Death Ship

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Liberals, you so CRAZY!

Over at Clown Hall, the weekend usually means two days of rest while the mack daddies of the right gather their nuts and let George Will do the heavy lifting. But I guess they got bored waiting for the Super Bowl to start, so Sunday was a very productive day at the dingbat clearinghouse.

First off, we get raving testicrat Doug Giles complaining that conservatives aren't funny enough, leaving the left to win the comedy wars. I agree, although we differ on the reasons (he thinks, for example, that conservative comics aren't funny because they're straitjacketed by political correctness, whereas I think it's because they're not capable of being funny), but it's a good read anyway, especially for the parts where Doug tries to be funny himself, and the part where he cites the lately unfunny Dennis Miller, the always unfunny Brad Stine, and the unfunny-going-back-several-lifetimes Julie Gorin as the only funny conservatives.

Next, hilariously self-described "Musclehead Revolutionary"Kevin McCullough engages in another of the American-city-obliterated-by-terror-nukes fantasies the right is so fond of, which I discuss in more detail here.

But the best of all is Lyle H. Rossiter, MD, a Town Hall newcomer and ex-Army shrink who declaims on a currently fashionable theme on the ring-a-ding right: that liberals are the way they are because of childhood trauma and/or mental illness. As evidence, Doc Rossiter offers the following lunatic delusions that are actually believed by insane leftists:

A very large portion of the population is suffering; they are suffering because they are deprived, neglected, exploited or abused.

They are suffering because of certain injustices inflicted upon them.

Bad people, such as capitalists and the rich, cause the victims to suffer by depriving, neglecting, exploiting and abusing them.

These bad people are villains who must be stopped from preying on their victims.

The people are innocent victims; they have no important role in causing their suffering.

Some of the suffering of the victims comes from too little social freedom and too many restrictions on behavior in social situations.

The libertarian structure of ordered liberty grounded in basic property and contract rights allows the villains to exploit the victims.

HA HA! Can you believe there are actually people crazy enough to swallow that insane bullshit? "People are suffering from neglect, abuse and exploitation?" WHATEVER, NAPOLEON, SAY HELLO TO SANTA CLAUS AND HARVEY THE GIANT RABBIT FOR ME

Muslims fail at life!

So says Baron Blitzkrieg over at Gates of Vienna, a.k.a. the SCA Sword Practice That Walks Like a Blog. Earlier in the week, Baron Winter put down his flagon and turkey leg to compile a scientific checklist that would prove once and for all whether or not Muslims are evil. I think you'll be surprised at the results!

A lot of rhetoric on the topic of Islam ricochets around the blogosphere and in the media every day. Islam is a deadly danger and must be eradicated on the one hand. Muslims are victims of persecution by Islamophobes on the other hand. Assertions such as these are uncheckable and irrefutable, since they are based solely on ideology.

See, contrary to all appearances, Baron Mordo is not just some Islamophobic jackoff on the internet, whipping himself into a frenzy of impotence over his hatred of the dark people and their bloodthirsty moon god! No, he is, like his namesake Baron Zemo, a scientist, and using the highly scientific method of making a checklist and annotating it using MS Paint, he has determined the following empirical facts once and for all:

- "We" are involved in a religious war with Islam.
- There is no discrimination against Muslims in the west.
- Islam is intolerant and wicked.
- Islam is not a religion, but a political ideology. (This would seem to contradict point #1, but this is SCIENCE, people.)
- Fighting terror in Iraq doesn't meant that the dusky hordes won't still attack America.
- Islam is an expansionist aggressor who wants to reclaim half of Europe.
- Not all Muslims are radical Islamists, though they may as well be because so many of of them fail to condemn terrorism.
- It is impossible to say if Islam can be "reformed", though it probably can't.

However, the most important question -- does hope lie with moderate Muslims? -- is "Yes,if we can convince them to abandon Islam altogether and become atheists or Christians!" What a humanitarian! You can tell Baron Blood isn't consumed with prejudice like so many right-wing bloggers. I urge you to use his tip cup to reward him for his brilliant writing (like this windy slog through the most famous line from The Usual Suspects), so he can afford to buy his lady fair a new corset.

They make a good point off the top of their heads

The boys over at Butt Propulsion Laboratories have really been knocking them out of the park lately. Today, they note a piece in the Yale Daily News that applications to Mr. President Man's legacied alma mater have fallen by 10% this year -- a fact the Butt Propellors attribute to, of all things, the presence in the student body of a former member of the Taliban.

Well, sort of:

No one proposes that last year's bombshell -- the news that Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, is now a student at Yale -- has anything to do with the drop in applications, or draws the inference that there might be a reaction to Yale's administration being a tad out of touch. But it is at least as plausible as some of the other hypotheses on offer in the YDN article.

You see, THEY'RE not saying that this filthy Islamofascist darkie is to blame for the falling admissions, goodness no! They're just saying that it's as plausible as any of the other factors cited in the article.

Those factors, for the record, are:

- The introduction of an 'early action program' that led to an unusual amount of preapplications

- A low acceptance rate last year, due to Yale's highly selective admission criteria

- Normal statistical fluctuation (last year featured a record high number of applicants)

Those reasons are TOTALLY CRAZY! You can see how blaming it all on the presence of a demon-worshiping towelhead is JUST AS PLAUSIBLE as any of that.

A Catechism of Cliche

Things have been terribly busy here in the monkey house, with both a woman and a colored attempting to usurp the throne that rightly belongs to good white Christian gentlemen, and I haven’t been able to keep up with lesser repositories of wisdom like RedState lately. More’s the pity, because, as alert correspondent Mighty God King points out, that comes at the cost of missing things like this.

Some minor imp named Paul J. Cella has looked to the theologians and Paul Elmer More (founder of the rightly forgotten school of literary crtiticism known as neohumanism) to create the pompously titled 'A Reactionary’s Shorter Catechism', stating that “it is only sane to react against madness”. It is also only reactionary to call sanity madness, but that’s a different essay, so Cella and his collaborator 'Maximos' (Magneto having been unavailable due to a prior mashed-potato-circuit speaking engagement) composed these rules for living whereby they “contradict the world” by saying things a lot of people agree with.

Human nature is not elastic, but rather constant; and the corrupt aspects will always be with us.

They start out strong, I admit, by claiming against millennia of history that human nature is constant. No evidence is offered, but when is it ever?

There is great peril in the reckless use reason to pry into the nonrational aspects of our history and traditions: like Noah’s son looking upon his nakedness, the brazenness of reason my issue in ruin.

I’d like to address this point, whatever it is, but I’m pretty sure that the sentence is missing at least two words.

The misuse of the label progress has concealed some of the most terrible political calamities in history; the very word has been rendered untrustworthy.

We really shouldn’t even bother to do anything progressive, in other words, because people claiming to be progressive have sometimes done bad things.

