My wife gave me a 20-gig iRiver MP3 player for Christmas, which I'm happily loading up with all of my favorite tunes, and having a blast playing.

At least, I thought I was, until I read that I actually hate it:

Conservatives don't like personal audio players. Seventeen years ago, Allan Bloom inveighed against the Walkman, arguing that clapping on the headphones was a selfish, narcissistic manoeuver, in which teenagers sealed themselves into a "nonstop ... masturbational fantasy". This year, in "The Age of Egocasting", conservative writer Christine Rosen argued that iPods and MP3 players had accelerated this cultural erosion even further: iPod users had devolved into such navel-gazing twits that they don't even notice where they're going, and miss subway stops. Personal audio players, conservatives worry, are the ultimate statement that the individual is paramount; the world around us can go screw itself, because we're not even paying attention.

Hate 'em? We hate 'em as much as we hate Weblogs!

Seriously though, blogger Elemenohpee has the best rebuttal to this strawman argument:

Okay, I don't really consider myself conservative, but for the sake of this argument, let's say I am. I also know that a big chunk of my vast and highly intelligent readership is conservative. How many of you hate MP3 players? How many of you own an MP3 player? Does anyone hate hate the idea of personal choice, especially personal choice in music players?

Also, liberals are behind plenty of movements to restrict choice of various kinds. Seattle just passed a referendum to ban smoking not only in bars, restaurants and other private businesses, but also within 25 feet of any door, window or ventilation opening. Liberals are the most vociferous opponents of educational policies such as school vouchers and charter schools meant to give parents more choice in what kind of education their kids get.

Their 1980 book Free to Choose successfully instigated a revolution in public policy because it offered conservatives both a rhetorical weapon and a legislative program. Until then, the Left had a clear advantage on both scores. Rhetorically, the Left promised compassion and equality and packaged them with programmatic action in the form of ever more government power. Those opposed to an ever larger and more intrusive state were thus forced to defend hard-heartedness and inequality, and to oppose legislative change.

The Friedmans changed all this. First, they gave us the word “Choice,” the rhetorical power of which is enormous in our consumer-driven society. The Left suddenly became Anti-Choice, at least after the point at which a child is born. They are against parental choice in where the child is educated. They are for limiting choice in what medical care the child may receive when he is sick, and philosophically opposed to the idea that his parents should be able to spend some of their hard-earned dollars on better care. More broadly, they are against giving the individual a choice in how to spend a significant portion of his earnings, preferring that the state make those choices. They are against choice in how most individuals invest the major source of their retirement savings, again believing that the choice should be made by government. Rhetorically, the Left no longer has an emotive advantage: Thanks to the Friedmans, the rhetorical cleavage on most issues becomes one between “pro-choice” and “pro-government.”

But it is in the programmatic realm that Free to Choose is most empowering to those who support limited government. Conservatives in government had traditionally been the side opposing change. At a minimum this put us on the wrong side of the legislative ratchet. If we lost, individual freedom was further eroded by state power. If we won, all that happened was that things didn’t get any worse. After Free to Choose, the Right became the agent of legislative change. In the quarter-century since its publication, the posture of the Left has become so defensive that the phrase “reactionary liberalism” is now in vogue.

(Via Matt Rosenberg.)

James Glassman (who beneficently publishes my articles at TCS Daily) writes that despite what the MSM would have you believe, "overall, 2005 was a damn good year. Celebrate!"

When the final figures are in, it is almost certain that our Gross Domestic Product -- the single best indicator of economic progress -- grew by more than 3.5 percent once again in 2005, compared with about 1.5 percent for the Euro Zone (the part of Europe, mainly Germany, France and Italy, that uses the euro as currency). U.S unemployment is 5 percent, compared with rates twice that high in Europe.

We are creating net new jobs (that is jobs gained minus jobs lost) at a rate of 2 million a year. Inflation is low, and the stock market -- unless something dire happens this week -- will rise for the third year in a row.

Further good news is that, Europe excepted, the rest of the world has enjoyed superb growth this year, and the U.S. has provided much of steam for the global engine. Yes, this means that we have a large trade deficit, but we can afford it. Our economic strength has boosted the value of dollar, and we’re attracting gouts of investment cash from around the world.

Globally, 2004 and 2005 were the two best years in a row since the 1970s. Latin America will grow more than 4 percent; China, about 9 percent; India, nearly 8 percent. Even Japan, which has been in the doldrums for more than a decade, is back on track.

“This sustained and broad-based economic growth is a pleasure,” writes Martin Wolf in the Financial Times. “It is also something of a surprise.”

After all, hurricanes in 2005 caused $100 billion in damage in the United States. There was a terrible terrorist attack on the London subway. Iraq has been rough going--though not as bad as we are led to think. A recent pre-election survey in Time magazine found 71 percent of Iraqis saying that “things are going very well” or “quite well” in their lives and that, by a margin of 6-1, next year will be better for their country.

There are threats in America: imminent investment tax hikes, a looming crisis with Social Security and Medicare, terrorism and protectionism. But overall, 2005 was a damn good year. Celebrate!

In case there was any doubt, a study has confirmed that Americans have a lot of what economists know, technically, as stuff.

The computer has surpassed the dishwasher as a standard household appliance. The poorest Americans have posted a sharp rise in access to air conditioning. The richest Americans still own the most cars, but they are choosing to own slightly fewer of them than they used to.

These census findings, released earlier this month, were true even before gifts piled up under trees this past week.

These nuggets provide a glimpse of American lifestyles that isn't captured in the raw data of monthly economic reports. At a time of concern about the standard of living for future generations, the study offers hopeful signs of tangible progress, even as the pace of income growth has slowed in recent years.

It's only one piece of the overall picture of economic progress and doesn't resolve the question about future generations. But it confirms that what the Census Bureau calls "material well-being" abounds for regular folks today in ways that Louis XIV - for all his palaces, silk stockings, and ruffled finery - could barely have imagined.

True, most of us don't have an entourage of fawning servants, and while US homes have expanded in square footage they hardly rival Versailles. But modern appliances, in many ways, are robotic servants who sometimes break down but have yet to stage an organized revolt.

Who will have the honor of First Post of the Year in 2006 at NRO's Corner? Vote early and often!

Gateway Pundit has a startling graph on the declining Iraqi body counts, and wonders why there's a media blackout.

Well, he doesn't really wonder why--I suspect he knows the answer as well as anybody.

Steve Feinstein looks at bias by omission.

Via Betsy Newmark, who writes:

I was watching a discussion on C-Span last night of four veterans who had come back from serving in Iraq and they were unanimous in their condemnation of how the press has covered the situation there since the embedded reporters left in 2003. I'd like to see one of those countless symposia where journalists sit around thumb-sucking and talking about their awesome selves conducted in front of an audience of veterans from Iraq. Let them defend their coverage to the people that they've supposedly been covering.

Meanwhile, in a very much related article, Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Third, our affluent society is at a complete disconnect with hard physical work and appreciation of how tenuous life was for 2,500 years of civilization. Those in our media circus who deliver our truth can't weld, fix a car, shoot a gun, or do much of anything other than run around looking for scoops about how incompetent things are done daily in Iraq under the most trying of circumstances. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that our technologies and wealth give us a pass on the old obstacles of time and space — as if Iraq 7,000 miles away is no more distant than Washington is from New York. Perhaps soldiers on patrol who go for 20 hours without sleep with 70 pounds on their back are merely like journalists pulling an all-nighter to file a story. Perhaps the next scandal will be the absence of high-definition television in Iraq — and who plotted to keep flat screens out of Baghdad.

The result of this juvenile boredom with good news and success? Few stop to reflect how different a Pakistan is as a neutral rather than as the embryo of the Taliban, or a Libya without a nuclear-weapons program, or a Lebanon with Syrians in it, or an Iraq without Saddam and Afghanistan without Mullah Omar. That someone — mostly soldiers in the field and diplomats under the most trying of circumstances — accomplished all that is either unknown or forgotten as we ready ourselves for the next scandal.

Precisely because we are winning this war and have changed the contour of the Middle East, we expect even more — and ever more quickly, without cost in lives or treasure. So rather than stopping to praise and commemorate those who gave us our success, we can only rush ahead to destroy those who do not give us even more.

Update: No wonder the MSM talks down the economy--just look how their stocks have performed this year, and over the course of the decade since 9/11.

Last night, I linked to Paul Mirengoff's look at the Mobius Loop-like nature of the modern left. For a reason why, Scylla & Charybdis get Siggy with it, breaking out the Freud:

"Cognitive Dissonance" is the obvious* answer to Mirengoff's fascination over the "Forever Young" attributes of the 60's Dem generation. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what one already believes, and incoming information. If the new information doesn't match up with existing beliefs, then something has to give way. Until it does, mental discomfort manifests.

(Via Charles Johnson.)

Jason Apuzzo writes a powerful--and surprisingly positive--review of Steven Spielberg's Munich. Apuzzo describes the film as three-quarters of the blockbuster pro-War On Terror flick that Hollywood should have cranked out at least a dozen of since the fall of 2001, done in only by a poor ending dominated by the ham-handed equivalence of Tony Kushner's writing:

I would ask fellow conservatives to take a closer look at this film, and not go overboard in attacking it. Munich is not Fahrenheit 9/11, not by a long shot. Examine what Spielberg is doing here cinematically - especially in the delineation of character through action, rather than verbiage - although some of the verbiage in this film is quite good. Ask yourself who you’re sympathizing with, rooting for - and who, on the other hand, you’re led to despise or reject as inhuman. I think Spielberg is in greater agreement with you than you’re being told by some conservative critics. And calling Munich ‘anti-Israel’ is about as fair as calling The Passion ‘anti-Semitic.’

It’s extremely important for conservatives not to endlessly cry “wolf,” decrying every film that comes down Hollywood’s pipeline as liberal propaganda. [I tried to warn people earlier in the year about this with respect to Star Wars, and also Spielberg’s War of the Worlds - neither of which were as ‘politically engaged’ as some made them out to be.] Frankly, there’s enough genuine propaganda as it is - we don’t need to drag Spielberg’s film into the mire, as well. He doesn’t deserve it - and frankly, I wish we had someone on the conservative side who was as skilled and passionate on this subject.

To the liberals out there, who were so eager to embrace this film as the ‘Oscar frontrunner’ just a few weeks ago, I’d ask: did you really get the film you wanted, here? Did you like that scene when the PLO terrorist admits to Avner why the Arabs really support the Palestinians? And did you like the way that terrorist was escorted around by KGB handlers? And by the way, where was Halliburton in all this? Or Exxon? Or ‘American Imperialism’? Or Nixon’s Plumbers?

