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February 16, 2010 - February 9, 2010

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

THE NEWSPAPER THING. Honestly, I've never been a fan of Michael Kinsley, but I've always had a grudging respect for him. He played the liberal foil amicably and cogently on William F. Buckley's Firing Line, so I've never doubted that he was one of the diminishing population of lefties who don't stroke out at the mere presence of a conservative in the room. On the other hand, I had the impression that he was boringly predictable, a party-line kind of guy without much in the way of original ideas. Now I'm thinking I might have been wrong about that. His op-ed piece today in the Washington Post, "Life After Newspapers," is brilliant.

Regular readers here will know that I have a dog in this hunt. I've written about the financial catastrophe facing newspapers many times, most recently here, here and here. In the latest instance, I was responding to a newspaperman who took strong exception to my assertion that the crisis was one newspapers had brought on themselves, much of it through increasingly naked political bias. A representative excerpt of his argument and my response:

If you respond by saying, well, some other enterprise will step in and fill that role, then the burden is on you to explain how such a business could be any more sustainable than the ones that are struggling mightily to be sustainable as we speak.

Sorry for the lengthy post. I'm just getting weary of seeing this flawed argument about the newspaper industry's decline (i.e., various versions of "they're too biased!"), and it's hard not to wax on about it.

Since then, of course, bailout fever has spread, not surprisingly, to newspapers who believe not that they're too big to fail but -- like my antagonist above -- too important to fail. Congress is actually considering the possibility of making newspapers nonprofit "foundations" subsidized by the very government they're supposed to be objectively reporting on. That should make liberals happy, shouldn't it? Well, interestingly enough, not in Michael Kinsley's case. It turns out he's the kind of old-fashioned liberal who still believes in quaint concepts like the market and an independent press. From his op-ed:


He's also unsparing about how this crisis came to pass.


Wow. That's an acute perception. And true. What's more, he's not particularly worried:


It's enough to make you wonder if Michael Kinsley is becoming, um, conservative. I confess it; I'm impressed.

Now, if only we could extend the grand option of "doing nothing" to a bunch of other issues the Obama administration is interfering in so recklessly and disastrously. Then, maybe, I could begin to share CountryPunk's naive hopefulness. Although I'd also have to see some change in this depressing statistic.

NO POLITICS. Redemption lurks in the oddest corners. Reliable sources are telling me that the current nostalgia craze is for the Eighties, and my experience of the past weekend bears that out. My wife paid rapt attention to a five-hour VH1 special devoted to one-hit wonders of that decade, and I found myself enraptured, too, despite my reflexive allegiance to the much more serious sixties era of popular music. But constantly in thrall to this site as I am, I also took skeptical note of the canned intro that was repeated at the beginning of each one-hour segment -- the declaration that the 1980s were a "simpler time" and that without the music we all loved the decade would have "sucked."

A simpler time? Hardly. Unlike many who have fallen vicariously in love (or at least 'like') with distant decades, I actually lived through the eighties, just as I lived through the seventies and sixties, and I can report that there was nothing "simple" about them. Of course, I fully understand why the people who keep track of popular music have to say what they say, because the Eighties were the decade of Ronald Reagan, the twilight of the Cold War, a time of prodigious global challenges, and the last time that Americans were unashamedly proud to be American. Uncomfortable realities in the Age of Obama. It was a time when time might very well have suddenly ended for us at any moment, but also a time when our nation was finally, after several diffident decades, standing up to those who threatened us. It began, quite propitiously, with the "miraculous" 1980 Olympic hockey victory against the Russians. (All right. I was going to be content with just a link to Miracle, but I can't. I want to be sure you watch it. So, my apologies for interrupting the flow of this paragraph...)


The decade ended with the total collapse of the Soviet Union, engineered by a president whom the MSM hated so much it contrived to give all the credit for sudden peace to the Soviet leader who had the wit to fold an irretrievably bad hand.

Did the Eighties "suck"? No. Defiinitely no. After twenty years of economic stagnation and inflation, the Eighties were the beginning of a 30-year epoch of growth and prosperity. And oddly enough, prosperity also spurred a boom in the innovation and excitement of popular music. Within months of the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, MTV was born, and it became an international phenomenon. Are you starting to understand why the Eighties are the source of a current nostalgia craze? I have it on good authoriity that girls are suddenly wearing leg warmers again, just as they did in the aftermath of the movie Flashdance.


In fact, my own grown-up daughter -- she's 24 now -- tells me that the Eighties, especially the music, are all the rage now. I asked her what was so special about this era she's too young to remember. What one word characterizes her fascination with a long expired decade?

