "Bravely proposed raising taxes for ten minutes," for example, and "Hates religious 'conservatives' as much as he hates 98.9% of the rest of humanity", for another. We suspect the omission is designed to make Mitch more Douthat-friendly, which serves to point out that this Remaking the Republican Party thing which apparently got him the gig at the Times nothing else can explain isn't exactly going so well, is it? As of this point the Party has pretty much disinvited you and Reihan Salam, and losing 47 states looks like the early favorite. You are not going to solve the problem--I don't believe you ever really wanted to solve the problem, by the way; that New Republican Paradigm shit was just something that sounded like a good idea for fifteen minutes, like--I'm merely speculating--your wife's John Paul II tramp stamp--not going to solve the problem, I say, by wistful creation of an Antimatter Fred Dumbo Thompson for 2011. The Republican party is bereft of ideas. This is not anything new; you guys removed Thought Crime from Washington in 1981 by eliminating the first half of the equation. Somebody then convinced those people they were the irresistible Wave of the Future, and those people convinced you, Ross, and you never questioned it. Now you want Brownie points for admitting that the Real America thinks Sarah Palin is an idiot. Too bad that doesn't include the majority of Republicans, Ross-O. By the way, that stabbing pain in the rear answers the Republican question, Who's the Trick Here?

Let's put it this way: Daniels could win the Republican nomination on a flying pony; he can't win it without stampeding Rightward faster than Mittens did two years ago. Not that he's not capable. I've been watching him since he worked for Dick Lugar, and if he's got any moral sense that doesn't come printed on green paper it's escaped me. But he's not gonna Sensible his way to the Republican nomination. Look at the fetid human grease spot Maverick John had to turn himself into last time (I'm being charitable, here; I thought he was a slimeball to begin with. It's the Base that thought he was Castro without the military successes), and that in a year when the Republican brand was so clearly a handicap that even the Base realized it. And now he's running even further Right just to keep his seat in Arizona, fer chrissakes. Present evidence that a non-insane, non-Bible-thumping Multinational Shill can hoodwink the rubes and gain the nomination, as expressed in Kilomitts per Primary: Zero.

And take my advice, Ross boy, it ain't worth it. The Chip Down There on Daniel's shoulder is bigger than the box he stands on to reach the big boy microphone, his wife is Miss Havisham with more gowns, and his Economic Miracle doesn't bear scrutiny. That Healthy Indiana deal, for example, is financed by Medicare, not Miracle Mitch Money, and it's a great deal, maybe, if you found yourself not quite qualifying as impoverished, with enough jack to make an insurance payment every month and your lot sufficiently improved by catastrophic coverage alone . The Toll Road deal--it was not exactly universally acclaimed in Hoosierland--looks more and more as though the Governor of Indiana appropriated state property in order to hold the company which had just shelled out for the Chicago Skyway for ransom; "fiscal" "conservatives" might wish to consider why that sort of behavior is admirable while bail-outs are not. Not to mention that the promised return has been swamped by the economy, and the boondoggle highway extension it was supposed to pay for it will now partly pay for. And ixnay on the welfare privatization thing there, Ross: Daniels had two years of failure, which taxpayers paid for at full face value, before he pulled the plug on a program that stank of corruption, insider dealing, and bid-rigging from the outset, and which we're going to spend god knows how long, and how much, to set back to the working order he found it in.

For a Daniels candidacy to catch fire, what’s left of the Republican establishment, currently (if reluctantly) coalescing around Mitt Romney, would have to decide that he’s the better pick. That would mean gambling that the best way to defeat the most charismatic president of modern times is to nominate a balding, wonky Midwesterner who reminds voters of their accountant.

Well, my accountant hasn't sold lands I held in trust without discussing it with me, or solved an accounting shortfall by laying off the debits on county and municipal accountants and declared himself a genius. But then mine didn't help the Bush administration wreck the economy in the first place. Maybe I'm atypical.

Stranger things have happened.

A half-wit with a bad teenage beard getting a Times Op-Ed gig springs immediately to mind.

Buggery! And Now That I Have Your Attention, Buggery!