Given the present state of Hollywood, which has drifted further and further left - and become terminally unserious - I think Spielberg is basically to be commended here. If nothing else, he’s crafted the richest and most entertaining spy thriller in years. He would’ve been wise to let the film end where Hitchcock would’ve ended it: before the interminable speechifyng and hand-wringing starts. He also should’ve reigned-in his screenwriter, whose political passions get in the way of good drama.

Had he done those things, Spielberg might’ve had a classic on his hands. As it is, he’s still made a surprisingly substantive and sincere film for the times. That’s a far sight better than what the rest of Hollywood is doing.

We've written a few times about the left's stuck-in-the-1970s Mobius Loop-like state. Two posts today help illustrate just how pervasive it is.

First up is Roger L. Simon, who looks at the tens of thousands of gallons of ink the media spilt over an isolated incident such as Abu Ghraib, or inventing similar incidents out of whole cloth where none exist, while virtually ignoring the hundreds of "honor murders" committed each year by Muslims in the Middle East:

There is a deep psychological disturbance in our mainstream media, a kind of willed need to ignore the world around them. It probably was, more or less, forever thus, but modern communications, specifically the internet, have brought this willed ignorance to the surface as never before. And yet the MSM continues in the same direction, even in the face of seeming economic failure.

Sheryl and I were discussing this phenomenon this afternoon with our friend Gerard who reminded us of the obvious. Many of these media outlets that keep ignoring what is happening in the world while trumpeting every US failure are increasingly playing to niche audiences in our society. They have no real interest, financial or otherwise, in the truth - or in the future of humanity, really (that last is my observation).

Vietnam and Watergate are seminal events for almost all liberals my age. Vietnam taught them to distrust the use of force by our military, and to despise leaders who aggressively use military force in the name of the national interest. Watergate confirmed that a leader who projects military force overseas for that purpose can be expected to usurp power at home.

These "lessons" were rejected by most baby-boomers even at the time of Vietnam and Watergate. And despite the dominance of Vietnam and Watergate-obsessed boomers in academia, subsequent generations have found the lessons even less worth learning.

The Democratic party, however, has not just learned the lessons, it has internalized them. And to its great detriment. The electoral tide turned against the Democrats during the Vietnam era, and hasn't turned back. One can argue that the Vietnam/Watergate syndrome -- fear of the exercise of American power based on profound distrust of our military, our government, and our motives -- is the main cause of the decline of the Democrats.

Many liberals seem not to dispute this. In fact, they acknowledge the "failure" of most Americans to embrace "harsh truths," and see this as further evidence that something is wrong with our country ("what's wrong with Kansas?"). We witnessed this phenomenon quite vividly last November following the defeat of John Kerry -- perhaps the purest messenger of the Vietnam/Watergate lessons. Like some conservatives of the past, many liberals seem to relish their minority status as a badge of intellectual superiority.

At the same time, most liberals long to be vindicated in the public mind. If Americans were belatedly to embrace the lessons of Vietnam and Watergate, this would simultaneously confirm liberal superiority and restore liberal dominance.

Liberals look at Iraq, "torture," and now domestic spying, and can taste full public vindication. And therein lies their problem. If Iraq is Vietnam, it will soon enough confer great political advantage on the Democrats. But the Democrats (Hillary Clinton aside) are psychologically incapable, after so long in the wilderness, of "letting the game come to them." Or perhaps they understand that Iraq is not Vietnam. Thus, they overreach -- being too quick to compare Iraq to Vietnam, to eager to insist that we are failing there, and too quick to cry foul over domestic spying that targets mass murderers, not Larry O'Brien and Daniel Ellsberg. And the public recoils.

It's not surprising that the failure of many liberals to have learned anything truly new since 1974 constitutes a huge political disadvantage. But I'm fascinated by the ways in which this failure continues to confound them.

Chris Weinkopf has a great profile of Philip Anschutz, the man who brought you The Chronicles of Narnia this Christmas:

Anschutz is a spectacularly successful oil/railroad/fiber-optic/sports/entertainment magnate. He is also an evangelical Christian and father of three children who got so fed up with the tawdry state of Hollywood fare that he decided to get into the business himself by launching two film companies. He has spent a reported $150 million to $200 million to turn the first book in Lewis’s beloved Chronicles of Narnia series into one of the biggest film releases of this holiday season. The plan is to eventually translate all seven books into high-quality films.

* * *

A few years ago, Anschutz started gobbling up movie-theater chains, a move that had industry analysts baffled. Cinema attendance had been in steady decline for years, and the survivors were in cutthroat competition with each other, as well as with cheap DVDs and digital cable that had audiences staying home. Experts had declared the business all but dead.

Anschutz disagreed. During the 1990s, he had bought old railroads cheaply, then coaxed a golden new revenue stream out of them by selling rights-of-way for new fiber-optic lines alongside his trackbeds. Now he saw the same technological innovation—fiber optics—giving movie houses a fresh hold on profitability. He poured more than $700 million into buying three theater chains that had filed for bankruptcy: United Artists, Regal, and Edwards, giving him control of 6,273 screens, or 18 percent of the market, the country’s largest string of cinemas.

Anschutz’s master plan is to convert all of his theaters to digital technology—eliminating the cumbersome celluloid film reels that have to be shipped across the country, manually operated, then shipped back. If theaters could simply download their films as computer files and then project them through computer-controlled routers, there could be large cost savings. This scenario is especially practical for Anschutz, given that his company, Qwest, already owns a significant chunk of America’s backbone of fiber-optic lines. (High-resolution films require large telecom “pipes” to travel from locale to locale.)

Taking a higher road

But Anschutz’s big movie gamble is based on more than just fresh technology. The cause of declining ticket sales, Anschutz reasons, isn’t just the ease and convenience of home viewing. It’s also the deteriorating content of Hollywood’s products—which are too often vulgar, violent, sexualized, dark, and depressing. For many American families, especially religious ones (who are a much bigger fraction of the population than entertainment executives have ever acknowledged), the movie theater is no longer a pleasant or even safe place to bring children. This major bloc of the market has been ignored by Hollywood.

Producers have “misread what audiences want,” says Craig Detweiler, professor of mass communications at Southern California’s Biola University. “Audiences have proved more discerning of quality than Hollywood expected.” Thus, the repeated syndrome of movie elites underestimating the public appetite for higher quality and family-friendly entertainment, while overestimating the appeal of R-rated dross. (See “Stupid Hollywood,” SCAN, TAE, July/August 2005.)

Enter Anschutz, the man who’s made billions by spotting missed economic potential. In his Hillsdale speech, he asked: “Is this preponderance of R-rated films simply—as we hear so often—a response to the market? I would say not, considering that of the top 20 moneymaking films of all time, not a single one is rated R, and of the top 50, only five are rated R—with the remainder being G or PG.”

While conservatives have groused about Hollywood’s cultural pollution for decades, Anschutz is putting his money where his convictions are. “You need to bring your own money and be willing to spend it,” he told the audience at Hillsdale. “Otherwise, Hollywood doesn’t see you as a serious player.”

Anschutz’s aim is not to promote a political agenda, but to make good movies. His two film companies are “not political in any way,” concludes Govindini Murty, an actress, screenwriter, and co-director of the Liberty Film Festival. “They hire liberals and conservatives. Art is their foremost priority, making movies that everyone in the public can enjoy—not niche movies only for young males, or people on the extreme left or right.”

In other words, Anschutz’s companies are targeting the vast mainstream audience that Hollywood has increasingly alienated over the last four decades. This is no charity exercise. Anschutz is looking to make a buck—lots of bucks, actually. As author and film critic Michael Medved puts it, he’s “testing in a wonderful way…the theory that it is possible in Hollywood to do well while doing good.”

In the American Enterprise magazine, Kelly Jane Torrance asks, "Will 2005 be seen as a watershed year for conservative books?"

It certainly looks like it. And not just because conservatives seem to have beaten liberals in sales (although liberals did very well, at least when it comes to the most overtly political books).

Amazon.com has posted a list of the Top 50 bestselling books of the year. At Number 21 is Mark Levin’s Men In Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America. Two places down is The FairTax Book by syndicated radio host Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder (R-GA).

Liberal books—by which I mean polemics, as it’s probably the case that most of the books on the list, like novels, were written by liberals—didn’t fare so well. In fact, the highest one on the list was Jim Wallis’s God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It at Number 13. But the book, as noted in the subtitle, takes liberals to task almost as much as it does conservatives.

100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37) by Bernard Goldberg, author of the bestselling Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, made the cut, at Number 27. But Al Franken’s own The Truth (with jokes) didn’t.

How did these books sell so well? After all, conservative books weren’t getting glowing reviews in the New York Times or the Washington Post. The authors of The FairTax Book, for example, advocate replacing income taxes with a national sales tax. The New York Times reviewer declared, “No reputable economist of any political stripe would support it.” But his very next sentence was puzzling: “The honest truth is that replacing the current tax system with any system that raises the same amount of revenue (as Boortz and Linder claim their plan does) may make us better off, but only by redirecting our resources away from dealing with complex filing requirements and improving our incentives to work, save and innovate—not by creating the kind of free-lunch miracle suggested here.” Sounds pretty good to me—but I guess I’m not a “reputable economist.”

The New York Times didn’t even review Mark Levin’s Men In Black. But books like these found an audience anyway. By 2005, conservatives had learned to market their ideas without having to rely on the mainstream press that historically hasn’t been sympathetic. Regnery, the conservative publisher of Men In Black, has created bestsellers primarily by preaching to the choir. The company’s public relations firm markets directly to conservatives through talk radio and television hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity. It worked for Men In Black and found particular success before last year’s election with the influential Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.

The New York Times itself took notice. The annual Year in Ideas issue of the Magazine declared that “Conservative Blogs are More Effective.” Writer Michael Crowley of The New Republic says “what really makes conservatives effective is their pre-existing media infrastructure, composed of local and national talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, the FOX News Channel and sensationalist say-anything outlets like the Drudge Report—all of which are quick to pass on the latest tidbit from the blogosphere.” It’s this same network that has made books by, for example, Michelle Malkin, so successful—and it doesn’t hurt that she has her own blog as well.

Liberals get all pissy when conservatives decide to tune out institutions that don't represent them and create new ones -- just look at the sneering at "Faux News" and Rush and homeschooling and values voters. In Hollywood as in mainstream media, there is a price to be paid when an institution decides to leverage its prestige to push a political position where none is warranted; it's a price that is paid in viewership, influence, and profit -- in this case, a 30% falloff in viewers.