"Electricity," she told me. "The Eighties were electric."

That's an odd term to be used by a contemporary generation that carries electricity in its pockets and purses in a far more literal way than any denizen of the Eighties could have. There were no cell phones then, no Gameboys, and barely any internet connections. But I know what she means. In my somewhat retro vocabulary, her description translates to vitality, passion, aspiration, life. Particularly at the beginning of that decade, there was an explosion of possibilities that infected everyone, but most of all young people, even if they didn't know or credit the source. For just a moment, everything you could possibly imagine was conceivable. Like all such moments, it ended, long before the anguished 2000s, but the buzz of it still resonates in 2009.

Music, as always, is the key, the thing which gives us the feel and rhythm of the time. It's part of a continuum obviously, which is why we can look to the Rolling Stones (as usual) for bookends of eighties pop music. They kicked it off with Start Me Up, which is a new beginning by any measure and concluded it with Mixed Emotions, a monument to the end of the long simmering and incredibly dangerous Cold War between Mick and Keith. In between, there was a long ton of great music. Thanks to MTV, there was a profusion of one-hit wonders, which provide an unsurpassed insight into just how competitive the music industry is. So much talent harnessed to produce one fleeting moment of fame. Do you remember these?

How much harder must it be to read the times well enough to dominate them utterly? Here are the top ten songs of the entire decade:


The lists never tell the whole story, though. Time for me to come clean. Child of the sixties that I am, I still had a tape or two (or three) that I played every morning before I launched myself into corporate America in my expensive suit. And, yes, it was Eighties stuff. Come into my parlor...

The first one was actually the last gasp of the seventies, but it's no secret I was once a punk. The rest are the music of my life in the business world, about which I was as fierce and passionate as I am here. These aren't all the songs I listened to. But they are the ones -- apart from the obligatory Stones fix -- I remember most intensely. Psychoanalyze me at your own peril. In case you don't know it yet, I bite.


What were the Eighties? A vivid time. If you were there, you know what I mean. If you weren't, you probably wish you were. Which is a good sign that you can trust your gut. Nostalgia can be a kind of redemption. If it sends you in productive directions. I have a nostalgic decade or two that I look to as well. Maybe I'll tell you about them sometime. If you prove yourselves worthy. Until then, study this about me:


Eighties. Pure and (not so) simple. Just like me. Not to mention electric. After all, I am the undercurrent. Of everything.

Monday, April 06, 2009

SING, BABIES, SING. The Y-Gen website where I found this titled it "Dumb.flv." But both the escalators in the shot are down escalators. We can think of them as the two parties in our political system. If you're determined to go up, what other choice do you have? Even though the editor chose to cut before this young woman made it to the top, it does look as if she's going to get there, doesn't it?

I've been searching, I admit it, for reasons, images, even excuses for hope in the face of the daily avalanche of catastrophic news. They've been few and far between. (btw I will personally eviscerate the next person who writes "far and few between," which is one of the latest viruses of illiteracy sweeping the internet, conservative websites included.) But I think I've found something. Not an item or two to cheer about but a pattern that provides a basis for cautious optimism. How to frame it? Simply. (I have a post in progress about the complex virtues of certain kinds of simple-mindedness, but you'll have to wait for that one; it's far from simple to write.) The Obamaniacs and their adoring lefties are overplaying their hand. Yes, Americans are patient and slow to anger, but they will eventually respond to the drip-drip-drip of liberal pessimism, insults, authoritarianism, and hysteria. In this context, many of the recent "bad news" occurrences are not really bad news but baby steps toward massive repudiation of a worldview most Americans will ultimately and forcefully reject.

Take the new Newsweek cover story celebrating the impending death of Christianity in America:


It's just flat overstated. Twenty years ago, 86 percent of Americans described themselves as Christians. Today it's only 76 percent. That still sounds like an overwhelming majority to me. And probably more realistic than the old number anyway. If current events affect your religious affiliation, you weren't very spiritual to begin with. And even if the figure declines to 60 percent a decade or so from now, it will remain a large enough majority to 1) take punitive umbrage at cover art that translates its faith's most sacred symbol into political propaganda and 2) recoil in disgust at the image of an American president genuflecting to a muslim plutocrat who's in the business of secretly subsidizing terrororism against Jews and Christians. I have no doubt that Newsweek editors yearn for the death of Christianity in America, but declaring that it's imminent doesn't make it so. It merely exposes their own prejudice in the matter. Drip-drip.