The institution of the State emanates from the nature of man, who is a political animal, organizing collectively to shelter his tradition and community.

The last part of that sounds suspiciously like Communism, sir! What monkeyshines are these?

There is a presumption in favor of Free Speech, but it is hardly absolute. Few clauses of the Philadelphia Constitution have been more abused, and twisted from their original meaning, than the First Amendment.

Details of the nature and limits this abuse are, surprisingly, not forthcoming, presumably because we all know it when we see it.

Disloyalty is a permanent political problem, and historically has been a particularly ruinous one. There is no facile solution to it. Excesses on either side of it have issued in catastrophe.

Disloyalty to whom? To what? In what way? The use of three-dollar words in Cella’s writing is like that of a half-clever eighth-grader: it conceals a lack of detail, of substance, of explication.

There no presumption of protection for political discourse ranging over questions of the violent replacement of the Constitution, as the latter not a suicide pact. Sedition is a crime and ought to remain one.

Conservatives of late have been quite fond of this “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” line. It allows them to excuse the soiling of it by the existence of Camp X-Ray and other expressions of the Bush Administration’s push for police-state powers. Unfortunately, it only works when there’s a preponderance of evidence against the accused that suggests their guilt, which, in the case of Guantanamo, there is not.

A healthy polity will have a majority population and culture; contemporary orthodoxy on diversity tends towards anarchy and strife.

Which, I suppose, is why America today is so plunged into anarchy and strife. This is self-evident nonsense; almost every power in history, antique and contemporary, has been one of rich diversity. Diversity and multiculturalism spreads ideas, increases knowledge, promotes toleration, and reduces conflict. Majoritarianism does none of these things.

The right of a community to maintain its identity, autonomy, and independence is among the first principles of a free polity.

Doesn’t this contradict the majoritarian urge of the previous point? What if you want to maintain your autonomy against the rule of the majority culture?

A government may become destructive of these ends, calling forth resistance from the community. Revolt, like war, should be analyzed through the two-tier method of traditional Just War doctrine: jus ad bellum and jus in bello. A just cause for revolt may be dishonored by its conduct; and even an unjust cause may be conducted honorably.

In other words, those with a legitimate complaint must be condemned if they do not fight by our rules, and we may conduct an unjust war as long as we do it like gentlemen.

Cultures and civilizations vary widely and profoundly, not only in customs, but in terms of mindsets, ways of seeing the world, and potential for humane achievements. Indiscriminate blending of cultures is thus undesirable, and more often than not an at least implicit act of aggression against the existing majority culture.

That last sentence, good grief. It’s just…it’s just nonsense.

The Liberal compact, by which questions of ultimate existential import are bracketed, and questions of temporal prosperity and the adjudication of rights-claims pursued, is an act of violence against human nature, a displacement that occasions the rise of messianic political doctrines.

What he’s saying here, if you can’t find your way through the pompous argot, is that liberalism, because it attempts to address economic and social inequity, is a crime against humanity. Lovely.

Science, like economics, must learn its place — subordinate to the higher values of civilization, and not master of them.

Pipe down, brainiacs.

The traditional family — mother, father and children — must be privileged in law and in society; no other relationship is permitted to assert equality or parity with it.

Why? “PROVE”, Cella’s professor would scrawl in the margins if he hadn’t dropped out to follow Victor Davis Hanson around in a VW microbus.

Voting is not a right but a privilege. Its abuse is rampant, and to contain it is a valid object of public policy. More damaging to a republic than corrupt politicians are corrupt voters.

Fuck the American principle of the universal franchise; you fuckers better vote the RIGHT way, or you won’t be allowed to vote at all.

Cry humble, and let slip the gnats of war

For weeks now, the Medfly has been following his marching orders and ragging on John Edwards for having a big mansion. The way this works, in case you don't follow the cranks as closely as I do, is that Edwards is to be mocked and scorned as a hypocrite for daring to discuss the inequality between rich and poor when he himself is rich, and derided for his conspicuous spending in having such an ostentatious house.

Now, this is sort of curious, on its face: having money shouldn't disqualify you from noticing that there are inequalities of wealth any more than being well should disqualify you from trying to address the problems of the sick. After all, these are the same guys who utterly reject the chickenhawk argument, and say that their own failure to serve shouldn't disqualify them from being warmongers. And the criticism that you should somehow be ashamed of having a big fancy mansion is not one we normally hear from conservatives.

The Medfly has heard these objections. The Medfly has responded.

1) Edwards made his money as a trial lawyer, not as an industrialist or entrepreneur who built jobs and enriched the economy. Ambulance chasers like Edwards don’t create wealth; they seize wealth from its creators.

The Medfly's first defense: Edwards didn't make his money through real work. He's a lawyer. Boo! Boo lawyers! Boo the occupation that has produced more presidents than any other! Of course, Medved made his money as (first) a film critic and (later) a right-wing talking head drawing a salary from Richard Mellon Scaife, a professional descendent. So he knows a thing or to about earning a productive living: who contributes more to the economy and creates more wealth than pundits and critics?

2) Edwards has built both his Presidential campaigns on the “Two Americas” theme – claiming that there’s profound danger in the emerging gap between a handful of super-rich, absurdly privileged people and the rest of the populace.

Edwards, says the Medfly, should not be allowed to talk about the wealth gap, because he himself is rich. He'd better either stop caring about poor people or stop being rich, because there is no third way. This is the same reasoning that went through the minds of the wealthy when they called people like FDR and Bertrand Russell "class traitors".

3) Has Edwards spoken to his pal Al Gore about his lavish, energy soaking plantation?

It's hard to figure out who the Medfly is making fun of here, because he doesn't believe in global warming. Also, nice use of the word "plantation", there. Anyone inferring that Edwards is some sort of racist slaver better not blame the Medfly, because that was CERTAINLY NOT what he was getting at.

4) As for Edwards exemplifying “The American Dream,” do we really want to identify that timeless vision with conspicuous consumption of the tackiest and most irresponsible sort?

The Medfly's final defense: sure, we want people to get rich, but do they have to be so ticky-tacky about it? I breathlessly await the Medfly making the same argument about Donald Trump, Bill Gates, the Hunts, the Waltons, and the Bushes.

Meanwhile, up in Fuddles, MN, James Lileks still hates hippies.

It's all perfectly innocent, you see

Everyone from Crazy Pammy to the gang at Big Boy Jammies are outraged at suggestions that a "Code of Conduct" created by the town council of Herouxville, Quebec might possibly be racist.

For, you see, as we have learned repeatedly from our wise right-wing crankocrats, there is no such thing as racism -- or, if it does exist, it is reserved for minority groups to deploy against majorities out of their endless reserve of sour grapes. There are jokes, and misunderstandings, and bold stands against political correctness; there are brave men, like Burt Prelutsky, who speak truth to power about the self-created problems of black people. But there is no such thing as racism. That's just a word used by liberals to make conservatives look bad.