At some point, it must be puzzling to the boys in the Manhattan skyscrapers why they can't please either side: the conservatives whom they tried to shut out, and the modern left, to whom the mainstream media isn't nearly leftwing enough.

The traditional components of the MSM will soldier on for quite some time of course--but it must seem strange to no longer always be able to control the arguments--or introduce all of the new ideas.

As usual, life imitates The Simpsons. In an episode titled, "A Fish Called Selma", washed up actor turned infomercial spiv Troy McClure once admitted that he wasn't quite like you or I:

"Gay? I wish! If I were gay they'd be no problem! No, what I have is a romantic abnormality, one so unbelievable that it must be hidden from the public at all cost."

An unusual wedding ceremony was held in the southern resort town of Eilat on Wednesday, as Sharon Tendler, a 41-years-old Jewish millionaire from London married her beloved Cindy, a 35-years-old dolphin, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Thursday.

The groom, a resident of the Eilat dolphin reef, met Tendler 15 years ago, when she first visited the resort. The British rock concert producer took a liking to the dolphin and has made a habit of traveling to Eilat two or three times a year and spending time with her underwater sweetheart.

"The peace and tranquility underwater, and his love, would calm me down," the excited bride said after the wedding.

After a years-long romance, Tendler decided to embark on the highly unusual path of tying the knot with her beloved dolphin. Last week, she approached Cindy's trainer Maya Zilber with the extraordinary request.

Zilber accepted the challenge and "talked the idea over with the fellow," who apparently consented.

'I'm not a pervert'

And so on Wednesday afternoon, the thrilled bride, wearing a white dress, walked down the dock before hundreds of astounded visitors and kneeled down before her groom, who was waiting in the water.

Cindy, escorted by his fellow best-men dolphins, swam over to Tendler and she hugged him, whispered sweet nothings in his ear, and kissed him in front of the cheering crowd.

After the ceremony was sealed with some mackerels, Tendler was tossed into the water by her friends so that she could swim with her new husband.

"I'm the happiest girl on earth," the bride said as she chocked back tears of emotion. "I made a dream come true, and I am not a pervert," she stressed.

Theodore Dalrymple, call your office. Your next article just wrote itself!

(Via the Brothers Judd.)

Update: Welcome Corner readers! If this is your first time here, please look around, you should find lots of stuff you'll enjoy.

The Anchoress has a good post on the recent announcement that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty, and that Upton Sinclair hid his knowledge of their crimes in order to do his antediluvian Free Mumia!!!/Free Tookie!!! impersonation. The announcement of Sinclair's letter prompts Jonah Goldberg to add:

So which leftwing martyr/icon is left? Sacco & Vanzetti were guilty. The Rosenbergs: guilty. Hiss: guilty. Margaret Mead: liar. Rigoberta Menchu: liar. Duranty: liar. Kinsey: liar. Upton Sinclair: liar. I.F. Stone isn’t looking too hot (lied about America often, loved totalitarians, might have taken KGB money).

Martin Luther King Jr. — small flaws aside — is still looking good. But Bobby Kennedy is only a useful leftwing hero if you don’t look too closely. Ditto JFK. Jesse Jackson’s going to look awful to historians.

Who’s left?

But seriously, the Anchoress adds one more name to Jonah Goldberg's list:

There’s always John Kerry, greatest war hero, ever. Still waiting for the general, free release of those military records, aren’t we? Why yes, yes we are.

The more they stay the same, as this quote illustrates:

I found in traveling around the world that a great many people . . ., apparently well educated and sophisticated, were convinced that the people of the United States were in the grip of terror and that free speech and free press no longer existed here. They believed that the United States was fomenting a third world war and would presently start it, with Armageddon consequences for everyone else, and that the government of the United States smashed without mercy anyone who dared to oppose even by oral protests this headlong rush toward disaster.

These people could "prove" their opinions by quoting any number of Americans and American newspapers and magazines. That they were able to quote such American sources proved just the opposite, namely that we do continue to enjoy free speech even to express arrant nonsense and unpopular opinion, escaped them completely.

Over Christmas Eve dinner, my wife and a couple of friends and I discussed the growing amount of firsthand reporting in the Blogosphere, including Iraq the Model's real-time reporting for Pajamas on the Iraqi elections. I mentioned that such efforts are having an impact beyond the Blogosphere. For example, when the Miami NBC affiliate reported the story of a Chalk's seaplane crash last week, the first photo to accompany the story was taken not by a professional reporter or photographer, but someone who simply happened to be on the scene with camera-equipped cell phone.

One friend sardonically quipped that eventually, we're going to start seeing people sending photos from their cell phones from inside a plane as it goes down.

Fortunately, that latter half of that equation wasn't an issue for blogger and licensed private pilot Jeremy Hermanns, but on a recent Alaska Airlines flight when the cabin accidentally depressurized, he was able to document the event with his cell phone camera and later, blog about it.

Linking to him, the Blogfather exclaims, "Now that's blogging", and notes that Jeremy's apparently earned the wrath of Alaska Airlines' employees, who apparently don't appreciate his efforts to document a flight gone wrong.

Alaska also apparently doesn't understand how increasingly common Jeremy's efforts will be in the coming months and years, as more and more people acquire cheap digital cameras, camera-phones, and of course, blogs.

Jonah Goldberg watched Tim Russert interview recent Jurassic legacy media retirees Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel and writes that Russert, often a sharp interviewer, turned into "Larry King on Prozac when interviewing his colleagues":

A thick cloud of nostalgia hung over the set. Why couldn't politicians trust journalists like in the good old days? Why must we have a sound-bite political culture? Why don't politicians follow the agenda set by media muckety-mucks?

Such nostalgia is understandable given the culture these men grew up in. In the post-World War II era, television journalism was almost a quasi-governmental institution. There were only three networks, and their news broadcasts set the national debate and drew the nation together in a way that had never happened before. Eventually, the establishment felt entitled to this arrangement. They forgot that this system was the unintended offspring of WWII and the Cold War and the advent of television. Before TV, American journalism was more boisterous and less revered.

Today's technological glitz notwithstanding, we are returning to the norm, and the guild-mentality consensus we've "enjoyed" this last half-century is evaporating and will likely never return.

When asked to name an underreported story in '05, Brokaw suggested the downsizing of General Motors. Well, GM is a good illustration of what's happening to the elite media. One of the main reasons GM is in such trouble is that it has never won the allegiance of post-WWII consumers. The "greatest generation," as Brokaw calls them, loved their Oldsmobiles, and they've been buying GM cars for 60 years. But that generation is dying, and GM's antiquated products (and pensions) are killing it in a more competitive environment in which young consumers couldn't care less about Oldsmobile.

Young people feel the same way about those evening-news broadcasts. Fewer than 10 percent of viewers of the major network news shows are under the age of 34. The average viewer is over 60. Haven't you noticed that all of the ads are for adult diapers, denture cream, and Viagra? [Why, yes I have--Ed] There's nothing wrong with that, but it's a sign that the old system cannot last.

Meanwhile, the one institution that has been immune to the media's prying eyes is now being scrutinized itself — not by a journalistic priesthood but by bloggers, independent media, and consumers. Rather than embrace the new era, which recognizes that the elite media's power qualifies them as worthy of scrutiny, the elite media circle the wagons. As Ted Koppel asked at the end of Meet the Press, "When are you getting to the tough questions? Come on, Tim."

(Of course, that's far from the first time such a thing has happened.)

It's a boy! Meet Preston Davis Green, the newest member of the VodkaPundit family.

And fortunately just in time, another member of the Blogosphere has written the guide to child-rearing...

Neo-Neocon looks at the recent story about the FBI's monitoring Muslim sites for radition and writes it's the story that has everything:

Let's see: (1) anonymous and totally unidentified sources as the conduit for all the information, check; (2) accusations of religious profiling, check; (3) vociferous Council on American-Islamic Relations protests, check; (4) spilling of the beans (by those anonymous sources) on a classified program designed to protect us from terrorists, check.

Of course, as Mickey Kaus noted, there's been some interesting blowback to these sorts of stories: "Another spy scandal and Bush will be at sixty percent."

Mary Katharine Ham and La Shawn Barber write about the very recent--as in 1966--origins of Kwanzaa. Ham describes a news story on Kwanzaa cut in half by an editor who decided it to play it as safe as the New York Times covering Woody Allen or John Kerry:

I was asked to do a story on a local Kwanzaa celebration when I worked at a newspaper a couple years ago. Between second grade and then, I had figured out that Kwanzaa was created about the same time as Nancy Sinatra's career. But I didn't know about Karenga until I started Googling.

Then I found the Front Page Magazine article linked above, written by Paul Mulshine, a columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger. After I clicked on it, I almost wished I hadn't.

I had planned to do the dutiful, fluffy Kwanzaa story. I had planned a sprinkling of history, some winning photos of 6-year-olds, and quotes lauding the act of gourd-painting as a path to cultural awareness. I had it planned.

Paul Mulshine threw off my plan, and I knew I was in trouble. In trouble because I couldn't, in good conscience, leave all the bad stuff about [Ron] Karenga out of a story about the holiday he created. In trouble because I knew this would cause problems with my editors.

I called Mulshine, who was nice enough to do an interview with me and send me some of his sources, so that I could have some back-up when my editors asked me about it. I called Karenga and left a message on his machine, but never heard back from him.

I interviewed the teachers and students involved with the Kwanzaa celebration. I got all the gourd-painting quotes I needed, but I also asked what they knew about Karenga and his unsavory past. They knew nothing about it. I asked if they knew why Kwanzaa used Swahili terms when most American slaves came from thousands of miles away from anywhere Swahili was spoken. They didn't know. Many of them didn't know the holiday was created in California in 1966, just as I hadn't.

In the end, I compromised. I wrote 10 inches of fluffy holiday story. The childrens' Kwanzaa artwork was beautiful and deserved to be spotlighted, no matter what kind of man Karenga was. But I also wrote 10 inches on Karenga. Nothing too graphic. I didn't get into the specifics of the torture. I didn't list every one of his misdeeds. But I thought a little of that was important to the story, especially since it seemed no one knew anything about it.

The next day, I picked up the paper. My 20-inch story had become 10 inches long overnight. Can you guess which 10 inches they cut?

This paper never cut for space. It rarely edited a word I wrote. As a result, a 10-inch cut was conspicuous, to say the least. And indefensible. And in this case, expected.

My editor and I had a civil conversation about it, the conclusion of which was something along the lines of, "well, you just can't write stuff like that. Just because...you just can't."