I've been wondering quietly about the lack of media coverage of the two journalists seized by North Korea. Two young women in the clutches of the most indisputably evil political regime on earth. It's not even clear that they were captured inside the North Korean border. Regardless of their professional stature or lack of it, these are media people. They work for Al Gore's television network for heaven's sake. How is it possible that this is not a day-after-day-after-day headline story in the nation's leading newspapers? No matter how left wing these girls are, even conservatives would raise hell to secure their safe return. But it's been only a rueful footnote in coverage of the "Hundred Days" of Obama. And the few leaks we've been permitted to date suggest they're facing ten years of imprisonment. Americans. Journalists. Women. Young women. Imprisoned in North Korea. Under who knows what godawful, abusive conditions.

Ironically, the only outrage I've heard expressed about their plight came from MSNBC's leftwing Gorgon Rachel Maddow. I was actually applauding to myself when I heard her say she was so mad about the situation she wanted to scream. That's how I feel too. But then.... BUT THEN she transitioned smoothly into video clips of Guantanamo and actually blamed the Bush administration for creating the precedent of institutional oppression that somehow enabled the North Koreans to justify their actions. American journalists are kidnapped and imprisoned under the Obama administration without the least sign that that administration is trying to secure their release and IT'S THE FAULT OF GEORGE W. BUSH??!! As if Kim Jong Il would be more reasonable if the United States were more tolerant of muslim terrorists... Yes, she said it with a perfectly straight face, but it's over the top. The unavoidable inference is that she doesn't care at all about the fate of her unfortunate media sisters. They're just convenient chips on the table in the game she's playing against the opposition party. Americans will subscribe to this bizarre interpretation of responsibility? No. Drip-drip-drip.

The new six-dollar-a-carton cigarette tax to pay for S-CHIP went into effect this week. No matter how anyone wants to spin it, including the troglodyte conservative Neal Boortz, it's a huge and hugely regressive tax increase on exactly the people Obama promised to give tax relief. Nothing could demonstrate more convincingly that Obama doesn't care at all about the disadvantaged, underprivileged folk he promised to care for as his first priority. He isn't about happiness. He's about punishment. For all the sins against his own personal conception of right and wrong. Wherever Americans transgress his own own peculiar code of morality, he will be there with a stick and a slick self-justifying platitude. Drip-drip-drip-drip.

We're on the verge of the NFL draft, which is interesting in the wake of the AIG and other bonus scandals. Obama and the mass media may think they've successfully blitzed the question of how much talented Americans should make in a free (or controlled) market economy, but once again, they've overplayed their hand. How many people watched the Super Bowl? Precisely. You can whip them up to a fever pitch over the course of a few weeks of intense indoctrination, but at a level deeper than the NYT or White House press office can ever get to, they understand the market economy. When their NFL team selects the most talented quarterback in the draft this year, they'll be clamoring on sports talk radio for team ownership to make whatever compensation deal is necessary and then they'll stand in line to shake the hand of the brand new mega-millionaire they prayed would join their team. Contrary to all the wouldas and shouldas of the MSM and the libs, Americans do know that outstanding talent deserves -- and earns -- outstanding compensation. One or two news stories may temporarily stir their emotions in an opposing direction, but they still know what they know and in time they will remember it. Drip-drip-drip-drip-drip.

Meanwhile, President Obama stands up before an audiene in France and declares that Americans have been arrogant in their dealings with Europe. Excuse us? We've been arrogant? Whose side is this guy on? Is it somehow wrong to expect that a president of the United States of America should be on our side?

Which perfectly highlights and crystallizes the essentials of the mistake the Obamaniacs are making. They secured 53 percent of the vote in the presidential election. In popular terms that's not exactly a landslide. It's a decisive win but not a mandate equivalent to, uh, say, the 76 percent of Americans who still describe themselves as Christians. Chances are very good that a big chunk of the 53 percent who voted for Obama didn't think they were signing up for a regime that despises the country it's sworn an oath to protect and the religion that gave rise to that country.

It will take time. But within the next four years, a majority of Americans will come to understand the worldview of Obama and the people who back him most fervently. Drip-drip-drip-drip-drip-drip. And guess what. Even people who are dumb as rocks don't enjoy being insulted, derided as racists, arrogant imperialists, foolishly obsolete for their religious beliefs, and incapable of making decisions for themselves about their own lives. The media are cutting their own throats -- and Obama's. They just can't help their delirious impulse to parlay a modest electoral victory into a license to assert their own twisted vision of utopia as a fait accompli.