OUR story so far: What the Transcontinental Railroad brought to the vast herds of American bison, what the Internets brought to window peepers, the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 brought to Hamilton County, Indiana, USA: the opportunity for a sort of cosmic ruin wrapped in Profit. And if you imagine the City Fathers of Carmel, IN, were gonna let that one pass by you don't know Carmel, IN. Or City Fathers. Or Dad's Clubs. Or America. In fact what are you, a goddam Commie?

(Children's ice cream, Mandrake? Yesterday AM I switched on the teevee for some reason just as the Today Show came on with its opening parody of The News designed to make that 1% of America which remembers Dave Garroway imagine it's back in high school, or something. This despite the fact that it's not even the fucking news anymore, which was driven home, like I needed that, by the fact that the lead story was the death of that SeaWorld trainer. And over and over (and, oh, over) again the teleprompter readers reminded us that the tragedy occurred in full view of the audience, including parents with children! With Children! As though anybody else is gonna be in Orlando in late winter hoping to wring some precious amusement out of captive marine mammals spouting on command, or elephants in tutus, or roller-skating chimps. The Children! Shut up. It's not the lesson I'd have them taught, and God Knows it's not how I'd've taught it even if it was, but dollars to doughnuts "Lookee! We can put Big Fishies in a tank for the slack-jawed amusement of thoughtless Consumption addicts, and the profit of corporations with little or no concern for the sale conditions of valuable breeding stock with a bad track record" is gonna wind up haunting some of the adorable little tykes at some point, too. Just wait'll they have kids of their own!)

Yes, Defense Highways (back up to the start if you don't remember), and that wasn't just there to assuage the ever-watchful and philosophically-consistent legislative watchdogs of Eisenhower's own party about the largest public works project in history (to that time, at least). Eisenhower famously admired the Autobahn, just as he famously got no closer to actual combat in a thirty-five year military career spanning both World Wars than mop-up operations against the Bonus Army. In fairness, he didn't really have much experience playing defense, apart from the occasional rescue of surviving remnants of his fuck-ups at the Kasserine Pass, or Bastogne, say, so we might be charitable enough to suggest it never fucking occurred to him that the transportation benefits of a first-class road system extended to the attacker as well. Either that or, as is more likely, neither he nor any other marginally sane person in 1950s America really believed any of that Red Dawn shit.

Cut to: Today. Far be it from us to kick Hamilton county while it's down; it's just that it always deserves kicking somewhere. Last week came word that what was being described as a "bullying incident" had taken place on the boy's basketball team bus a month earlier on a trip home from Terre Haute, a hundred miles to the southwest. Apparently three senior boys had "bullied" two freshman players. [The Reader will note that here we leave the familiar, if ecologically-challenged realm where things which are said are in some way related to Facts, or someone's understanding of Facts, that someone being a person using those words to convey Facts, and enter the Republican Zone.]

We are, as you know, a public-education savvy household. So when the Principal of Carmel High School comes on a dismisses the thing out of hand while congratulating himself on his quick and correct action once this matter was brought to his attention, my Poor Wife and I listened with what your Doctor calls "exponentially elevated skepticism levels". Nothing to see here, Folks! The young men in question have been disciplined. Sorry, but confidentiality laws prevent us from giving you any further information. In conclusion, not a crime. Bye.

Now, in case you skipped that video, or you'd been struck dumb long before the Coach's comment was relayed, here it is again:

That is, at this point--we're just scratching the surface yet, people, but even now we know that "bullying" occurred on a public school bus, during transportation of students from a school-sponsored extra-curricular event, which resulted in the suspension of three players who were presumably being supervised at that moment by said Coach, and possibly as many as three assistants--part of the public comment from the school is a bad locker-room homily about standing up to Adversity when Adversity shoves something up your bunghole. Well, he ain't the Math Bowl Coach.

Now, there is an anti-bullying law in effect in Indiana for public schools, but it is so toothless it's practically gumless into the bargain. Nevertheless, is this how you want officials at your child's school to treat the issue? Is this the sort of awareness you'd expect from administrators? Or teachers? Or lunch ladies?