Sure, some might question the adoption of such a Code of Conduct in a town where no immigrants live. Some might wonder why it's necessary to ban immigrants from burning women to death with acid or burning them to death in a fire, when laws against this sort of thing presumably already exist in Canada. Some might even wonder why the city council seems to find it necessary to speak out against activities that are not taking place anywhere in the country. But this is just a group of decent small-town folk saying what they believe in, that's all! And to speak out against their behavior, to call it racist -- that's the same as saying you APPROVE of burning women to death with acid!

Why, it would be no different than if a town full of Christians posted a notice saying that in their town, the kidnapping, ritual consumption and murder of Christian babies was forbidden. Or if a town full of white people passed a resolution that under no circumstances were people allowed to loaf around on street corners blaring their boom boxes and refusing to provide for their many illegitimate children. Or if a town full of westerners placed an item in the town charter expressly forbidding the eating of dog, the binding of feet or the use of water torture. What's racist about that?

"Guernica": a piece of shit, or what?

Over at Butt Propulsion Laboratories, John and the boys, who fancy themselves quite the cultural gadflies, contemplate the question: "Depressing Art: Is It Any Good?" The theory is floated, not unlike a too-large turd in an overflowing toilet bowl, that bitter, depressing art is only made by overpriveleged leftist creeps whose lives are so perfect that they can afford to contemplate misery, while the simple-minded happy people at the bottom, who truly do suffer, only want a song and dance and a nice chuckle. It's a strangely familiar argument...oh, that's right! I remember where I've seen it before: it's the same argument that they used to illustrate how blacks were happy with their lot, because look at how they sang and danced and smiled. Anyway, we are assured, all the depressing movies of yesteryear will soon be forgotten, and only It's a Wonderful Life and Tarzan movies will ultimately be remembered by critics of the future.

For a real laff, go to this post at Libertas that kickstarted the whole conversation and watch Jason Apuzzo claim that "bleak, dark, angry, bitter" films are doomed to eternal failure. When someone, in the very first comment, notes the obvious -- that our legacy of noir would suggest that his eyes are brown -- it kick-starts a high-larious conversation where some of the conserva-critics make the argument that postwar noir , certainly the single most cynical genre American cinema has ever produced on every level, is actually about "justice" and "bad guys trying to do good" and "faith in the human condition". One poster even attempts to argue that Night and the City is the definitive noir because of the protagonist's search for redemption through self-sacrifice, or at least that's what I think it said, but it was hard to tell because big chunks of my brain were exploding. The comments thread ends thusly:

This whole rejection of beauty for bleakness has been the hallmark of all the fine arts during the post War era. Thats why I do not give a damn about art after 1945. When I went to the reopened MOMA in NYC two years ago I only cared about the top floor with works before 1945 and Monet’s Water Lilies. Thats why I have never read a novel published after 1945 except when I was forced to in “English Lit” class like that atrocious Toni Morrison. Thats why I do not care for any classical music since 1945 with atonality being dominant. Call me a reactionary. I am proud to wear the label.

The little scandal that couldn't

Lately with all the people dying and the whole region falling apart and everything, it's been easy to forget that Iraq is also home to the biggest financial scandal in American history. But, despite ongoing efforts to make people care, the fact that Mr. President Man is being outfitted for Warren G. Harding's old suit doesn't raise a lot of hackles.

It's even less likely to do so with the release of the latest report by the Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, who just barely escaped having his job eliminated by the White House. (Maybe they can still saddle him with a government snitch.) Mr. President Man wants some more money, even though Henry Waxman and no one else would like to know where the last $300 billion we gave him went; the new audit reports genteely that "U.S. officials spent another $36.4 million for weapons such as armored vehicles, body armor and communications equipment that can't be accounted for". This is a nice way of saying that they can't find them, just as "DynCorp also may have prematurely billed $18 million in other potentially unjustified costs" is a polite way of saying they tried to steal it.

Curiously, though 27 new criminal probes have been opened in the last 3 months (bringing the total number of Iraq financial mismanagement cases referred for prosecution to 78), Bowen, perhaps fearing for his job, claims that "fraud has not been a significant component of the U.S. experience in Iraq". I guess that's true, unless you consider getting hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts and then farming the work out to subcontractors who don't actually do it to be fraud. Some people are really hung up on definitions like that.

"Overall," the AP report says, "the largest single expense was security. The total was spent in the following way: 34 percent for security and justice. 23 percent to try* to generate and distribute electricity. Still, the report noted, output in the last quarter averaged below pre-war levels. 12 percent for water. 12 percent for economic and societal development. 9 percent for oil and gas. 4 percent for transportation and communications. 4 percent for health care." So, essentially, they're spending nearly 3 times as much on "security and justice" (that is, soldiers, cops and jails) than they are on "economic and societal development" (that is, things that might alleviate the need to spend so much on soldiers, cops and jails).

*: Gotta love that "try". If we just have faith, try hard, and give Mr. President Man's new plan time to work, maybe -- just maybe -- we can the the electrical supply working at an equal level to what it was when the country was led by a dictator who had plunged them into two losing wars and a decade of sanctions.

World War IV?

Interesting, even-handed article in the LA Times by historian David Bell:

Imagine that on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism...

The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States. Yet a great many Americans, particularly on the right, have failed to make this distinction. For them, the "Islamo-fascist" enemy has inherited not just Adolf Hitler's implacable hatreds but his capacity to destroy...

Seeing international conflict in apocalyptic terms — viewing every threat as existential — is hardly a uniquely American habit. To a certain degree, it is a universal human one. But it is also, more specifically, a Western one, which paradoxically has its origins in one of the most optimistic periods of human history: the 18th century Enlightenment...(t)he unexpected consequence of this change was that those who considered themselves "enlightened," but who still thought they needed to go to war, found it hard to justify war as anything other than an apocalyptic struggle for survival against an irredeemably evil enemy. In such struggles, of course, there could be no reason to practice restraint or to treat the enemy as an honorable opponent...

The war against terrorism has not yet been much of a war at all, let alone a war to end all wars. It is a messy, difficult, long-term struggle against exceptionally dangerous criminals who actually like nothing better than being put on the same level of historical importance as Hitler — can you imagine a better recruiting tool? To fight them effectively, we need coolness, resolve and stamina. But we also need to overcome long habit and remind ourselves that not every enemy is in fact a threat to our existence.

Foot Foot don't live here no more

We've waited a long time, but finally, the 2006 Golden Wingnut Awards for excellence in right-wing blowhardery have been awarded by the Poor Man Institute, at a special ceremony hosted by congressional ejaculator Mark Foley. I urge you to investigate immediately, and for God's sake, whatever you do, do not miss the amazing remix of some of the year's top dipshits, spliced to the tune of the Shaggs' "My Pal Foot Foot". Essential viewing for a scary age.