Just another mile-marker in my journey out of the newspaper business.

Betsy Newmark writes:

As you might remember from your history books, Sacco and Vanzetti were two Italian anarchists who got caught up in the Red Scare of the 1920s and were accused of the murder of a paymaster and security guard for a warehouse. At the height of the Red Scare, they were convicted in a very questionable trial. After much hoopla with lots of support for the two men from the intelligentsia of the day, they were executed in 1927. This incident is always cited in the history books as evidence of what unreasoning fear and injustice stalked the land during the Red Scare after WWI and during the twenties. Two innocent men were executed simply because they were immigrants and endorsed an unpopular ideology. One of their most vigorous supporters was the muckraking novelist, Upton Sinclair.

Well, a California collector has found a 1929 letter written by Upton Sinclair proclaiming his knowledge that the two men he so strongly defended were actually guilty.

So, of course [Sinclair] decided to stay silent and let his public and allies all go on thinking that two innocent men had been put to death. Apparently, his position among other like-thinking leftists and his readers was more important.

This isn't the last time that leftist intellectuals have rallied to the cause of someone they feel has been unjustly sentenced by the government. Think of Alger Hiss. Jim Bass is thinking about the Free Mumia movement. And, of course, witness the latest brouhaha over Tookie Williams. The pattern of guilt being secondary to the political outcry and demagoguery continues.

There's a certain amount of this L.A. Times article by John Horn titled, "Hollywood should rewrite own script" that should sound awfully familiar to anyone who regularly scans our "Hollywood, Interrupted" archives. For example:

You can't even fool some of the people some of the time

In an age of instant text messaging, studios no longer can hide a movie's stink with marketing. Within hours of "The Perfect Man's" opening, Universal's box-office business returns started declining; the Hilary Duff movie actually managed the rare feat of selling fewer tickets on Saturday than on Friday.

The coasts are toast

For quality movies to perform well, they must appeal across the nation, not just to the coastal cognoscenti. The ultimate financial success of "Brokeback Mountain" will be determined not by its Arclight take but by its returns from places like Salt Lake City's Broadway Centre Theatre.

the New York Times recently ran an article wondering why Hollywood's box office is down this year. Could it be because of efforts similar this in so many other films over the last 15 year or so, sure to alienate moviegoers in, what after the 2000 election was dubbed the Red States--flyover country where films need to make the bulk of their money in the US to be a hit--have started to take their toil?

Another reason is pure narcissism. Check out the quote that ends the article:

Nobody knows anything

Screenwriter William Goldman's famous admonition about Hollywood's brainpower (or lack thereof) rarely proved so accurate. A documentary about penguins sold more tickets than Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn's "The Interpreter." Golden Globe voters failed to nominate Steven Spielberg's "Munich" for best picture. Turned down by nearly every studio, "Sideways" collected five Oscar nominations and won one trophy for Fox Searchlight. Paramount's "The Longest Yard" remake grossed more than "The Legend of Zorro," "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "XXX: State of the Union" combined. Given all that, it's fair to wonder if such 2006 movies as "Poseidon," "Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction," "The Omen 666" and "The Santa Clause 3" are part of the solution ... or part of the problem. "Da Vinci Code" producer Brian Grazer says that even though he's "optimistic" about the year ahead, he can't predict audience tastes or Hollywood's future. "I only make movies," Grazer says, "that are interesting to me."

Two essays appearing today are a reminder that it's possible to be cultured, enjoy all the benefits of western civilization, and have no compunction about tearing it down.

First up, Lee Harris asks, "Am I anti-American enough to win the Nobel Prize?"--and thankfully, he's not:

Here, it seems to me, I have a real problem on my hands. In my book Civilization and Its Enemies, I actually defended America, kind of, as I have done in a number of articles for Policy Review and right here at TCS. Thus I have foolishly left one of those awkward paper trails that nominees to the Supreme Court have so much trouble explaining away to unsympathetic Senators, and this does present quite a serious obstacle to my Nobel Prize aspirations. Can I really expect the committee to give the prize to someone who has said nice things about America, even in his dotage?

But that is precisely why I decided to go ahead and publish my acceptance speech now, because that way I could make it clear to those guys in Sweden that I know exactly what kind of thing they are looking for in a Nobel Prize laureate, which is fanatic, frothing-at-the-mouth, virulent anti-Americanism of the most vicious kind.

You see, by reading my speech ahead of time, the committee would realize at once that they were dealing with a man who could spew as much bile and hatred against America as their previous choices for the prize have done, and that way they would jump at the chance of awarding me the prize, with the added plus that they wouldn’t have to bother about actually wading through my books and articles.

You don’t really think that the committee actually read Harold Pinter’s plays before giving him the prize? If The Caretaker is pointlessly boring and tedious in English, one can only shudder to think how it must come across in Swedish. No, they probably called him up and said, “Listen, this year we’re down to you and Maureen Dowd, and since we can’t give it to an American, it’s gotta be you. So, can you give us a really vicious attack on America?”

Now anyone who has read Mr. Pinter’s acceptance speech knows how well he came through for the committee, and, I must confess, that it has set a standard that will not be easy to surpass. Indeed, its effect on me was downright daunting. How could I top that?

Hold it right there for a minute. That’s how we define “assimilating” into western society at the dawn of the 21st century? If a fellow deals a little coke while wearing pants with a gusset located at calf height while singing along to the re-mix of “Slap Up My Bitch”, we say, hey, he seems to be fitting in very nicely? No need to worry about him getting any wacky ideas down at the madrassah, he’s an impeccably secular pluralist Peugeot-torcher.

It’s true that the rioters look rather less foreign than, say, the stern young men in the mosques of Peshawar or the training camps outside Jalalabad. But, on the other did, so did Mohammed Atta and his 18 confreres. They were very well “assimilated” by Clichy-sous-Bois standards. If you recall, in the days after 9/11 a flurry of all-American cocktail waitresses, lap-dancers and prostitutes popped up to say they remembered Mohammed and Marwan and Majed and the rest of the gang chugging vodkas, groping strippers, renting porn videos – just like fully assimilated citizens of advanced western democracies. They were said to have patronized, inter alia, Shuckums of Hollywood, Florida, Cheetah’s of San Diego, the Pink Pony of Daytona Beach, Nardone’s Go-Go Bar of Elizabeth, New Jersey, none of which rates a mention in even the racier suras of the Koran. And none of which prevented the guys from drinking up, leaving a tip (lousy, according to the gals), and flying their planes into the Twin Towers on Tuesday morning.

The July 7th London bombers were also impeccably assimilated: they ate fish’n’chips and loved cricket. Omar Sheikh, the man believed to have masterminded the beheading of Daniel Pearl, is, in fact, an Englishman, educated at an English public (ie, private) school and the London School of Economics. And so it goes: somewhere right now far away from these shores, there’s a guy sitting in a Yankees cap, wearing a Disney T-shirt, listening to Britney Spears – and plotting to bomb America.

The two are not mutually exclusive. They never have been. The Merry Widow was both the biggest smash on Broadway and Hitler’s favourite operetta. In a not entirely persuasive attempt to humanize the old KGB hard man, Yuri Andropov was widely touted as a Glenn Miller fan. The world’s former Numero Uno Commie, China’s Jiang Zemin, could hardly attend a state banquet without getting up and singing Elvis’ “Love Me Tender”. Saddam Hussein is not just assimilated with western culture, he’s eerily assimilated with National Review’s back page columnist: The old Baathist mass-murderer and I share the same favorite singer – Frank Sinatra. If you dialed up Amazon.com’s “We have recommendations for you!” CD page, Saddam’s and mine would be identical. Even more unsettling, we share the same favorite candy – Britain’s “Quality Street” chocolates, especially the big gold-wrapped toffees the shape and size of the old English penny.

There’s no contradiction between a liking for western pop culture and a loathing of western civilization. Merely the latest in a long tradition, Mahmoud Khabou, the 20-year old unemployed son of Algerian immigrants in Clichy-sous-Bois, understands more clearly than the media that jihad is by no means incompatible with conventional forms of western delinquency. Asked by a reporter to name his heroes, he replied, “Osama bin Laden and Rodney King.”

YARGB, which is short for "Yet Another Really Great Blog" has an interesting post titled, "Munich is an Unwitting Indulgence in Nihilism":

Somewhere along the line, Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner bought into the absurd myth that much of the Arab terrorism of the past fifty years is the inevitable blow back response of Palestinians whose land and heritage were allegedly stolen by Jewish imperialists . Munich is their recently released creation---and it is an appalling piece of work. Based on the highly questionable book by George Jonas, Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, this film is far too long and exhausting. It is often boring. A group of four assassins are sent on a mission, to kill one by one, Palestinians suspected of collaborating in the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes during the 1972 games held in Munich. These misfits soon wonder if they are morally any better than their pursued quarry. The latter often come across as warm and fuzzy human beings doing the best they can. There is even a ridiculous scene where the Israelis and the Palestinians inadvertently spend the night together. It suggests that a little love and understanding will bring about peace. The violence of the terrorists would cease if only the Israelis were more open to dialogue. Throughout of the film, the recurring theme is that violence is ultimately useless in fighting terrorism. It will probably even make things far worse. Needless to add, the creators of Munich are also indirectly commenting on our post 9/11 existence.

Spielberg and Kushner, to be kind, are unwitting nihilists. The logical conclusion of their morally equivalent premise is that the defenders of Western Civilization values are little better than their attackers. We have no one to blame but ourselves for allowing our elected leaders to exacerbate the tensions. Violent responses to terrorism must give way to improved communication and good will. After all, our disregard of the rights of the Third World’s citizenry got us into this mess. Is this bizarre perspective an anomaly? Not in the least. Both men are mainstream representatives of the leftist ideologues who control the Democratic Party in the United States and the Labor Party of Israel. Such individuals and their cohorts have to be defeated politically. They may mean well, but their ideas turned into actual policies are dangerous. This movie is a not so gentle reminder of how crazy the Left is in the early part of this century. If they are not hindered, there may not be a next one. The stakes are truly that high.

When I wrote my article earlier this month for TCS Daily, space requirements caused me to leave this quote from Hollywood, Interrupted co-author Andrew Breitbart on the cutting room floor. Andrew told me Hollywood movies these days essentially come in two flavors: the relatively apolitical big budget shoot-'em up or sci-fi movie, and the movies Tinseltown makes when it wants to Make A Statement--and win at Oscartime:

But then you have the Oscar/Sundance/Miramax axis. And that’s the type of film that is done on the cheap by Hollywood standard that tends to be the message movie, that conveys perfectly where Hollywood is intellectually and artistically. If you were to isolate that type of movie over the last ten years, you would see that what Hollywood is elevating is nothing sort of nihilism. Whether that be American Beauty, or even a Syriana, what you see are movies that pretty much… These people long ago put America on trial, and found America, and its underlying consumer-oriented culture to be guilty. And this is their way of, on the other hand producing it, and on the other, looking for immediate artistic penance.