And this was merely the Prelude, the strutting of Players across the stage before the real tale began. It's difficult at this point (one week later!) to keep all the leaks in chronological order, but what has been rather feebly dismissed as the "rumor mill" by school officials pretty much exploded at this point. The students were known, despite the school's solicitous concern for their Rights, because they were the three Seniors who didn't dress for the game. (Whether they, in fact, had an expectation of privacy that included anonymity, given what the Court has routinely decided about high school students in general and extra-curricularists in particular, is moot.) By the weekend we had heard "rumors" that one of the freshman players had received treatment in an emergency room; that the report to the school (variously, on February 10 or 15 or 16) had come not from the parents of either player, but from the parent of a student not on the team who had reported gossip which was filling the halls; and that, contrary to the initial assurances the incient had not risen to the level of criminality, the hospital had filed a police report concerning the ER visit, and that there was a police report filed the day before the public announcement which included potential charges of battery, criminal confinement, and criminal deviate conduct. "Criminal deviate conduct" under Indiana law means someone has been forced to perform a deviate sexual act against his or her will. (Oddly enough, to this point, every "unfounded rumor going around" has proven to be pretty much on target.)

So now the pressure is building on these petty tyrants, and it's not the sort usually associated with Coaches and the rectums of dewy-limbed Youth. On Wednesday there's a joint Press Conference featuring the school, the district, and Carmel Police, who, you'll recall, weren't anywhere in the picture the last time we got the unvarnished truth from these little Röhms. And now they're saying even less than they did the first time. The cops hit the ground running by informing everyone that the investigation is likely to take a while, say, your standard Search for WMDs timeframe, apparently under the impression that this will give everyone time to find something else to amuse themselves with but, Surprise! it actually encourages local media impersonators to climb on the story and hope for a ride on the Major Market Comet or something. * Then one or two old-timers remembers the Freedom of Information Act, and demands the police report. Which was released the next day (yesterday):


And which one or two cranks seem to think has, oh, a little more readactivity than strictly legal, though just the ten minutes of supervisory oblivion is pretty damning. Meanwhile, Channel 59 finds a parent of a freshman team member (not one of the assault victims) who says (anonymously) 1) the attack did involve a region more commonly employed for egress, 2) that the fear of these kids was so pervasive that none of the freshmen wanted to enter the locker room unaccompanied, 3) they all kept their sweatpants tied as tightly as they could manage, and that 4) Principal Williams' principled speech to the freshman team about the incident included the threat that anyone who spoke to the Media would be kicked off the team and suspended from school, confirmation of an earlier "unfounded rumor" Williams has denied. And another report of a locker-room assault has been filed.

Meanwhile, how three or four coaches missed this happening on a bus they were supervising is perhaps open to discussion, if we're feeling charitable; how they miss a pattern of behavior so widespread among twelve boys supervised by three adults, or how an administration misses the slightest hint of what's common knowledge in its own halls, is not. Which goes double for a police department deciding physical evidence of a sexual assault on a fifteen-year-old kid isn't worth investigating until it turns up on the teevee. We are reminded, as always with these things, how bright the line between zero tolerance for such things and looking the other way because it's your star athletes, and how difficult it is to act like you're honest when you have no intention of letting that get in your way.

________________

* Don't mean to minimize the contribution, or the honest concerns about bullying, just the dedication to getting a story wherever one arises. Channel 59 has gone so far as to issue a public declaration that it will stay with the story regardless, which gives you an idea of what sort of "Why are you still covering this when it's already settled and/or Under Investigation?" pressures they're getting from rich people. And as with Tiger Wood's little fender-bender, if the initial Apology had been up to standard the whole thing would've been left to the Pulitizer-Prize-winning journalists at the Enquirer, and we'd be back talking about the weather.

Run That By Me Again. I Was Educated In Indiana.

Marijuana use by seniors goes up as boomers age

By MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press Writer

Long a fixture among young people, use of the country's most popular illicit drug is now growing among the AARP set, as the massive generation of baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s and '70s grows older.

The number of people aged 50 and older reporting marijuana use in the prior year went up from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent from 2002 to 2008, according to surveys from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The rise was most dramatic among 55- to 59-year-olds, whose reported marijuana use more than tripled from 1.6 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent.

SO, as more people who smoke marijuana become Seniors, more Seniors smoke marijuana?

Wow.