In other kooky nut news, Cal Thomas still hates hippies (or, the sen has set on the peace movement); James Lileks also still hates hippies (check out the end, where he tells a story about an episode of Dragnet where two gopped-up stoners drown their baby, and is clearly on the side of Joe Friday) and engages in a form of mash-up that the rest of the country stopped doing around the time George W. Bush's father was elected; and Dennis "My Son Willingly Speaks to Coloreds" Prager notes that cheerleaders are dumb, but even they know that dictatorships are products of liberalism. "That is why, with the exception of Nazism...nearly all totalitarianism of the 20th century was on the Left."

When they came for the cheerleaders, I said nothing, because I was not a cheerleader. When they came for the glee club, I said nothing, because I was not in the glee club. When they came for the A/V squad, I said nothing, because I was not on the A/V squad. Then, when they came for the yearbook staff, there was no one left to speak for me...

Too much for one day, but...

...I couldn't let this steaming pile go unsmelt.

The New York Times magazine, following its longtime commitment to 'discovering' completely meaningless social trends 10 years behind everyone else and then assigning them ridiculous names to inflate their bogue importance (remember "hipublicans"? "man-dates"?), has discovered -- gasp! -- that there are certain negroes who enjoy rock music! They are, henceforth, to be known as "blipsters".

VOM.

Profiles in Bullshit, Vol. 6

Let's meet...DAVID HOROWITZ

THE POOP: If anyone in the modern conservative moment places above all others on the Stinkometer that measures the fetid funk of the True Believer, it's David Joel Horowitz. The trouble is, he's never quite known what he's a True Believer of. One of the most cartoonish distortions of the New Right, it's not really that surprising that he was once one of the most cartoonish distortions of the New Left. Following the depressing arc of a man who turns to money because he can't find love, Horowitz's youthful flirtations with revolutionary Marxism turned sour when he realized that all the violent rhetoric he'd had so much fun shouting alongside the other campus radicals had a deadly serious side; the Black Panthers turned out to really mean it when they said they were at war with the American system, and the Viet Cong weren't just killing time between weed re-ups when they vowed to drive out the imperialists. When one of his radical friends turned up dead and his comrades in black pajamas turned out to be just as adept at violence as his fellow Americans, he got spooked and began a craven withdrawal from politcal life. Too bad for the rest of us, he -- like so many others of the chattering classes -- never mastered a marketable skill other than letting loose flatulent blasts of ideological windbaggery. By the mid-'80s, like a lot of curdled yuppies, he'd repudiated his wild-eyed hippie past as insufficiently profitable, and was looking for a chance to cash in. All he'd ever been good at was bloviating, but fortunately, in the Reagan era, bloviation was in a seller's market, as long as your bile was spewed in the right direction -- which is to say, towards the Left. Horowitz did an about-face and aimed his brand of academic hustling at a brand-new target, and he's never looked back.

It's amazing how little his M.O. has changed; back in the '60s, his stock in trade was hollow, windy Marxist rhetoric of the sort only encountered in the halls of academia. Horowitz was, astoundingly, once an aide to the incredibly brilliant author, philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell; but his own writing of the era (best embodied in the unreadable The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War) was weightless lefty propaganda, anchored only by his tendency to crib arguments from people smarter than himself. It's interesting that no one on the left calls Horowitz a traitor; that would imply that by losing him to the right, they'd lost something of value. As a reading of his works, liberal or conservative, makes clear, this is not the case; had he stayed pink, he'd have been a decades-long embarrassment to the left. As to the reasons for his apostasy, Horowitz has always been crystal clear: he was awoken to the lies and cruelty of the left, first by the corruption and violence of the Black Panthers (who he'd once idolized so thoroughly that one wonders if his real disillusionment came after confessing a schoolboy crush on Huey Newton), then by the brutality and aggression of the Viet Cong. It's not hard to see what really happened: Horowitz, more than comfortable spieling his anti-capitalist down-with-the-Man rhetoric from the comfort of a dorm room or a wood-paneled office with tenure-seekers and book-deal-wranglers, got the fear when he heard it coming from people who really meant it. His master's degree fom Columbia made it easy to play arond with revolution, but he freaked out when presented with the possibility of real revolution, advocated by people who actually had something to lose.

At any rate, by the late '80s, despite all the Scaife money floating around, you couldn't just wander in off the streets, declare yourself a right-wing apostle, and start collecting a paycheck, even if you were a former editor of Ramparts who used to say things about how the rule of capitalism was a permanent threat to the democratic order. Even for a guy who sat in a luxury hotel in downtown Managua in 1987 and wished for the brutal, nun-slaying Contras to overthrow and execute the Sandinista government (for the good of the poorest citizens, no less!), just being a ridiculously extremist neoconservative crank was no longer enough. He needed a hook, and boy, did he find one! After dicking around with a few hilariously titled books like Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes and The Anti-Chomsky Reader, he started pulling in the Regnery paychecks by inventing a whole new subgenre of right-wing lunacy: the battle against leftist academic McCarthyism. David Horowitz fully embraced the notion that our nation's colleges, despite turning out economy-choking numbers of MBAs and lawyers, were actually hotbeds of unreconstructed Stalinism, dedicated to warping our children into neo-Marxist tools -- and who would know that better than he, a former neo-Marxist tool? But then, showing a spark of originality no one who'd followed his career up to that point could possibly have suspected he possessed, he went the movement one better and added a twist: not only were the universities leftist rat-traps, but they were actually practicing employment discrimination against conservatives!

Yes, in the Witziverse, there is no such thing as a campus conservative; as he puts it, "it is virtually impossible for a vocal conservative to be hired for a tenure-track position on a faculty anywhere, or to receive tenure if so hired". Curiously, Horowitz tends to focus his attention on the liberal arts, where one would expect to find a lot of liberals; his search for conservative professors might be more fruitful if he were to look for them in the sciences, law schools, business schools, engineering departments, or even schools of government, but it's a lot more fun to point out how j-schools or literature departments are run by self-described leftists, then cross his arms and say "see?". Upping the irony ante to the point where the table is beginning to groan, Horowitz -- who makes his living bitching about the fact that people like Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky are permitted to have opinions -- claims that his anti-liberal witch hunts are conducted in the name of "academic diversity". This asinine claim doesn't stand up to even a second's worth of scrutiny, and people like Juan Coles and Stanley Fish have spent a lot of time meticulously demonstrating what any ten-year-old can plainly see (that David Horowitz is a low-rent two-bit hustler with his head so far up his ass that when he talks his eyeballs vibrate), but he's still managed to become one of the leading lights of neo-conservativism on the strength of his highly original and appealing notion of collegiate Communism, which people just eat up even though there's not a scrap of merit to it. His latest project, Discover the Network, is a conspiracy-mongering aggregation of nutjobs dedicated to "outing" campus liberals a la Joe McCarthy reincarnated as Fox Mulder.