All this is consistent with Tony Kushner's view that Zionism, as he told Ori Nir of Haaretz last year, was "not the right answer," and that the creation of Israel was "a mistake," and that "establishing a state means f***ing people over." (If he really seeks to understand Middle Eastern terrorism, he might ponder the extent to which statelessness, too, can mean f***ing people over.) When Avner's reckoning with his deeds takes him to the verge of a breakdown, he joins his wife and child in Brooklyn and refuses to return to Israel, as if decency is impossible there. No, Kushner is not an anti-Semite, nor a self-hating Jew, nor any of those other insults that burnish his notion of himself as an American Jewish dissident (he is one of those people who never speaks, but only speaks out). He is just a perfectly doctrinaire progressive.

Or has that always been its definition?

Betsy Newmark asks:

If you got into [journalism] to make the world a better place, how do you match that attitude up with noninterference when it comes to being in a situation where your personal intervention may help an individual?

Interesting attempt to bridge the left/right divide by Tim Blair and the readers of his blog. Be sure to read the comments.

Mary Catherine Ham looks at Google's riduculously subtle Non-Demoninational Winter Solstitial December 25th splash page greeting:

I'm going to get just a little "War on Christmas" on you. I didn't want to be bitter-blogger yesterday, so I left it alone, but did anyone see the Google logo yesterday? Here's what they gave us to commemorate the birth of Christ and the first day of Hannukah.

As a friend of mine said, "because everyone knows the true meaning of Christmas is that cats and mice should work together to industrialize." Heh. Yep, I'm pretty sure that's in there-- Book of Jerry, Chapter 5. Look it up.

It's not that I'm angry about this, but I do feel like Google goes from looking sensitive to looking downright silly when it just pretends Christmas isn't there at all, while commemorating other holidays. Just silly.

Or, maybe they're just going for a really subtle "lion lay down with the lamb" thing. Very subtle.

Michelle Malkin rounds up the most Unhinged 2005 video moments.

Posting will no doubt be a bit sparse on Christmas day, and any posts on Sunday will appear under this one. In the meantime, let me take this opportunity to wish everyone:

Color me unsurprised:

This isn't the first year religious groups have taken on retailers who say "Happy Holidays'' instead of "Merry Christmas.'' But a retail analyst says it's been one of the angriest.

Britt Beemer, the chairman of the consumer research firm America's Research Group, says a growing number of consumers are aggravated when stores instruct their employees not to say "Merry Christmas.'' A survey by the group found that a quarter of those polled said they'd walk out of a store that gives the more neutral greeting. Those surveyed also say retailers aren't spending as much on lavish Christmas displays as they used to.

This year, the American Family Association gathered more than 500,000 signatures asking Target to include Christmas in its promotions. Stores such as Sears and Wal-Mart faced boycotts.

There's a very simple solution for online retailers, of course.

AP reports:

The congregation of First Emmanuel Baptist Church drove from Baton Rouge, Houston and other points far and wide on Christmas, then walked past collapsed buildings and piles of storm wreckage to worship in their old church for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.

"This means everything. We've come home," said Lila Southall, the minister's wife. "My house is gone but I'm still home for Christmas."

Update: "Asia marks one year to the day since tsunami hit, sweeping away 216,000 lives".

Tomorrow night's edition of Monday Night Football will mark its last broadcast on ABC, before it moves to cable's ESPN next year, which also owned by Disney:

From its inception, ABC's "Monday Night Football" was a risky experiment that defied American sports tradition. From Howard Cosell's pontification to Don Meredith's down-home songs to Dennis Miller's arcane analogies, it dominated TV viewing in homes and bars across the nation.

The broadcast was a hodgepodge of personalities and indelible images, defining moments and follies, eye-popping on-the-field performances and the kind of impromptu silliness that only sheer boredom can create.

In short, it was exactly what ABC Sports boss Roone Arledge hoped it would be.

It was theater.

Television sports reaches the end of one era and the beginning of another Monday night when ABC signs off on its prime-time weeknight coverage of the NFL for the final time and hands off to sister network ESPN.

The 555th Monday night game on the network is itself of little consequence: The dismal New York Jets play the New England Patriots, who already are playoff bound but have no chance to improve their position.

The series switches networks next season, when ESPN begins paying $1.1 billion per year for Monday night rights in an eight-year deal.

"'Monday Night Football' is the premier property in sports television," ESPN president George Bodenheimer said. "All the players get up for it. All the teams watch. It's a national showcase. To be able to transition it to ESPN is an honor."

There was no ESPN when ABC began its MNF run on Sept. 21, 1970, with the Jets playing at Cleveland. It was the beginning of 36 seasons of one of television's most valuable franchises, a compelling three hours that became the longest running prime-time sports series in TV history.

Two from the United Federation of Planets: first up, remember this one, from the early, funny years of Saturday Night Live?

And second, this was a geeky little bonbon I wrote for the last page of the December 2004 issue of Electronic House magazine:

Ed Morrissey writes:

For those who keep insisting that Saddam had no WMD and no way of producing them, The Hague has some embarrassing news. It convicted Saddam's supplier, Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat, to 15 years for selling Saddam the chemicals used to kill at least 5,000 Kurds in Halabja, among others.

Need a last-minute Christmas gift idea? PC World reviews "The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years".

(My wife says any poll without this is bogus, though.)

James Bone, the London Times journalist insulted by Kofi Annan during a press conference, responds:

AS A journalist, I expect my share of verbal abuse. But it is not everyday that I have my professionalism impugned by the world's top diplomat on global TV.

The advantage is that I have not felt as young for years as I do now that Kofi Annan has described me as an “overgrown schoolboy”. The disadvantage — rather more serious — is that the UN Secretary-General continues to refuse to respond to the still-unanswered questions about his role in the Oil-For-Food corruption scandal.

For months journalists were told that the UN could not answer any questions because the scandal was under investigation by the Volcker inquiry. Since the Volcker panel issued its last report in October, the UN has refused to answer any questions because it says the matter has already been investigated. Yet the inquiry raised more questions than it answered, the most important being: what did Kofi Annan know and when did he know it?

(Via Pejman Yousefzadeh.)

Look out: Tim Blair is channeling Molly Ivins.

Mark Steyn has, I think, the definitive look at The War On Christmas, placed into the larger context of the left's War On Culture:

One December a few years back, I was in Santa Claus, Indiana, and went to the Post Office – a popular destination thanks to its seasonal postmark. “Merry Christmas!” I said provocatively.

But Postmistress Sandy Colyon was ready for me. “A week ago,” she said, “I’d have had to say ‘Happy Holidays’, but we’ve been given a special dispensation from the Postmaster-General allowing us to say ‘Merry Christmas’. So Merry Christmas!”

That’s “Christmas” at the dawn of the third millennium – a word you have to get a special memo from head office authorizing the use thereof. In America, most executive honchos would rather not take the risk, instructing the staff to eschew any mention of the C-word in favour of “Happy Holidays!” – the all-purpose inoffensive greeting that covers Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Eid, the Third Wednesday after Ramadan, hippy-dippy solstice worship, West Bank Suicide Bomber Appreciation Day and any other festive occasion you’ve lined up for the general vicinity of late 2005/early 2006.

For US columnists, the end-of-year column bemoaning the fanatical efforts to expunge all Christmas traditions from public life has become an annual Christmas tradition in itself. And, happily, there’s no shortage of contenders for silliest Santa suit. Last Christmas, to pluck at random from just one state, the annual trip by one New Jersey school district to see Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” was cancelled after threats of legal action. At another New Jersey school, the policy on not singing any songs mentioning God, Christ, angels, etc, was expanded to prohibit instrumental performances of music that would mention God if any singers were around to sing the words. So you can’t do “Silent Night” as a piano solo or Handel’s Messiah even if you junk the hallelujahs.

But let’s not obsess on New Jersey’s litigious secularists. In Plano, Texas, in the heart of God-fearin’ Bush country, parents were instructed not to bring red and green plates and napkins for the school’s “winter” parties, as red and green are colours with strong Christmas connotations and thus culturally oppressive. In Massachusetts, in the heart of Bush-fearin’ country, the mayor of Somerville issued an apology for accidentally referring to the town “holiday party” as a C-------- party.

This year the Christmas crowd pushed back, complaining to Wal-Mart and other big retailers about what’s become a perversely ostentatious aversion to the C word. The malls still have to sell stuff which at least prevents them retreating too far into the more extreme manifestations of cultural self-abasement. At the average American schoolhouse, no such restraints exist and the average “holiday concert” is now an hour of torture for even the most self-consciously tolerant parents, forced to endure a mélange of cat-strangling multiculti dirges. Jesus, Mary and Joseph long ago got the heave-ho from the grade school, but the great secular trinity of Santa, Rudolph and Frosty aren’t faring much better. “Frosty The Snowman” and “Jingle Bells” are offensive to those of a non-Frosty or non-jingly persuasion: they’re code for traditional notions of Christmas. The basic rule of thumb is: Anything you enjoy singing will probably get you sued. At my children's school, like most others, the holiday concert’s “celebrate diversity” anthems are parceled out entirely randomly: one year you might get the Hannukah song, the next the traditional Hutu disemboweling chant. But the thing to remember is: it would be offensive to inflict “Deck The Halls” or “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” on any hypothetical Hutu in attendance, but it’s not offensive to inflict hot Hutu hits on bewildered moppets.

In a rare Friday night/Saturday morning post (depending upon which time zone you're in), James Lileks has an MP3 of the NBC radio news broadcast for December 25th, 1944. There's only a brief mention of Christmas in the middle of it, otherwise, it's "Bad news, straight, no chaser", as James writes. But there's no moral equivalence, no attempt to portray one man's Nazi as another man's freedom fighter. No attempt to portray our breaking of the Germans' Enigma codes as This Week's Crime of the Century by the president.

In other words, you know the broadcaster is rooting for America to win the war, unlike much of today's media.

(Man, I sound as grim as NBC's announcer. Fortunately, Lileks has much more Christmassy stuff on his site, between today's and yesterday's posts.)

PBS's Nova TV series is doing a year-end round-up on January 10th. Sounds like some interesting stuff, interspersed with a fair amount of PC editorializing.