Dateline: February 24, 2025

by DYLAN SEDENSKY

As Gen-Xers Age, Tattoos Migrate South

Dateline: February 24, 2050

by MUAH!! 3 SEDENSKY

Senior Rainbow Parties: Too Much Lipstick, Not Enough Dipstick

Man, I wanna live to be 100.

When You Can't Tell One End Of A Shovel From The Other, Digging Yourself Out Is Problematic At Best

ITEM: Indiana Governor Mitch "I'm Small On The Inside, Too" Daniels travels to Washington, D.C. to put the Ass in National Governors' Association, picks up an award ("Best Miniaturization, Scale Model, or Simulacrum") like, I'm guessing, every other governor in attendance, and tells Dan Balz, who writes for some local rag which has appropriated the name of the Washington Post in its absence that he's "leaving the door open" for a 2012 run, but just because so many people asked him to do so, or crack a window, for godssake, not because he really wants to.

This, of course, set off the usual festival of slack-jawed repetition which for some reason still goes by the name of "news", and I'd already braced for it when the locals came on. And sure enough, it was the top story, and surer enough, it was treated as though the fact that five people were talking about it made it louder, which made it more emphatic, thus truthier, even though by this time Daniels had issued a coy little clarification, as though he'd just been minding his own business when Dan Balz stopped by and asked him an innocent question.

But the interesting thing was, Channel 8 tosses it, as they do all "important" political "news", to Jim Shella. I always try to get the political sound and fury from Shella, not because he's The Dean of Statehouse Reporters, but because he's the most incompetent liar. And I'm expecting a rerun of last week's Festival of Appreciation for Evan Bayh, Courageous Political Maverick, because, after all, this is Indiana, where, if you're famous enough to get your name in an out-of-state paper, or appear on th' teevee, you've got a sinecure for life; Claude Akins packed 'em in at mall openings, that guy Rupert from Survival (yes, I know) is just a Libertarian Party endorsement away from being the next mayor of Indianapolis, and whenever Axl Rose or David Lee Roth is ready there's six figures waiting for a weekend entertainment reporter, sobriety and pants optional.

Instead, Shella runs clips of Daniels repeatedly insisting he wouldn't be a candidate for, won't be a candidate for, and has no interest in being a candidate for President, and a particularly humor-packed one from his last gubernatorial race (with prop RV in the background; think he's ridden in one since?) where he announces that this will positively be his last campaign, like, forever, promise, promise, hope t'die, because the only thing he's interested in is completing the fabulous makeover he's given the Hoosier State, before he returns, like Cincinnatus, to the plowin'.

And I can't really believe my eyes; I'm wondering if last week's check from the GOP bounced or sumthin. Then they come back for the lite banter and portentous exit comment segment, and Shella says something like--I was a bit in shock, so I didn't catch it exactly--"a lot of us really believed him when he made those promises."

And I swear to God there was a little catch in his voice. My choice here was to bust out laughing or fall down and bang my head, and I chose A. Y'know, there're probably people in this state whose distaste for Daniels exceeds mine, but I'm guessing all of them have either been directly screwed by one or more of his actions (individually, not the class-action screwing we've all enjoyed), or know him personally. But fer chrissakes, holding the man to his word? What th' hell's wrong with you? How thoroughly has this frankly incredible belief in his honesty colored the coverage he's received, which involved, oh, the total fabrication of his record? I don't believe a word that's ever come out of his tiny mouth, yet I think these things are totally expected, and should be accorded the same free pass we give Diet Coke and Christianity and everyone else who fills our every conscious moment with shit not even the person saying it believes, and I'm not Dean of anything. Daniels has been running for President since, I'm guessing, the moment he realized he couldn't run for Napoleon, certainly since he realized, at the end of his first Legislative session, how little effort is required to gull people, and doubly so since Sarah Palin stole his thunder (and risks, in the "fiscal" "conservative" view, unleashing hordes of insufficiently-deodorized day laborers on the political process, where they might eventually put down their flags and guns long enough to realize who's really been fuckin' 'em over).