Curiously, Horowitz has made lots of money and quite a name for himself, but one thing he hasn't made is friends. Unlike Norman Podhoretz, who people seem to like until they discover that he's a walking fart, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in contemporary punditry, on the right or the left, who has anything good to say about David Horowitz. The left naturally regards him as a penny-arcade snitch who's parlayed a lucky hustle into a reekingly harmful career, but surprisingly, people on the right don't seem to care much for him either. They peddle his arguments when it suits them, and they defend him as much as possible against the supremely ironic charge of censorship from the left, but they don't ask him to all the good parties, and a number of prominent conservatives seem to flat-out despise him. Perhaps it's because of his cheap racket, or his snitch's demeanor, or their own memories of how quickly he turned against his own when the tide shifted; or perhaps it's that he's just a dissimulating little shitstain who it's impossible to like.

WHAT’S THE ONE THING HE KNOWS FOR SURE? Affirmative action is A-OK, as long as it's only applied to conservatives.

DEFINING MOMENT: Horowitz (who shouldn't be confused with the consumer advocate and Fight Back! host of the same name) doesn't really have one defining moment where his stench wafted out of the folds of his forehead for all to smell, but he does tend to lie a lot. At least three times, he has reported incidents of students receiving failing grades because they turned in papers that were pro-American or anti-liberal, but each time he's been shown to have hyped, exaggerated, misinterpreted or invented the cases. His most recent book, The Professors, claimed to show the liberal biases of over a hundred "dangerous academics", but only six profiled professors were included because of anything they'd ever said or done in class. Also, despite being subtitled The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, the book featured only 100 profiles. To no one's surprise, Horowitz blamed the gaffe on someone else. He was, of course, lying.

And yet, it gets worse!

I dare you, DARE YOU to read the Comments section of that Burt Prelusky post I just linked.

Here, I'll get you started.

THIS REALLY HAPPENED

A Black friend once asked if I would apologize for slavery. I said no, not only no- but he11 NO. My people never had slaves, never knew of slavery. They came here in the 1880s after it was all over. So why SHOULD I apologize?

Said it was a stain on American History. I said, SO WHAT! Did it happen to you? (No.) Your parents? (No.) So WHAT is your problem? Well, it happened. SO WHAT! End of discussion.

THANK YOU, WHITE PEOPLE

Blacks haven't been slaves on the North American continent since 1865... white people owe you nothing. In fact, it was white people--in Western culture--who ended slavery in the Western world, many of them dying in battle.

THANK YOU AGAIN, WHITE PEOPLE

I'm sure you've all noticed the coverage being given to the fact that two black head coaches have led their team to the Super Bowl. In fact according to cnn.com history was made. How nice that these two men took the charitable opportunity that was handed to them on a silver platter by the well meaning white team owners and managed not to screw it up. Truly a credit to their race.

HOW BLACKS CAN EARN OUR RESPECT

I'd encourage them to learn to speak well, and to have job skills, and to marry before they reproduce, and to avoid getting on welfare at any time. I'd also encourage them to either lose the gum altogether (preferable) or learn how to chew it with their mouths closed.

DO WHAT NOW?

We need to call out the people who think blacks being racist against anyone who isn't black isn't racism.

IT’S JUST THAT SIMPLE

None of what happened in the past affects us now.

BURT PRELUTSKY RESPONDS TO HIS OWN COLUMN

I wondered when I wrote the piece how blacks would respond. It seems that the intelligent ones read it as I intended. Namely, with an open mind and an open heart, whereas others merely took umbrage that a white person would dare to write the truth.

WHEN WILL WHITE PEOPLE EVER WIN?

Whites are in a no win situation regarding anything Black.

SO REALLY, THEY WERE KINDA LUCKY

if the Black's had not been brought over as slaves, they would still be in Africa and subsequently have a much lower standard of living and wanting to come here anyways.

IN FACT, WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, WHITES HAVE IT WORSE THAN BLACKS EVER DID

Though by definition many of us are slaves as well through increased government control and higher taxes.

YOU NIGGERS OWE ME ONE WHITE FOOT, SIZE 11E

Blacks owe ME, PERSONALLY.... The blacks were slaves and deserve special handouts a century later. Well, slavery ended because a lot of white guys DIED to end it. One of my great-great-grandfathers came back from the Civil War without a foot and another didn't come back at all.

MAYBE!

The very people that always responds to white people with the same ole come back; "You are a racist" are in fact the biggest racist of all. Nothing is 100%, but the average black person has a deep hatred for most or all white people. And only because of the color of their skin. The average black person cannot talk very long before race is part of their message. I do not notice that when the average white person talks. Maybe I'm wrong.

SOME OF THEM ARE ALMOST HUMAN

I think your "role models are too often basketball players who make more babies than baskets; whose language skills are embarrassingly abysmal" line is a bit over the top. I have been favorably impressed during some recent post-game interview by how well-spoken the athlete was --- in a couple of cases the black athlete made more sense than the white interviewer.

LISTEN TO MY FUNNY COMEDY ROUTINE

Burt, I'm offended, I'm deeply, deeeeeply offended Burt- You said the N-word, I know it was in context to a Chris Rock monologue, but he is a black guy, you're a white guy you can't say that man, I'm hoit(ebonics for hurt) and scarred by you saying that (sniffle!) because after some 800 years of oppression at the hands of your ancestors Burt (boo hoo) you saying that word just (sniffle!) makes really, really sad man. Burt don't you know (Waaaa! Waaaa!)(crying uncontrollably now) I'm a human being Burt-I hoit(ebonics for hurt) Boit (ebonics for Burt). I really, really hoit Boit

NO, I SWEAR, THIS REALLY HAPPENED

Several years ago I attended a seminar where someone professed that the early Egyptians themselves were Negro. During the Q&A afterwards I asked "If that is so, who were Pharoah's slaves.?" The presenters only reply was...."Next question..."

MY KEYBOARD IS BROKEN

The Ni**ers don't want a conversation, and they don't want responsibility. Hence their treatme*t of such people as Cosby, Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas, Sowell, etc. To the Publicity Wh*re and those that buy into his crud, they are worse than racists: they are traitors...

BLACKS ARE THE REAL RACISTS

I have lived in the south for over 10 years and I have yet to meet a white bigot, but the black bigots are a dime a dozen.

THIS NEGRO GUM-CHEWING EPIDEMIC IS WORSE THAN WE FEARED

I (and many other people) hate it that, whenever people are sardined in together and can't escape, they pull out the gum and pass it around. I can't stand the look, the sound, or the stench of gum chewing... and I've noticed that if I ask a black person to tone it down, they often seem to assume that it's racial, and that I can't stand it because it's a black person doing it--when nothing could be further from the truth.

THE PROBLEM IS, THERE’S NOT ENOUGH DISCRIMINATION

The key point: I once read that the race problem in this country is not that a black man can't get a seat in a restaurant, it's that a black man can't get thrown out of one.

Town Hall is WHITES ONLY!