The Hotline has a round-up of events in the Blogosphere titled, "12/22: The Year Of Blogging Dangerously".

Gee, why does that title ring a bell....?

It'll come to me sooner or later.

(Seriously--it's a great megapost. Even if the title is strangely... hauntingly... familiar.)

"Japan joins Germany and Italy in the ranks of countries where a decline in population has already set in".

Russia's population has seen better days as well--and by far, that nation leads the world in one grim statistic: suicides.

Meanwhile, back here in the US, Betsy Newmark has "more evidence that the next census will not be good news, on the average, for blue states".

As Mark Steyn wrote this past spring:

When I've mentioned the birth dearth on previous occasions, pro-abortion correspondents have insisted it's due to other factors - the generally declining fertility rates that affect all materially prosperous societies, or the high taxes that make large families prohibitively expensive in materially prosperous societies. But this is a bit like arguing over which came first, the chicken or the egg - or, in this case, which came first, the lack of eggs or the scraggy old chicken-necked women desperate for one designer baby at the age of 48. How much of Europe's fertility woes derive from abortion is debatable. But what should be obvious is that the way the abortion issue is framed - as a Blairite issue of personal choice - is itself symptomatic of the broader crisis of the dying West.

Since 1945, a multiplicity of government interventions - state pensions, subsidised higher education, higher taxes to pay for everything - has so ruptured traditional patterns of inter-generational solidarity that in Europe a child is now an optional lifestyle accessory. By 2050, Estonia's population will have fallen by 52 per cent, Bulgaria's by 36 per cent, Italy's by 22 per cent. The hyper-rationalism of post-Christian Europe turns out to be wholly irrational: what's the point of creating a secular utopia if it's only for one generation?

Karl Rove implicated in identity leak scandal.

(This was the reporter who broke the case...)

The Indianapolis Colts are 13-1, won their division, will have home field advantage throughout the playoffs, and may very well advance to the Super Bowl.

But this story puts all of that into stark perspective:

The 18-year-old son of Tony Dungy, head coach of the top-ranked Indianapolis Colts football team, was found dead on Thursday in Tampa, police said.

A spokeswoman for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said deputies were called to James Dungy's apartment at about 1:30 a.m. by his girlfriend. They were unable to revive Dungy and he was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Dick Bailey, a spokesman for the Hillsborough Medical Examiner, said an autopsy to determine the cause of death will not be completed until Friday at the earliest.

The St. Petersburg Times quoted Bailey as saying that Dungy's death was "apparently a suicide."

Asked by Reuters about whether it was a suicide, Bailey said, "I know of nothing to conflict with that," adding that the cause of death would not be conclusive until the autopsy was finished.

Tony Dungy, in his 10th season as a National Football League head coach, directed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1996 until he was fired after the 2001 season. He turned the Buccaneers from perennial losers into winners that made the NFL playoffs four times in six years.

After he was fired following a playoff loss in January 2002, Dungy was immediately hired by the Colts.

This season the Colts won their first 13 games before losing last Sunday at home to San Diego. They play at Seattle this Saturday.

"The thoughts and prayers of everyone in this building are with Tony and (wife) Lauren, their children and their extended family, and for the repose of James' soul," Polian said at a news conference at the Colts' training facility in Indianapolis. "This is a tragedy for the Dungy family and by extension his football family here with the Colts."

Owner Jim Irsay and Polian met with team officials and players to break the news.

"It was not easy, and it was somber, to say the least," Polian said.

Caldwell will take over "for however long Tony will be away and however long he will be away is entirely up to him," Polian added.

Chaplains were brought in to talk with the team.

"I don't think there's anyone here that would wish to play a football game under these circumstances, but it's our obligation and we'll fulfill that obligation because that's what Tony wants us to do," Polian said.

DoctorZin of Regime Change Iran writes:

Last Friday, the day after millions of Iraqi's voted in an historic election, the US Senate passed a resolution condemning the recent alarming statements by Iran's President. Surprisingly, the mainstream media ignored the resolution while the international press has been avidly covering similar resolutions adopted by countries around the world. Unfortunately, the story behind the resolution revealed a disturbing lack of conviction by some in the US Senate.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey illustrates the ineffective leadership of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (did you know he's a doctor? No seriously, he's a physician! Did you know that?) in the most damning way possible: Frist's own words.

Over at National Review Online's Media Blog, Stephen Spruiell has a month-by-month round-up titled, "Media-Manufactured Controversies: 2005 Year in Review".

These two get my votes for the worst examples of media abuse.

"I want to bite the hand that feeds me. I want to bite that hand so badly. I want to make them wish they'd never seen me!"--Elvis Costello, "Radio, Radio"

Maybe there's something in the Christmas eggnog they're drinking, because two media-worshiped mavens both lashed out at their power base this week.

First-up, Roger L. Simon links to this AP report, which catches Kofi Annan attempting to evade questions about the UN's Oil-For-Food debacle by dressing down the reporter from The Times of London who dared question the Might Wizard:

At Wednesday's press conference, one of the most persistent questioners, James Bone of The Times of London, mentioned a Mercedes-Benz that Kojo Annan imported into Ghana using his father's diplomatic immunity to avoid taxes and customs duty, and said some of the secretary-general's accounts of oil-for-food related events, "don't really make sense."

"I think you're being very cheeky," Annan interrupted. "Listen James Bone, you've been behaving like an overgrown schoolboy in this room for many, many months and years. You are an embarrassment to your colleagues and to your profession. Please stop misbehaving and please let's move on to a serious journalist."

The president of the U.N. Correspondents Association told Annan that Bone had a right to ask a question and was not an embarrassment.

Bone walked out and said later: "The Volcker report raises many serious questions about the integrity of the U.N., and it's important that public officials paid with taxpayer money answer these questions fully and without accusing the press."

If Kofi Annan gives Roger a flashback to 1972, then this person's worldview is perpetually trapped in that year. But of course, so are the folks who launched her celebrityhood--and it's astonishing to see someone not recognizing that she's biting the hand that not only feeds her, but created her:

What do you think you achieved in Crawford?

We brought the war into the forefront of American consciousness and started the discussion that should have started before the war. The mood in our country is turning around.

But the peace movement in the U.S. remains small. Why?

One thing that has prevented the peace movement in America is the media. I spoke with 5,000 people in North Carolina on March 19, 2005, and the press called the protest "insignificant." They covered the Terri Schiavo case instead.

You feel like you were mistreated by the press?

They got hold of everything I've ever said and scrutinized it so carefully. They never scrutinized what Bush said. No one said, "Why did you lie to the American people and say there was WMD?" The press found an easy target in Iraq, and they found an easy target in me.

Chutzpah, thy name is Cindy.

Update: In an article with the Antonioni-esque title of "The Blow-Up", Claudia Rosett has much more on Kofi's meltdown on the podium.

In his tribute to Paul Johnson's epic history of the 20th century, Modern Times, in the 50th Anniversary issue of National Review, Roger Kimball wrote:

One of the great triumphs of Modern Times is Johnson’s capaciousness: His embrace is Whitmanian in its generosity (though not in its sobriety and judicious wisdom). Modern Times is a book with a theme and a moral.

The theme revolves around relativism — moral, epistemological, metaphysical. The Modern World, Johnson writes in his opening flourish, began on May 29, 1919, when Einstein’s theory of relativity was experimentally confirmed, thus shattering the complacent confidence of the Newtonian worldview. Of course, the theory of relativity is not the same thing as relativism. Johnson acknowledges this. And yet, like the second law of thermodynamics (which popularized the term “entropy”) or Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the theory of relativity was science that cast a large metaphorical shadow. Was it misunderstood — even un-understood? It didn’t matter. Johnson is right that the popular appropriation of Einstein’s theory is a good illustration of the “dual impact” of scientific innovators: Their theories change our understanding of the physical world; “but they also change our ideas. The second effect is often more radical than the first.”

The embrace of relativism was a harbinger, a symptom of a seismic shift in the way people view the world. People? Well, educated people, anyway, of which we have a greater and greater supply. (I say “educated”: I mean “schooled.”) It is often said that relativism is the conviction that, when it comes to morals, there is no such thing as absolute values and, when it comes to knowledge, there is no such thing as absolute truth. It is worth meditating on the use of the word “absolute” here. Someone should contact OSHA about its being unfairly overworked. What a relativist really believes (or believes he believes) is that 1) there is no such thing as value, and 2) there is no such thing as truth. The word “absolute” is merely an emollient, a verbal sedative intended to forestall unhappiness. What after all is the difference between saying, “There is no such thing as absolute truth,” and saying, “There is no such thing as truth”? Take your time.

Dr. Sanity, aka Dr. Pat Santy, an MD in psychiatry / aerospace medicine, picks up on The Theory of Moral Relativity:

Much as the Left (who as a group are heavily invested in the whole postmodernistic touchy feely thingy) would like to believe that they have exclusive rights to the truth, they have actually dealt themselves out of any contest for discovering truth by insisting that truth is relative. If it IS relative, they they must agree that I am as correct in what I think as they are.

OTOH, if truth is NOT relative, but exists outside of whatever one side or the other feels is true, then by all means, let's get down to the evidence which will prove which side is correct. I'm game.

Do you begin to see what a house of cards they have built for themselves? If truth is relative, then by their own standards, it is not possible for anyone to be self-deluded-- since self-delusion (they call it "emotional truth" ) is their only reality.

What is most laughable is that their entire way of dealing with the world is based on a fundamental self-delusion - the denial of external reality.

When you live in a world where objective reality is unacknowledged, is it any wonder that from your perspective noone can every prove that what you feel is true, isn't really true? That is why the same distortions and creative fabrications resurface time after time in political discussions these days. The entire "Bush lied about WMD" for example. No matter how many times this is debunked, it gets recycled by the reality-based deprived community. Or, take the case of the pathetic Mary Mapes, who continues to (religiously) adhere to the belief that the forged TANG memo represents truth and deny the reality of any facts to the contrary or to her fundamentally illogical position. Her behavior is entirely consistent with the philosophy that if you feels something is is true, it is true.

In other words, she is engaging in self-delusion.

Conservative publisher Henry Luce wouldn't recognize what Time, the magazine he founded back in 1923 has turned into. He'd surely be astonished that it's now essentially just another house organ for the Democratic Party. But he probably would admire the well-deserved shellacking that Frank Martin gives them for their ridiculous 2005 "Persons of the Year" choices.

Frank's got a few nominees of his own--any one of which would be more credible than "The Big Three" that Time chose.

(Via the aptly named Dr. Sanity.)