And now, perhaps even more amazing--or breathtakingly dishonest--than a political reporter claiming he believed Mitch Daniels'--or any politician's, for that matter--renouncement of political ambition, is an Indiana political insider pretending it hasn't occurred to him what running a national campaign while accompanied by Cheri "Paco, If You Don't Put Some Goddam Tequila In The Next One You're Gonna Be Back Out Trimming Bushes" Daniels gazing lovingly up down at you would entail. Hell, yes, Daniels is running for President. Hell yes, he'd rather be a kingmaker. Because he knows that's the best he'll be able to do. Daniels is running for Chief of Staff. (Maybe Veep, but Imperial Gatekeeper is much more his style than even a Cheneyesque #2.) Running for President might be the best way to lay a claim; certainly it would be the best way to increase his slush fund before he was "forced" to "live on" a government check for another four years.

ITEM: Jesus, the Balz piece does it again:

Early in his tenure as governor, Daniels angered conservatives when he proposed raising taxes to help balance the state budget. Since then, however, he has become a favorite of fiscal hawks for the way he has run his state. Though conservative on social issues, Daniels has not made them a focal point of his political agenda.

Sigh. The goddam "one year surtax" again. Either we are going to accept every instance of revenue-enhancin' weasel words as genuine, or we oppose them in every instance, Dan. Daniels did not ever propose to raise taxes. He proposed a surtax to reduce the state's deficit, or "deficit", and this act of political courage lasted exactly fourteen hours thirty-six minutes, when the screaming from his own party abated just enough for him to recant. Once the reverb had died down someone with some actual budgetary expertise explained to him that the "deficit" he'd campaigned on was a matter of paper, and that by shifting accounts around and laying off the remainder on local governments he could claim to've averted a budget Crisis without really doing anything.

People keep bringing this up, but none of them ever looks at how that money could be so vital to balancing the budget one minute, and then gone, forgotten, and unneeded the next. It's also noteworthy that despite five years of his leadership resulting in an exponentially worse budgetary crisis, that political courage hasn't returned. We're now slicing schools to the marrow instead.

As for him supposed being "socially conservative but not insistent about it", well, bosh. Daniels is a Straussian elitist. He's contemptuous of the religious nuts he shares a party with, but he finds their devotion to order, duty, and slave wages useful. It's true he's helped keep the religious crackpots in the Legislature in check, but that's not quite the accomplishment you Beltway types imagine; Indiana's been fairly reticent about passing the sort of valid-until-the-first-court-challenge social legislation Kansas spends its time on. And just into Mitch's first term the real religious nuts mounted challenges to sitting Republican legislators in safe Republican districts, and won a few. So it's five parts political calculation, three parts contempt, and two parts watchin' your own ass.

No national political writer can really imagine that Daniels is going to waltz through the "social" "conservatives" of his party nationally, not if he also imagines that Mitch will really be running to win, not running as a hired gun to keep the financial bosses in the game. He'll make whatever concessions to his "beliefs" he finds prudent and necessary, Dan. Trust us.

ITEM: We continue to heart Charles Pierce, just in case you were wondering:

Does it make me a bad American to admit that I'm a little sick and tired at this point of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team and its win over a Soviet team that, as the years go by, looks more and more like a bunch of people who no longer were that enthusiastic about their jobs or the State that employed them?

All I know, Charlie, is that is doesn't make you alone.

[Sunday] in its infinite wisdom, the NBC mother network gave us another retrospective on the 1980 Lake Placid miracle in the middle of which Al Michaels--who, at this point, seems firmly to believe that he landed on Omaha Beach or something 30 years ago--said, "It seemed like we went from burning flags to waving them."…

The only people I remember burning American flags in 1980 were the Iranians, whom I am fairly sure Michaels did not have in mind. The country was somewhat dispirited and the inspired fakery of the Reagan Revolution was just a bit over the horizon, which I am fairly sure Michaels does have in mind. Dragooning that admittedly marvelous game into the service of reactionary politics has been subtext of every anniversary piece done on the 1980 team ever since.

I saw a piece of that interview, and snapped it off when Michaels said something about it "feeling like a victory in the Cold War"; I'm not sure how I lasted that long, unless I couldn't find the remote. And this was the third goddam misty-eyed retrospective I'd seen in eighteen hours. Enough, already. It's a game, it's history, and half the fucking import of the thing depends on this Cold War malarky, which, even if it were relevant to something other than the interior of the worst sort of jingoist skulls, and Al Michaels' subsequent career, would be a sword cutting in two directions.