I have listened to you, the American people. I have listened as you've told me what you want from my Town Hall recaps, and you have told me: "MORE RACISM". So allow me to re-introduce you to...Burt Prelutsky.

You may remember Burt from his days writing scripts for shows like M*A*S*H or Branded. Or you may remember him from his liberal apostasy, after which he became Town Hall's Hollywood correspondent and the journalistic equivalent of a cranky old man yelling at the damn kids to get off his lawn. But in yesterday's column, he finally woke up to the reality that the site that hosts him is a haven for politically incorrect rebels who would never dream of condemning him no matter what crazy bullshit spills out of his gob, so he decided to write a whole column about how he doesn't like the coloreds. Let's watch!

The whole question of race is a dicey one. Pity the poor fool who wades into those troubled waters. Well, here goes.

Oh, hooray! An elderly, wealth white man from Hollywood is finally going to tell us truth about black people. Have your blood pressure medicine handy!

If a black person tells the truth -- namely, that in 2007, 99% of black problems are self-inflicted -- he is, like Bill Cosby and Thomas Sowell, dismissed as an Uncle Tom.

Well, there you have it, folks: after 400 years of slavery, kidnapping, torture and murder, a disastrous war, 100 more years of institutional racism and discrimination, and a mere 40 years of actually being able to vote, blacks -- who no doubt are completely free nowadays of the problems caused by racism and discrimination, and whose massive inequality of resources, education, opportunity and income is not a factor because BOOTSTRAPS! -- have managed to take charge of 99% of their problems. Now that's showing initiative!

If a white person tells the truth -- namely, that with a 70% illegitimacy rate, no amount of government hand-outs will do anything but provide the cancer victim with a very expensive band-aid -- he’s condemned as a racist.

Actually, white people are condemned as racists if they come up with a bogus, grossly inflated, context-free statistic and present it as "the truth".

When blacks say they wish to have a dialogue with whites, it only means that they want a forum at which to bash whites, while their victims provide a Greek chorus of mea culpas, provide the coffee and Danish, and drop a little something in the collection plate on their way out.

Just like the Jews, with their fake-ass "Holycost". Whatever, Hebes! We're through feeling guilty for your weak shit!

There is such a thing as white prejudice. No doubt about it. But it has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with character, culture and values.

Okay, everyone, I beg of you: read that again. What Burt is saying here is that when white people are prejudiced, it's not because they're racists, but because other races have insufficient character, inferior culture and bad values. That's what white prejudice is. Why, it seems like something you should almost be proud of!

What blacks refuse to acknowledge is that whites are intolerant of crime and the creeps who commit it, be they black thugs or white trash.

Whereas black people, they just love gangbangers and drug dealers! Ask any mother who's terrified to let her kids out the door: she has nothing but positive things to say about the Gangsta Disciples, and if you say a word against them, she'll throw a hissy fit.

The real shame should be that millions of black kids are fatherless

No white kids are fatherless!

that their taste in music is for anything that’s crude, lewd and loud

That horrible crazy rap music!

that their role models are too often basketball players who make more babies than baskets

Not like our fine upstanding white quarterbacks!

whose language skills are embarrassingly abysmal

Niggers are dumb!

and that, although most of the street punks are peddling drugs for roughly the minimum wage, they regard it as a worthier, more manly pursuit than working at a 7/11 or, God forbid, going to church, school or a library.

Uh, going to church doesn't pay anything, Burt.

Most whites in this country are not racist. In their heart, they agree with black comedian Chris Rock when he says, “I love black people, but I hate niggers,” even if they themselves are not allowed to make such an honest declaration.

God damn you blacks! Why won't you allow us to be honest, and say that we hate niggers?

Actually, what most whites are is cowardly. When we see black kids with the top of their baggy pants drooping somewhere south of their butts

White people never sport crazy fashions!

annoying people with their ear-splitting boom boxes

Okay, honestly: when was the last time you actually saw someone with a boom box? What is this, 1985?

saying “they be” when they mean “they are,”

Of course, Burt, who does not know what dialect is, is wrong: blacks mean "they be" when they say "they be". It's not like they're saying "banana" when they mean "apple"; they're just communicating -- in a way that is perfectly clear to the people who comprise their audience, which, after all, is the goal of communication -- using different language than is preferred by Burt Prelutsky. But, on the other hand, he makes a good point: niggers are dumb!

and we pretend that theirs is a different, but equally fine culture as our own

There you have it: we KNOW that black culture is inferior to white culture (which I guess is what he means by "our own", though I'm hesitant to be included in any culture Burt Prelutsky thinks of as his), but cowards that we are, we go on letting these barely-human apes think that it's not.

we’re no better than those enablers who give money to drug addicts or booze to alcoholics.

Burt here claims that by "letting" blacks have their own art forms, dress styles, and modes of speech, we are enabling their destruction. He's learned his lesson well from his hero Ronald Reagan, who said that "letting" Indians live on reservations and keep their own language and laws was "indulging" them.

When we finally stop patronizing loafers, louts and criminals, stop encouraging people who were born 120 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, 20 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act

Wow, twenty whole years after the forced legal abolition of institutional racism! It's a wonder they haven't put a man on the moon yet!

to pretend that their sloth and ignorance are the fault of whites, only then will blacks come one step closer to having that colorblind society they claim they want.

Uh, Burt? It's conservatives who say they want a colorblind society. Blacks don't want people to stop seeing them as black; they just want to not be discriminated against because they're black. It's not quite the same thing, you fucking racist old cracker.

BOOM!

As I mentioned earlier, the conservative talking heads are coming all over themselves at the fictional nuking of Valencia, CA on 24. Now, the big caveat here is that I've never seen the show, and don't intend to, so I'm not sure who's responsible for the fictional attack, how it's being portrayed, and so forth -- and, frankly, I don't care. What interests me is the reaction to it among right-wingers; while they're trying desperately to convince us that it represents a dire warning of what our sinister enemies among the Islamist horde have in store for us, it's pretty obvious that what it really represents for them is a masturbation fantasy.

Remember, these people essentially make their living by fearmongering. With social policies that center around frowny prohibition and economic policies that serve only to fatten the fat, the only way they have to get the majority of Americans to vote for the GOP is to terrify them into thinking that only the candidates of the Republican Party have the requisite stones to stand up to the dusky blood-drinkers who even now are trying to find a way to stuff a thermonuclear warhead into a briefcase. Their leaders invoke "the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud", while they themselves spin endless fantasies about nuke-blasted American urban centers (which James Lileks always and inexplicably places in Seattle) to explain why we can't elect someone who would give us health insurance. They conjure images of a major MSA being reduced to radioactive Ho Ho wrappers as a vision of the unimaginable horror our enemies have in store for us (cut to Onion editorial cartoon of a bearded mullah preparing to rape Lady Liberty), but for them, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished: have no doubt that in an abstract sense, if not a real one, they would be immensely satisfied if some jihadi took out a nonessential flyover so that all their raving and panicky predictions would be justified.