Joseph Bottum writes beautiful Christmas prose:

Just because something is sentimentalized does not mean that it is untrue—or even that we are wrong to layer it over with sentiment. The distaste for sentimentality begins as a rebellion against false feeling, but it finishes as a rebellion against all feeling. It starts as a plain-speaking person’s refusal to be deceived by a coat of paint, and it ends as a rude person’s refusal to use paint at all. It opens as a wise man’s ability to point out the fool’s gold, and it concludes as a fool’s inability to point out the real gold.

For on this point, we dare not be mistaken: Christmas is the real gold, and all the sentimentality with which we gild a thing already golden, all the evergreens with which we decorate a thing already evergreen, all the holly boughs with which we mark a thing already holy—all these are not some vain attempt to mask the truth. They are, rather, the tribute that sentiment will always try to pay to true things, on the same principle by which a wife chooses the prettiest wrapping paper for her husband’s most expensive gift on Christmas morning. What need had the King of Kings—what need had a newborn child in a cattle shed—for the awful oblation of frankincense and myrrh laid before him by the Wise Men? And yet those men were wise, as we are wisest only in our greatest foolishness.

Something in the Christmas season rightly tempts us to such sentimental gilding, just as something in the Christmas season tempts us—awk!—to the chaotic chiasmus of this kind of fake-Chestertonian prose, every sentence an aphorism eased along by alliteration’s artful aid, until the words clot up in a giant Christmas pudding that subsides with a half-baked sigh as it cools upon the table. “I’m sick of Chesterton,” F. Scott Fitzgerald has Amory Blaine complain in This Side of Paradise. From January to November, the style of G.K. Chesterton may go down easy. But around Christmas, while the streets jingle with Salvation Army bells and the elevators jangle with Muzaked carols, it’s just too much. Just too much.

And yet…well, and yet, how are we to help ourselves? Every one of those jingling bells and jangling carols awakens some remembrance half gone, half recalled, haunting in the middle distance of the mind that had thought itself too mature to be moved again by merely memory.

Power Line asks:

It's a funny thing: when the Democrats are in the majority, the Democrats run Congress. When the Republicans are in the majority, the Democrats still run Congress. How does that work?

Libertas reviews King Kong and sees several flaws, but also a film well worth seeing.

Accompanying the review are several stills from the movie, including a shot of the biplanes approaching the Empire State Building that is just mind-boggling in its photo-realism. It's clearly all digital effects and trickery, but the density of the buildings--and even New Jersey across the river--is spot-on for the era, making the shot look perfect: what the Big Apple would have looked like during the Depression, if it had been photographed with a modern digital camera.

Neo-Neocon writes, "Holocaust denial: it's catching":

Holocaust denial, always reprehensible, is somehow more understandable in Europeans than in someone such as [Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]. After all, Europe bears more of the guilt for the Holocaust; therefore it stand to reason that Europeans would have more motivation to want to wash their hands of any association with the Holocaust by declaring it a fabrication of those wily and nefarious Jews.

But Holocaust denial has spread to Arab countries, and of course to Iran. The reasons are not completely clear, but it seems to go with the territory of anti-Semitism itself. After all, if one desires to hate Jews and to blame them for all manner of evil, and at the same time one imagines there's a need to be sympathetic to victims (and to elevate the Palestinians as victims extraordinaire), then the Jews have to be discredited as victims. They must have no sympathy whatsoever in order to become the villains of the piece. And to do that one must deny that the Holocaust ever occurred--so that their re-victimhood may be safely contemplated, and with a clear conscience.

It's a sad and not-too-well-known fact that the development of virulent anti-Semitism in the Arab world, a 20th century phenomenon (which Iran now seems to have "caught"), was in fact a direct result of Nazi influence in the Middle East during the 30s (see this book by Bernard Lewis on the subject). So the resemblance noted by Baron Bodissey is not so strange, after all: Nazi propaganda is probably the underlying source of this sort of thing--both in the Arab world and, by a sort of contagious spread, in Iran.

I read a little bit of Paul Tillich for my book. Interesting stuff, but not really my bag (existential Christian theology tends not to have enough car chases to hold my attention). But he makes one argument that's stuck with me, even if I don't totally buy it. He argues that skepticism about God's existence creates the belief in God. In The Protestant Era, he writes, "There is faith in every serious doubt; namely, the faith in the truth as such. . . . So the paradox got hold of me that he who seriously denies God, affirms Him." Peter Berkowitz makes what seems to me a similar argument about Nietzsche. Even as Nietzsche tried to smash concepts of truth, what emerges from the process are external standards of hierarchy and value. Or something like that.

Anyway, even if I have all that wrong, it seems like something similar is at work with Holocaust denial. The need to deny the Holocaust establishes the importance of the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad and his ilk need to call it a myth because if such a horrror actually happened the moral consequences would be too enormous to ignore. Why else say it's a myth? Denying the historical reality of the Holocaust concedes the moral arguments which flow from it. In much the same way hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue, Holocaust denial is the homage evil men pay to absolute standards of good and evil.

The deniers in the Arab world often tacitly acknowledge this by adding the contradictory argument that if it happened then Israel should set up shop in Austria or Germany.

Of course, all of this doesn't take place in a vacuum. There are other arguments for why Israel should be where it is and there are other reasons why people deny the Holocaust. But a more logically consistent anti-Israel stance would simply accept that the Holocaust happened and, well, so what? But they understand they can't make that argument, at least not on the world stage. We all know that for internal consumption, the Nazis still get a lot of applause in the Middle East.

Update: Clive Davis notes a great idea for a mass protest against Ahmadinejad.

Related: UPI reports, "Menorah vandalized in Philadelphia park".

Virginia Postrel links to this Los Angeles Times story about a 56 year old stuck in the 1970s former SDS radical, environmental attorney and classic New Puritan:

Mark Pollock is a Napa-based environmental lawyer, a former Bay Area student radical and lover of fine food. Gloria Alvarez is a resident of Culver City who, for the last 33 years, has owned and operated Gloria's Cake & Candy Supplies, a tiny Westside culinary landmark jammed into a former American Legion Hall near the intersection of Sawtelle and Venice. Pollock and the seventysomething Alvarez have more than a little in common.

To be precise, on April 23, 2003, Pollock and his lone associate, Evangeline James, sued Alvarez and a who's who of names from the bakery world: "Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc.; Dean & Deluca Inc.; Chefshop.com Inc.; Pfeil & Holing Inc.; Kitchen Etc.; Q.A. Products Inc.; Confectionary House; Beryl's Cake Decorating & Pastry Supplies; American Cake Supply; Albert Uster Imports Inc.; Do It With Icing; Cooking.com Inc.; Candyland Crafts Inc.; Favors by Lisa; Sugarbakers Cake, Candy and Wedding Supplies Inc.; Kitchen Conservatory Inc.; American Gourmet Foods Inc.; Annerose Hess d.b.a. Ohess; Pastry Wiz; Barry Farm Enterprises; GM Cake and Candy Supplies d.b.a. Cybercakes; Babykakes; and Does 1 through 100 inclusive."

Pollock's lawsuit swept through the close-knit world of American cake decorating like a hot knife through icing. Despite no law specifically outlawing dragées, private citizen Pollock took it upon himself to rid every last supermarket shelf, specialty food store and mail-order purveyor in California of those tiny silver-covered sugar balls you've been licking or flicking off the top of your cupcakes since you were a tyke.

Pollock's suit was an attempt to get a potentially dangerous substance out of the hands and stomachs of the California public. But to Alvarez and her colleagues, it was as if they were being blackmailed by a distant tree-hugger.

The 56-year-old Pollock speaks with confident authority. Although he is an unreconstructed radical, he looks great in a lawyer's crisp striped dress shirt, dress pants and tie. A former SDS member, he entered law school at the University of La Verne to help cleanse the system from within.

Pollock is a fanatic who's determined to stamp out other people's small pleasures in pursuit of his own version of righteous living (and collect lots of money along the way). He succeeds because it costs him almost nothing to sue. His victims settle rather than spend more, in time and money, to fight his claims. Any litigation system that encourages--indeed, rewards--this petty tyranny needs serious reform.

Tim Blair is succinct: Kill Trees, Save The Planet!

Interesting look at politics and residential density over at TCS Daily, by Patrick Cox:

A partnership, maybe even symbiosis, developed over time between the Democratic Party and the MSM. By the Vietnam era, journalists were doing the heavy lifting for the Democratic Party, puzzling out politically profitable angles and prompting politicians with precisely loaded questions. Liberal politicians got their "talking points" daily from the headlines and lead stories of the MSM and the DNC could focus on fundraising.

For ideologically grounded conservatives and libertarians, it was infuriating; the undecided swing vote could be swayed and Democrats prospered. Already, however, things had begun to change.

Technology and the Paperboy

Telephones, when they finally came to rural America lowered the cost of rural news collection. The shift of advertising expenditures from radio to television created low cost distribution opportunities for red state radio commentators.

And then, of course, along came the Internet, which is taking, at an increasing rate, market and advertising revenues away from newspapers and their colleagues in radio and television. Today, the cost of production and delivery of online news has plummeted; witness Matt Drudge, TCS Daily and the blogosphere. The balance of power has shifted as anybody with a modem can now self-publish or seek out news and commentary according to individual tastes, needs and preferences. Paperboys hardly matter anymore.

In the short run, these changes have been of tremendous benefit to the formerly underserved political right -- the red state people. It is not, however, simply that they now have some outlets that are respectful of their views. The right has the enormous benefit of decades of frustration with the MSM neglect and mischaracterization of their perspectives. Conservatives and libertarians had been talking back to their televisions and growling at newspapers for most of their lives, and still haven't got over the exhilaration of finding news sources that publish the debates they were having privately.

Liberals, however, were spared the best conservative arguments by editors who didn't like or understand them. Nodding at Walter Cronkite's and Dan Rather's interpretation of events, the left was lulled into the complacency of consensus in a world where consensus did not truly exist. The few alternative voices, hidden on the pages of mostly liberal editorial pages, were easy to dismiss as irrelevant or extremist.

Today, you can see this lack of familiarity with the fine points of public debate clearly as Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi continue to act as if they were living inside the old ideological news monopoly. It is why Democrats thought they could specifically contradict themselves on Iraq policy and expect not to be called on it. In the old days, they wouldn't have been -- except in the slow to arrive albeit brilliant monthlies and bi-monthlies like National Review and Reason, typically read only by cadres. (Both publications now have a robust web presence to compliment the dead tree publications).