I'm no hockey expert. I remember tuning in The Miracle sometime late in the 2nd, and the Commies looked to me like a beaten crew. It happens. If it hadn't, would we have Healthcare, and an Equal Rights Amendment, and all be singing the Internationale now? I thought the really remarkable thing was the US comeback win over Finland, but then, I'm not a real fan and I miss some of the intricacies, like how it serves as a surrogate battle over opposing economic systems. The Blue Line's represents the M1, right?

ITEM: I've mentioned on any number of occasions that the stupid gotcha! tricks of the Press are determined more by the requirements of the script than heartfelt political partisanship, which requires a heart, for starters: Jerry Ford Doesn't Know Poland Is Communist and George H.M.S. Bush Incompetently Vomits On Kiichi being two. So thanks for the reminder that "Al Haig tried to take over the government" belongs up there. Wasn't sure anybody who tried to fob that shit off was still alive.

ITEM: Okay, okay, so Ice Dancing doesn't even qualify as the broad side of the barn, but look: Musical Theatre sensibilities, Regional Musical Theatre gesticulations, and an utter tone-deafness to cultural sensitivities even after they're fucking pointed out to you--part and parcel of an utter tone-deafness to anything which occurred in the 20th century and wasn't absorbed by Regional Musical Theatre, apparently--is one thing, and the expected one at that. But you, no doubt after months of intense executive sessions, hit on Folk Dance as a "theme"--compare, for example, the theme of Alpine Skiing, which was "go faster than everyone else until you get to the bottom"--and you allow Cancan?

This stuff is a harbinger, folks, and it's not pretty. It's four times as incompetent as it was twenty years ago--not even I expect that--and look where that got us. The announcerpods at Monday's two-man bobsled kept reminding us it was "the fastest course in the world", apparently having forgotten about how it sped one guy to his Reward. Oh, well, maybe the Who will rescue the Closing Ceremonies.

A New Low In Low

Ross "Finger on the Pulse" Douthat, "Enquiring Minds". February 21

CORPUS Christi, hasn't Harvard demanded this guy's degree back yet?

Last Thursday, after weeks of hedging, the Pulitzer Committee acknowledged that the Enquirer’s extensive coverage of John Edwards’s double life — stories that were first ignored, then dismissed, and finally vindicated in the mainstream press — would be considered for investigative reporting and national news reporting awards.

By rights, the Edwards story should have been entered in the “public service” category as well. If the supermarket tabloid’s reporters hadn’t gone digging where other journalists declined to even tread, we might never have learned how close the Democratic Party came to nominating a truly disgraceful character for the presidency.

Yeah, thank God we avoided that ugly precedent.

Let's just take a moment to dispose of any actual issues which might be involved here, since Ross won't be touching on them (understandable, since the specter of S-E-X has been summoned from, you know, Down There):

• The Tsk-Tsk, Cluck-Cluck-Cluck Factor was turned up to 11 in Edward's case--not that Ross needs any, well, prodding--because of Elizabeth Edward's cancer. Not that she isn't a courageous woman--though, personally, I wish she'd used some of that courage to turn down a book deal--and not that I believe her health could have, or should have remained private. But I found that press conference extraordinarily creepy (not her fault; I'm sure she had other things on her mind). It was a fucking year before the primaries, for one thing; John Edwards couldn't suspend his campaigning for a few months? And it was guaranteed to be given the Full Oprah treatment, which couldn't hurt, eh? Who said anything about that then?

• We think Skepticism is always warranted, and cynicism justified by the preponderance of the evidence in any case you'd care to name, but look: if you've decided, retroactively, that John "Gunslinger" Edwards is the evilest man ever to come within several dozen percentage points of lasting more than one month in a major party primary, then there's one fact you ought to face. None of us has any control over the inner life of our candidates, and few of us have Ross' plerophoric ability to judge them so completely. What we can do, then, is not fucking go ass over teacup over these staged events, no matter how poignant or admirable or rich in symbolism (and there goes NBC's Olympic coverage). Thousands of people in this country wake up every morning facing the same, or worse; few if any have lifetime government healthcare, and many of those who do had to spend themselves into poverty first to get it. Somehow the mass-market empathy for Elizabeth Edwards--to be sure, a champion of public healthcare--didn't translate into Senate votes for taking care of people who really need it.