Thus we come to this column by Lileks' buddy, Hugh "Paint the Map Red" Hewitt, who answers the unmade charge that 24 has 'gone too far' by noting the allegedly low Valencia bodycount and saying that if anything, it hasn't gone far enough. "Eventually another nuke will go off," he assures us, referring to the real world and not the one of 24, "and it is not likely to be the obvious action of a state actor." This is a curious assertion to make, given that there are tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in the hands of state actors and, as far as anyone knows, none in the hands of individuals. Also, the only times nukes have ever been used is by states, and many states -- including the U.S. -- are continuing to produce them. Our current strategy for fighting terrorism in the middle east includes as a key component the possible use of low-yield tactical nukes. But, hey, whatever, reality: Hugh says it'll be raghead rebels and the teevee proves him right, unless it doesn't.

"Would the BBC have been going 'too far'," asks Hugh, "if in 1937 it had broadcast a radio drama depicting life in a Hitler-authorized death camp where hundreds of thousands of Jews were being executed in gas chambers, one of a string of such camps springing up across Europe?" Not really. But how about if Winston Churchill wanked himself to sleep at night by thinking about the Nazi death camps? Maybe that would have been going too far. Or how about if it turned out there weren't any Nazi death camps? Or that the death camps in the drama were portrayed as being authorized by Canada rather than Germany? Too far? I dunno, I don't have my own talk show.

"An event much more likely to occur in our lifetime than any catastrophe unleashed by global warming has been put on the table," says Hugh, no doubt giving all the starving people in Africa a good chuckle, "and suddenly tongues are wagging about responsibility." Whose tongues? I haven't heard anyone reading 24 the riot act, and even if someone is, who cares? It's one of the most popular shows on TV. "Americans don't like to think of such an attack upon America," bloviates punditry's own Triple H, "but prior to 9/11, they didn't like to think of airplanes crashing into skyscrapers". Man, true! I mean, before 9/11, I can hardly think of any movies that depicted a planned terror attack on or invasion of America. Except for a few hundred.

"A shock to many, an upsetting nightmare for others," he concludes, "a depiction of a happy ending for our enemies." And for some? A propagandist wet dream.

Also, be sure to check out some of the delightful comments made by Town Hall readers:

"If this sort of event happened in the US, Muslims, rightly or wrongly (although it's inconceivable to me that any other group would muster the will to try to detonate a nuclear weapon on US soil), the Muslims would be held responsible by an incredibly vindictive faction of our nation. There would be a pogrom against Muslims, and quite honestly I as a citizen and as a member of the military would do nothing to stop it. Actually, if the bomb destroyed ACLU Hq, we'd kill two birds with one stone."

"Back when I was in high school, there was the scaremongering 'The Day After.' Realistic in its portrayal, perhaps, but if only we had listened to its producers and the rest of the Left, and not Ronald Reagan. Why, the good ol' Soviet Union would still be here! No, the Socialists are mad because '24' is calling a spade a spade, and the terrorists this season are much more realistic: Islamic fanatics who hate the West, more specifically, the US, and have no compunction about killing anyone and everyone whom they hate."

"Now, for retaliation, if I could just see Iran turned into a parking lot on the show, I'd be the MOST loyal viewer they have."

"If a nuke were detonated in Los Angeles Mexico would be really angry that an atomic bomb had gone off in their country."

"I fully expect several suitcase nukes to be exploded in 4 or 5 of our major cities before 2015. With the Congress of the United States, both Democrat and Republican advocating surrender, the Bush admistration is just about all that stands in their way."

"Destroying Hollywood is in the world's best interest, and that is why we must praise Islamists. They would rid us of the intestinal aesthetic pests that are destroying the US."

"Would it not be grand (if not wishful thinking) to have President Palmer enact draconian measures to counteract terrorism....and have it work out well? Just a dream on my part, much like the obliteration of Hollywood."

CHARMING.

You CAN bullshit a bullshitter

I've been trying to enjoy the first few seasons of Penn & Teller's Bullshit lately. I say 'trying' because it's not easy. At times, the show is delightful, and I still revel in debunking on general principles, but there's two things that really bug me about the show.

First of all, there's Penn Jillette's relentless libertarianism. Now, it's pretty safe to say that I used to fairly idolize Penn Jillette. He was a big goofy-looking dude (he's far and away the winner in the 'celebrity I most resemble' sweepstakes, if other people are any guide) who knew a bunch of cool tricks, was fearless and outspoken about his political and philosophical views, he had a low tolerance for obvious nonsense, and he was obsessed with Uma Thurman; what's not to love? Unfortunately, as time has gone on, he's displayed some tendencies that are less lovable. He's a bit of a blowhard, as are all really opinionated people, but with a nasty edge of self-righteousness; he's polyamorous, which is fine, but always brings me down when people talk about it a lot, which he does; and he's a die-hard ultra-libertarian, a devotee of Ayn Rand, and (!) a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. This comes through way too often in the show; he's quick to talk up the lack of peer review when he's debunking intelligent design (as well he should), but he's equally quick to ignore the presence of peer review when he's debunking global warming. He's also constantly critical of people who cynically peddle nonsense in order to make a buck, but it seems not to have occurred to him that as much money can be made off of environmentalism, recycling, and alternative fuels, there's a lot more to be made off of the industries they're meant to correct, and that just maybe all the people who are saying global warming is a myth have something to gain from their stance as well. (To his credit, he's owned up to having his head up his ass on second-hand smoke.) I know his standard disclaimer -- "We're as biased as anyone, but at least we admit it" -- but I don't see that as any less of a cop-out than if an evangelical said it.

Beyond that, though, it can be an enjoyable show -- depending on who's writing it. BS's writing staff is wildly inconsistent, coming up with hilarious and insightful lines and cutting jokes one episode and wheezing out hoary gags, puns, and one-liners that seem like they belong on Animal Planet home video shows the next. I want to like the show -- I mean, I really want to, not just because I like Penn & Teller, but also because it's one of the few skeptical voices in mass media -- but in the end, I really don't.

I hesitate to use the "Only In America" formulation, but...

Rich Madison Avenue shopkeeper sues penniless vagrants for a million dollars.

You know, I don't wake up hoping for these worst-case scenarios. They just seem to present themselves to me.

The latest from Fuddle, MN

Lileks today can be broken down, more or less, into sections.

SECTION 1 involves the narrative of a trip to Chuck E. Cheese. He always likes to complain about these trips (and adds a delightful bit of misogyny, because when he explains that they are necessitated by his wife playing cards with her female friends, he always calls the card games "hen parties" or something else you'd expect to hear issuing from a 1950s cartoon dad with a rolling-pin lump coming out of his head as he sits at a cocktail bar commiserating over a Harvey Wallbanger), today's entry makes it crystal-clear that the trips are really more for him than they are for his six-year-old daughter. It's almost charming, in a sad, egomaniacal way.