This is an act that will get old in a hurry. Maybe not tomorrow or next month. But soon -- and permanently. Here's the news that's NOT being reported during this disastrous Hundred Days. Americans have 300-plus years of experience at being Americans. Meaning that at some very deep level they do not accept being told what to do, how to live their lives, where and who to work for, what (and what not to) smoke and drink and eat and fuck, and especially how they should regard themselves and their own lives vis a vis the rest of the non-American world and the God who made us all.

The media do NOT have the power they think they have in such matters. Nor does the Obamessiah. When the people finally realize he is not one of them but something else, with an alternate agenda, they will turn on him with a vengeance and all the bad that has been done will be undone.

In the meatime, all you conservatives, keep working your way up the down escalator. It may seem like you're bucking the tide, but remember that they're going down because that's the way the escalator is going. Ever so slowly, they'll remember that down is the wrong way to go, and before you know it, they'll arrive en masse at the escalator switch box and reverse its direction.

Yeah. I know. Come on, all you gloom and doomers. Do your worst. I don't care. I'm an optimist. Because I'm...

Friday, April 03, 2009

C of E. Whenever I think there are no more belly laughs in the world of current events, the Episcopal Church, or its senile cousin the Church of England, always comes galloping to the rescue. Sometimes it's the Archbishop of Canterbury supporting sharia law, and sometimes it's the latest church-sponsored vandalism of the denomination's liturgy and theology. This week, though, it's a hilarious "spiritual" dilemma whose only possible answer is a thigh-slapper of post-modern irony.

A dilemma always has two horns. (Or should I say 'prongs'? I guess.) The first prong this time probably struck the enlightened Episcopal flock as excellent news. The Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, has unanimously elected a new dean, Father Katherine Ragsdale. The origins of the school are closely associated with Harvard University, which is why it should surprise no one that the present-day institution is described as "socially liberal, particularly with regards to the inclusion of gay and lesbian persons in the priesthood." Father Ragsdale is herself a devout Lesbian, which may partially account for the glowing treatment she received in a current Boston Globe profile, despite her worrisome status as a Christian cleric. Another factor may have been her theological position on abortion, articulated in a recent speech to a pro-choice group:


But just as the announcement of Father Ragsdale's unanimous election was on the verge of precipitating a crescendo of release in the spiritual G(od)-spot of the Church's most enlightened, uh, members, this terribly disturbing report broke the mood entirely:


Of course it's perplexing. How could a church which believes in none of the obsolete Christian articles of faith be incompatible with a religion that also believes in none of the Christian articles of faith? Even the most tolerant among us is tempted to the dark suspicion that there's something arbitrary, something personal in this Inquisition-like act of exclusion. Perhaps Father Redding is not herself a Lesbian, and Bishop Geralyn got snubbed at the sYnod. That would be a sorry rationale indeed for fucking up a promising church career.


No wonder so many Church of England Brits are taking the morally progressive step of getting "debaptised" this month.

If you don't blunt the horns prongs of a dilemma, it can become a schism, a potentially devouring split in the body of the church. That's why I'm happy to weigh in here with a close-cropped explanation that makes perfect sense with, for once, no resort to ad-feminam attacks.

It appears that Father Redding, in her 21 months of reflection, missed a detail of incompatibility (isn't the devil always in the details?) between her two faiths. Understandable. It took me 0.00002 seconds of Google searching to find it. But here's the rub:


In a religious denomination which regards abortion as a blessing, this lone, sad backwardness of Islam is unfortunately sufficient to justify the removal of Father Redding from the clerical elite of the Episcopal Church.

Tragic. But final.

Nevertheless, I'm glad I could be of help. In these trying times, we don't need any more torrid controversies based on frivolous rumors rather than matters of deeply spiritual conscience. They lead to disappointing climaxes and catastrophic divorces. The Episcopatooty Church deserves much better than that. Time to open the windows and let fresh air wash away the dank clouds of suspicion and innuendo. What is Christianity if not a lavage of love dispelling destructive heat?

A QUINN MARTIN PRODUCTION. Never ignore your commenters. We do our sententious bit and then the locusts commenters arrive to chew us down to size. Like Penny. She's been a thorn in our side for months, and lately she's been obsessed with fingers, starting with this -- we thought -- lighthearted post about an Obama float in a German parade. She pointed out that the display was a finger short on each hand. uh, who cares? Who cares, Penny?

Did that deter her? No. When we did our post for April Fools Day, she returned laserlike to the question of fingers:


The generally acute commenter Beckoning Chasm noted Penny's obsession and struggled to understand it:


But Hanna-Barbera was the last thing on Penny's mind. Can you see what she was homing in on in this photo?