• Newt Gingrich, Ross? Is he less disgraceful than Edwards? Yet you seem willing to engage him in debate over the future of that Crime Family you both belong to.

Now, as we attempt to segue into what Douthat seems to imagine is the real issue--how the "reputable" Press' disinterest in John Edwards' character came this close to putting a man in the White House we later would have determined to be a serial philanderer, thereby requiring Congressional Republicans to grind the nation's business to a halt in order to read "fellatio" into the Record seven thousand times per week--a prospect which gives young Ross the shudders, no doubt--let us note that one man's "The mainstream Press totally ignored the story" is another man's "Yeah, because they were focused on his grooming practices".

We're willing to admit that some of this "The Press gives x a free pass" depends on your view of x, even though this is our stock in trade; the distinction, Your Honor, is that I'm not a paid fucking shill for either of the two major parties, and my belief about the national Press--that it defends not one "side" or the other, but the interests of its corporate bosses and the status quo its "personalities" bask in--is empirically demonstrable. I don't think the Press "ignored" the multiple questions about George W. Bush's character--and how'd that one work out?--in 2000 because of some simple-minded partisan bias of the type Mr. Douthat earns his living peddling. I think it did so because that's the way the Press works, generally, with a minor in "charges from what is euphemistically termed The Left in this country will be pushed back against more forcefully than those from The Right in no small measure because the whole Librul Media canard has played so well for forty years". For any of us the ideal Press scrutiny is the exact amount needed to topple our enemies and give our friends the benefit of the doubt. Patience is that virtue we admire in the driver behind us, but not the one in front. Douthat's Outrage meter is pegged by Edwards, but fails to register Newt. He's entitled; we're entitled to ask Why, and to ask the Times why he doesn't have to show his work.

It’s remarkable, in a way, that the Enquirer still exists at all, let alone that it’s enjoying a moment in the journalistic sun. In the age of Gawker, Twitter, and TMZ.com, a weekly scandal sheet seems quaint, if not archaic. And in an era when newspapers are fighting desperately for readers, you would think that the mainstream media — hemorrhaging subscribers and hungry for online eyeballs — would uncover all the really interesting scandals first.

But you’d be wrong. The Internet is very good at generating gossip, but lousy at the dogged work of transforming rumor into news. And the national press almost seems more uncertain about when and whether to probe into politicians’ private lives than it was in the days when The Miami Herald cheerfully ran a photograph of Donna Rice sitting side-saddle on Gary Hart’s lap.

First, this observation courtesy a guy whose "reporting" consists of linking to articles he's read, and, second, who can't seem ever to understand how far away he should stay from anything that happened more than six years ago. Gary Hart wasn't the guy who was caught due to the Media's clear-eyed sense of mission and dogged bone-sniffing; he's the guy who was caught because he dared the curs of the national Press to follow him and catch him at something. Meanwhile the Republican nominee-to-be, George Herbert Walker Bush, carried on an affair that'd been an open secret for years.

And, for good measure, chose Dan Fucking Quayle to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, which was more of a joke than a scandal, but should've been both. Quayle had only recently returned from a golf outing where he shared living arrangements with seven other Republicans and insurance lobbyist/demirep Paula Parkinson. Between the two of 'em you've got enough shady finances, malfeasance, draft-dodging, miching mallecho, and whiffs of soiled silk to've disgraced the character of a half-dozen national nominees. The Bulldog Press went sniffing around Kitty Dukakis' medical records.

Look, Ross boy, I don't expect you to know this stuff; I do expect that at some point you might recognize your lack and tread with some care. John Edwards is a detestable human being--though it ought to be noted here that it's your people, not mine, who claim to be in the forgiveness business--but he's not President of the United States at this moment not because he cheated on his cancer-stricken wife, and lied about it, and not because the National Enquirer happened to find some shit that stuck, for the first time since that Dingo did Eat the Baby. He's not President because Democratic primary voters, after the geek show in Iowa, didn't fucking vote for him. If you'd like to discard the cosseting fiction that this represents Democracy in Action, and that voters made an informed choice based on the issues, go ahead (but, for once, consider how it's going to play when the shoe's on the Right foot). But to suggest that sexual peccadilloes are a surer measure of character than, say, stealing from future generations to conduct an unnecessary war, or torturing captives in its pursuit, or listening in on private conversations just beggars belief, not to mention pointing out that had Edwards gained the Democratic nomination he'd be President today, thanks to the criminal mess of things your party made, whatever you think of its collective character.