SECTION 2 involves him scolding people for not buying his book. Hey, I'd do the same thing, if I had a book. Or anything else people might want to buy.

SECTION 3 involves the story of his daughter playing the piano, and is pretty cute, and thus contains no grist for my Lileks hatemill.

SECTION 4 involves a rare appearance by Mrs. Lileks, who has left Jimbo a note to gather together some stuff for a "drive for the troops" her office is holding. Lileks notes, properly, that "it galls you, really; they shouldn't need anything". True enough, although he stops rather a few steps short of placing the blame where it belongs, with Mr. President Man and his military short-shrifting so he can pay for the upper-class tax cuts the Lileks family enjoys. But they're happy to spread the wealth! The #2 item on the 'wanted' list is "Slim-Jims", which seems like a pretty frivolous thing for a 'drive for the troops', especially considering that our soldiers are, like me, fatter than ever. Also in the top ten list is "sports, hot rods, news and celebrity-type magazines", so Jimbo provides copies of -- get this -- Stuff (which he claims "for some reason...I get for free", ho ho) and the Weekly Standard. So, thanks to his self-sacrificing actions, our brave boys now have the inedible junk food, softcore porn, and right-wing propaganda they need to win the war! Well done, Mr. Lileks!

SECTION 5 involves Lileks telling a story about a dead Marine who got lots of attention at his funeral, which, he claims, makes hash of the criticism that the government has banned filming the returning coffins of dead soldiers. Aside from making no fucking sense (the images of coffins are meant to make the cost of the war a reality for people who might live in communities where they don't have a lot of war casualties, you jackass), this seems to suggest that Lileks believes that symbols have power, but only if they're symbols that he personally endorses.

SECTION 6, the Lileksiest section of them all, involves him deciding that, for reasons somehow connected to this dead Marine and the liberal media or something, he is going to censor his daughter's letter to the soldiers he's sending smut and extruded beef lips to. Make sense of that in your spare time, if you dare.

How to kill a media consultant

Let us say that you would like to be the head of a new-media company. Let us say that you are a minor mystery novelist with no particular experience in journalism, but with a big ego and a massive axe to grind against the mainstream media, so you have wheezy visions of totally transforming the way news is collected. This is called "hubris".

The first thing you'll want to do is to find a bunch of like-minded partners with whom you can trade quips about how corrupt, incompetent and liberally biased the mainstream media is. As time progresses and you become more entranced with your own cleverness, you should move as far to the right ideologically as you can, all the while claiming that it was the press that betrayed you instead of the other way around.

Once you've gathered a flotilla of self-absorbed dimwits (get as many as you can; it'll increase your chances of stumbling across a golden angel willing to invest those all-important $$$ in your new media venture!), it's time for your first big move. Since your key demographic is basement-dwelling cranks with nothing but time on their hands, see if you can get them to pick apart an innocuous story by a respected legitimate journalist. It shouldn't be hard; the trade isn't what it used to be thanks to decades of pandering to low-grade ideologues like yourself. Just raise a big enough stink and squawk the words "liberal media bias" over and over again, and eventually the journalist's employers will cave. He'll get fired, even though you're never actually able to prove that he did anything wrong. Congratulations! You've toppled an old-media giant.

Now it's time to take one giant leap forward. Announce that you are forming a for-profit company out of your loose aggregation of pissed-off conservative quasi-pundits. Use lots of terms like "new media" and "revolution in journalism" and "a new method of fact-checking" and "a professional news service for citizen journalists". Go public so that dopey right-wingers will toss money at you even though you don't really have any kind of business plan or apparent means for making money. Hey, you're part of the new media! You don't have to make plans or come up with revenue streams or any of that second-wave horseshit! You're on the cutting edge. When it comes time to pick a keynote speaker for the big event, go with a big name from the old-media world. Some people will criticize your choice as being a journalist even more fraudulent and disgraced than the old-media giant whose demise made your reputation. Do not listen to those people. They are just jealous of your forward-looking new-media ways.

With that out of the way, it's time to get to work. You're a publicly traded new-media dynamo now, not some shifty concatenation of hack bloggers! Still, there's no reason to actually do anything like train your shifty concatenation of hack bloggers in journalistic techniques. Simply write them a big check and have them go on as usual, writing a bunch of bullshit about whatever crosses their candy-colored little minds. You can even have one token liberal, but get rid of him quick lest he point out that you're not actually doing anything different than you were before the new-media revolution. Oh, yeah: you forgot to figure out where you're going to get your actual reportage from! Ah, fuck it, just pull that shit off the wire services like every other old-media outlet in the world does.

Hey, wait! You forgot to pick a name! That's the most important part. At first, you might want to select a name that implies a dynamic, user-friendly media organization that's free for all -- a true beacon that's open to all users, not just a self-congratulatory clique of half-baked ideologues talking to themselves. But don't get too snooty -- you don't want to sound too new-media, especially if you run the risk of getting sued by someone else who's already using that name. Hey, I know: why not name yourself after what you wore to bed last night? Then design a really crappy logo, and constantly remind your readers that unlike them, you don't even have to get dressed to go to work! That's super-duper-professional, and they'll be bound to respect you.

Now that you've fully established yourself, you'd better buckle down and get busy. Forget about any high-level defections you might encounter early on, or the petty distractions of your investors and business partners constantly asking how this thing is ever going to turn a buck. You have no time for that stuff! You're a citizen journalist! Besides, if they pull out, you can always find new investors and advertisers, especially if you soft-pedal the fact that your co-founder runs a racist hate site populated by
bloodcrazy loons. Spend the next two years being the best darn new media venture you can be, and try not to make a seemingly endless series of gaffes, boners and comically ridiculous missteps that make your company seem less like a revolution in journalism and more like a get-rich-quick scheme cooked up by Fred Flintstone.

At this point, your venture should be as highly respected as the old-media giant you single-handedly brought down. Your name should be on the lips of every American as their most trusted source of citizen journalism, and your leading reporters should be a classy bunch who bring only the finest reportage to a trusting public. Still, you're missing one thing: a big scoop. A stunning revelation about world affairs, an important breaking story where you get there first and prove that you're better than all the big boys after all.

Put your finest mind on the case, and the odds are he'll come through like gangbusters. Unfortunately, the old media being what they are, his story may be held to antiquated notions of truth, despite all the trouble you went to establish all those swell new methods of fact-checking. A bunch of snobby elitists lacking the wherewithal to establish their own new-media companies, and who therefore have no right to criticize yours, are going to demand a slightly higher standard of proof than 'this one guy I know says it's totally true', and, despite your ongoing efforts to paint them as part of a global conspiracy to make you look foolish, they may just manage to convince the whole world that your one big scoop was just a bunch of bullshit.

This is called "what comes around goes around, kid".