No. Obviously, you can't This is where you have to be a genius professional blogger to pick up on the coded hint from a commenter who is actually a black ops intelligence agent on a mission. Thankfully, we are a genius professional blogger, and then some, which is why it was the work of a moment for us to remember this 40-year-old CIA anti-disinformation campaign that ran on the ABC television network:


"Virtually undetectable," yes, but not if you're in the know. Which we are. There is a way to identify the aliens who are intent on conquering earth and subjugating the human population. The "QM initiative" made it clear:


Hmmmmmmmmm. Why is "Penny" drawing our attention to fingers? Take a closer look:



Note Penny's otherwise inexplicable comment that "Mrs. Brown seems to be surrendering, while the Prime Minister is holding that line." This makes sense only in terms of the finger behavior. There are no other visual cues of such emotional reactions. . Mrs. Brown is trying as best she can to emulate the manual mutation of her superiors. Her husband is obstinately resistant. Call it the "stiff upper pinkie" of British resolve. As opposed to the digital idiosyncracy of the invaders.


Well, that's the best we can do. It's possible and even likely we won't be here at the same old stand when you come back. (Ask Roy Thinnes how many ways they have to find and silence you.) So remember. Isn't that what Charles I said to D'Artagnan from the scaffold?

(If you're looking for us, we'll make it easy. This is what we look like. All of us.)


It's been nice knowing you all.

Have we done our duty, "Penny"? We can only hope...

WORLD BOOTY CALL. Honestly, nobody is more delighted than I am about the wonderful reception Michelle Obama got in  London. What American wouldn't love this kind of purple Brit prose?


Wow. But at the same time, I couldn't help thinking about the forgotten woman. Hillary. And to a lesser extent, of course, the forgotten related subject, the massing of the Orcs in North Korea and Afghanistan. It's hard to remember these unpleasant distractions, I admit. The scintillating image of Michelle in London is mostly bright enough to blot out the sun.


Which is not to say that the new American female Caesar of diplomacy hasn't had her share of stunning moments in recent days. For one thing she seems to have concluded the War on Terror:


What a relief. I've been weary of the War on Terror since it began. Who knew that you could end it by renaming it? Given this glorious diplomatic innovation, who would make the case that Hillary isn't also behind the administration's discovery that there are no such things as enemy combatants:



Isn't that what we pay Secretaries of State to do? Talleyrand himself couldn't have arrived at a better resolution of his own spot of trouble between Bourbons and Bonapartists. Just change the vocabulary. That does it every time. Which is why the toughest and smartest woman in the history of American politics has also figured out how to bring the Taliban to heel:


You know... why the hell didn't that moron George W. Bush think of this simple gambit? Oh. Hadn't thought of that. The Taliban isn't smart enough for the Talleyrand runaround. They actually got mad:



And vengeful:


Well, they say they're mad and vengeful. You know how that goes. They don't really mean it. If they attacked the White House, they'd never get to meet "the One" in person. Nobody would pass that up. Hillary knows. Wait till they get some of Obama's DVDs or iPods. They'll come around. Eventually, everybody's going to love the Clinton steel inside the velvet Obama glove. The War on Terror is over. When the muslims understand that President Obama refuses to do more than nod to the Brit queen while he's perfectly willing to bow down to the Saudi king, they'll get the picture:


Nobody's going to want to hurt Obama's America. Not Even this guy.


Yes, I know it's a disturbing video, but you have to realize that he's the kind of guy who's exactly in the Obama-Clinton wheelhouse, an Oxbridge intellectual who just has to be amenable to reason and nice tea cakes at some level.


And if reason and tea cakes don't do the trick, Obama can just bow down to him and Hillary can suck his, well, you know. Like she hasn't done that before...

Trust me. It's all going to work out. Everything's fine now that George W. Bush is gone. Go back to what you were doing before -- admiring Michelle in her haute couture togs in high-toned London..


Feel better? Sure you do. And if you don't, just remember that Hillary is on the case.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

NOT A DAY TO BE MAKING UP JOKES. Over at National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg tried to sneak in an April Fools prank about the Obamas' gift to the queen.


Very funny. Only problem is, the Obamas topped him with what they actually gave her, as the Drudge Report gleefully headlined:


I've never been a big follower of her majesty, but even I knew she had an iPod already.

That's pretty much like all the rest of the news today. It could all be a joke. Except that so much of it isn't funny. Still, if it's a laugh or two you want, go here and browse. (A review here, if you need permission.) They're a lot funnier than the faux news on the Comedy Channel, even if they're on too late to watch.

But you won't catch of any of us making a joke today. It could come true before midnight.

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