One other thing: the real question here is "When did the Pulitizer committee lose its fucking mind, and is that evidence that whatever's going around is contagious"? Not that I expect you to ask it, Ross. At least until they're passing out statues to someone who did it to a Republican.

Forget It, Jake

A) Young, good-looking, famous, and incredibly wealthy guy bangs cocktail waitresses two at a time.

B) Fame and wealth are courtesy legions of teevee viewers, synods of teevee executives, and bordellos of advertisers paying homage to his ability to hit a ball with a stick, provided it ain't raining and no one sneezes.

C) Accidental discovery of his abilities swinging a different kind of stick, a circuitous revelation via a goddam nation of full-time celebrity window-peepers, leads to a country in shock, advertisers in apoplexy, and innocent ESPN writers discovering that athletes sometimes have illicit sex, though, thankfully, such seems to have been limited to just this one case so far as they're aware.

D) Discovery of human failure of the sort which occurs in approximately 40% of all the sacred marriages in this country--where over 50% end in divorce for one reason or another--causes sudden realization in prime teevee-commercial-viewing demographic that lifeless celebrity testimonials provided any paying advertiser--be they financial shenanigan specialist, child-labor exploiter, or producer of unsafe, crappy, carbon-belching suburban Panzers--might be something less than heartfelt.

E) Withdrawn endorsement income and possibility that impressionable young golfers might try this sex business, find it enjoyable, and therefore give up golf compels weepy-assed (though still utterly affectless, proving all those commercial pitches really were his best efforts) "confession" of poon addiction to large teevee audience and brutally confined friends and family, thereby leading both print and teevee punditocracy to ponder how this played vis-a-vis the national catharsis required before golf fans will be able to enjoy watching him chip onto the manicured green at some restricted country club ever again.

And maybe it's just me, but the thing that came immediately to my mind was "We only demand psychological purgation of (A), when it's the one thing any of them did which is halfway understandable."

Dead Horse Flails 3/25¢

• I got to the IRS bombing news late (that is, I heard about it during the day, but didn't see any coverage until local and national news tried to spoil my digestion that evening), so I didn't see the hysterical Is It Terrism coverage until after it wasn't. When, as you know, it became Just A Crazy Guy Did Something Crazy After Fighting With His Wife story. Stack's "rambling" 3000-word web posting (roughly one Douthat Month, to provide some scale) was more referenced than read from, of course. That he'd had "disagreements" with the IRS just sorta laid there, as though We All Understand The Motive, Huh? Even If He Took It Too Far.

And I'm sure I speak for dozens of Americans when I say, "Could you just make up your fucking minds, please?" Guy with political agenda crashes private plane into government building? Disgruntled. Guy with political agenda lights his Fruit of the Looms on an airliner? Two-week news cycle about the Obama administration's ineffective approach to terrorism.

(Two bets Vegas won't cover: that it will be blamed on Obama, in some circles, and that they'll be roundly ignored by the sort of people who man our teleprompters and don't want to wind up waiting in security lines before boarding their corporate jets.)

• Meanwhile, if there was some reference to the ease with which Stack got away with this I musta missed it.

In other words, if it's pants-fouling terrifying when a Nigerian does it, but the tension eases when it's just some Caucasoid maniac with an IRS beef, then your former argument is defunct. Otherwise, it's the exact same fucking story, and Stack's motivation is irrelevant.

• Forget it, Jake, it's Olympic Coverage Syndrome:

"I knew Joe had a hang-up with the I.R.S. on account of them breaking him, taking his savings away,” said Jack Cook, the stepfather of Mr. Stack’s wife, in a telephone interview from his home in Oklahoma. “And that’s undoubtedly the reason he flew the airplane against that building. Not to kill people, but just to damage the I.R.S.”

The MSM. Objectively Pro-terrorist since 2001.