The Situation Is Changing Again

The Bush administration, however, has been masterful in its use of the new media. Schooled by years of exclusion and disdain, they have consistently played ideological "ropeadope" until their own constituency is begging for a response, and unchecked liberals have taken their arguments over the edge into parody.

This MSM embargo of non-liberal ideas has led, as well, to a more effective Internet presence for the right, and is seen clearly in the differences between the two most important of the partisans, Instapundit and the Daily Kos. I don't think it would be too controversial to say that Glenn Reynolds is more gracious toward his detractors as well as more interested in building consensus on controversial issues than are Kos and his readers.

What hath the blogosphere wrought? The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans’ adversaries in Old Media. Both changes help Bush and the Republicans.

Most importantly, the world wrought by the current Internet technology, enabled most spectacularly by Marc Andreessen when he and his Netscape democratized the Web, is on the verge of the next anarchic and unexpected seismic shift, which I'll get to in a later article.

UPI reports that "an NBC producer has been disciplined for becoming overly involved in the case of a convicted killer serving a life sentence in Arkansas.":

Shane Bishop, who works for Dateline NBC, wrote Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, urging them to guarantee that Michael Ronning would be spared the death penalty if he confessed to killings in their states, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Ronning is suspected of homicides in Florida, Texas and Michigan.

Bishop told the governors he believed he could get Ronning to confess if he was assured he would be spared execution.

NBC told the newspaper that Bishop acted on his own in violation of network policy and that appropriate disciplinary action had been taken.

Bob Steele of the Poynter Institute said that Bishop stepped over the line by trying to make a deal with public officials.

"Journalists should never become players in a story," Steele said.

Sorry for the all-caps--just trying to recreate that old New York Daily News vibe.

New Yorkers got a big dose of holiday cheer from the Transit Workers Union, as they go out on strike the week before Christmas. As of the time I'm writing this post, their unofficial blog is up to 727 comments--many of them in that warm, ingratiating tone that New York is (sadly) often known for. (Whoops--just before uploading this post, the comments were taken down.)

Glenn Reynolds writes, "Meanwhile, Bloomberg has to be asking himself, 'What would Rudy do?'"

Personally, I'd be asking myself this, and find some way to go PATCO on the Union, especially with temperatures dropping to 23 degrees tonight.

Over at TCS Daily, Glenn Reynolds looks at efforts to ban violent videogames:

Call me crazy, but I think that Congress has more important things to do than regulate videogames. I also think that this is a dumb move constitutionally, substantively, and politically.

“Yesterday a trio of Democratic senators with presidential ambitions introduced federal legislation that they believe can pass constitutional muster.

“The legislation, unveiled at a press conference by Democratic senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Evan Bayh of Indiana, would essentially codify the industry's current voluntary rating system. It assigns games letters from ‘EC,’ meaning appropriate for early childhood, to ‘AO’ for ‘adults only.’ Retailers who sell games rated ‘mature,’ ‘adults only’ or ‘ratings pending’ to children under 17 could face fines of $5,000 per violation.”

I think the killer objection here is that the decision will be a political disaster. The videogame bill is really a piece of pre-election Presidential positioning. But lots of voters -- especially those elusive “youth voters” whom the Democrats have been pursuing for the past couple of election cycles -- play videogames, and they’re not likely to respond favorably.

After Tookie Williams began his well-deserved Big Sleep, officials in Austria whined that they just might take Gov. Schwarzenegger's name off the eponymously named stadium in his hometown in protest.

Arnold's response? Take it off, pal!

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday told officials in his hometown in Austria to remove his name from a sports stadium and stop using his name to promote the city.

The governor's request came after politicians in Graz began a petition drive to rename the stadium, reacting to Schwarzenegger's decision last week to deny clemency to condemned inmate Stanley Tookie Williams. Opposition to the death penalty is strong in Austria. [SNIP]

"In all likelihood, during my term as governor, I will have to make similar and equally difficult decisions," Schwarzenegger said in the letter. "In order to spare the responsible politicians of the city of Graz further concern, I withdraw from them as of this day the right to use my name in association with the Liebenauer Stadium."

The stadium had been renamed for the former Hollywood star in 1997. He said he wanted the lettering removed by year's end. [SNIP]

In [the letter to the officials of Graz, Austria] Schwarzenegger also said he would no longer permit the use of his name "to advertise or promote the city of Graz in any way" and would return the city's "ring of honor."

The ring was given to him in a ceremony in Graz in 1999. At the time, Schwarzenegger said he considered it "a token of sincere friendship between my hometown and me.

"Since, however, the official Graz appears to no longer accept me as one of their own, this ring has lost its meaning and value to me. It is already in the mail," the governor wrote.

The letter notes that city officials will receive a follow-up letter from Schwarzenegger's attorney.

Something tells me the Gipper is smiling at the moment.

I guess it really is worth a thousand words: over at Blogcritics, that's how many I have on the pretty pictures that drove Miami Vice's second season, now out on DVD.

Mark Steyn compares Australia's riots to those in France last month and finds some curious, if underreported similarities:

There are no doubt "white racists" down under, but, as an explanation of what's going on, it's almost quaintly absurd. "People of Middle Eastern background" have prospered in Australia. The governor of New South Wales, Marie Bashir, is Lebanese, as is her husband, Sir Nicholas Shehadie, as is the premier of Victoria, Steve Bracks. Likewise, in my own state of New Hampshire, one of the least racially diverse jurisdictions in North America, the last Senate race was nevertheless fought between a Republican, John Sununu, and a Democrat, Jeanne Shaheen, both from Lebanese families.

All these successful politicians are of Lebanese Christian stock: that's to say, after a third of a century in their new countries, they weren't conversing with reporters in Arabic. It's not racial, it's cultural. And the cries of "Racist!" are intended to make any discussion of that cultural problem beyond the pale. In that sense, Sydney's beach riots are a logical sequel to what happened in France. From opposite ends of the planet, there are nevertheless many similarities: non-Muslim women are hectored and insulted in the streets of both Clichy-sous-Bois and Brighton-le-Sands. The only difference is that, in Oz, the "white youths" decided to have a go back.

These days, whenever something goofy turns up on the news, chances are it involves a fellow called Mohammed. A plane flies into the World Trade Centre? Mohammed Atta. A gunman shoots up the El Al counter at Los Angeles airport? Hesham Mohamed Hedayet. A sniper starts killing petrol station customers around Washington, DC? John Allen Muhammed. A guy fatally stabs a Dutch movie director? Mohammed Bouyeri. A terrorist slaughters dozens in Bali? Noordin Mohamed. A gang-rapist in Sydney? Mohammed Skaf.

Maybe all these Mohammeds are victims of Australian white racists and American white racists and Dutch white racists and Balinese white racists and Beslan schoolgirl white racists.

But the eagerness of the Aussie and British and Canadian and European media, week in, week out, to attribute each outbreak of an apparently universal phenomenon to strictly local factors is starting to look pathological. "Violence and racism are bad", but so is self-delusion.

Over at The American Thinker, Hollywood screenwriter/producer Kate Wright does a great job placing Steven Spielberg's new Munich into a broad historical perspective.

At one point, she writes:

Perhaps Mr. Spielberg is entranced by what Professor Jeane Kirkpatrick described as The Myth of Moral Equivalence, the humanist claim that all sides—regardless of core beliefs, tactics and genocides—are somehow valid. Otherwise, Spielberg seems convinced by moral relativism, the position that there is no comprehensive moral truth or truth value, that only personal subjective morality, deriving from social convention, is truly authentic. [That's par for the course in Hollywood--Ed] Even Hollywood publicists will have trouble extricating him from this self-inflicted philosophical quagmire by suggesting that he fall back on the obscure concept of moral pluralism which acknowledges the co-existence of opposing ideas and practices – but does not require that they be equally valid. As a last resort, he may be tempted to gravitate to the nouveau concept of value pluralism. But this stimulates the little mice into over-drive, and begs the fundamental question of our time.

If Israel has no right to exist, then who does?

Back in May of 2004, in the midst of the bruising election year (and even before the Swift Vets blockade, Ra^therGate, NYTRoGate, etc.), I submitted a piece for Tech Central Station titled, "Welcome to the Post-Bias Media", focusing on Bernard Goldberg's landmark first book on media bias. In it, I wrote:

Another strange thing has started happening as well -- in the past, media elites denounced any claims of a liberal bias in the news with a shrug and a who, us? Were not liberals. Were not leftwing. Were objective and neutral. No biases here! More and more, as well shortly see, the media are going on the record (Brock, Gore and Franken, notwithstanding) that it leans pretty heavily towards the left.

Today, Pajamas looks at those whacky neocons at UCLA and their crazy rightwing theories:

Scientists discover liberal media bias on Mars!

Or so it would seem, to judge by the lack of a mainstream media reaction to a UCLA study which is the first to use quantifiable measures to determine bias. Larry Kudlow blogs, "According to the study, which covered ten years worth of news stories, eighteen of the twenty major news outlets scored left of center. That’s a solid 90 percent for those of you keeping score."

Interestingly enough, the study also concluded that "While the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than the New York Times." And "The Drudge Report, while it might have a right wing reputation, leans left."

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Post appeared to be right of center.

Rob at Say Anything writes, "What always amazes me most about liberal media bias is not the fact that it exists, but the fact that so many people deny that it exists in the face of overwhelming amounts of evidence which suggests that it does."

Just don't look for the story on Yahoo! news, the BBC or CNN, because as of this morning, a search for "media bias" turned up no references to the UCLA study.

the real loser of the election wasn't the Democratic party. America is built on a two party system. Republicans reconstituted themselves into a more conservative party after Barry Goldwater took one for the team after JFK's assassination made LBJ's election all but inevitable in '64. There's no reason why the Democrats can't go through a bit--well, hopefully a lot--of analysis and see why they've lost the House and Senate for a decade (except during Jumpin' Jim Jeffords' 15 minutes of fame), and will be out of the White House for at least virtually all of this decade.

No, the real losers are the legacy media: the TV networks and newspapers.

Update: Hey, no bias here!

A Miami NBC affiliate reports:

A seaplane carrying 20 people crashed into the water off Miami Beach Monday afternoon, killing 19 people, authorities said. The other person has not been found.

Nineteen bodies were recovered after the Chalk's Ocean Airways propeller plane crashed around 2:30 p.m. after takeoff en route to Bimini in the Bahamas, Coast Guard officials said.

Roger Nair, general manager of Chalk's Ocean Airways, said two crewmembers were aboard along with 18 passengers, including three infants.

I heard on the radio that when the plane went down off Miami Beach this afternoon, a flotilla of private boats were on it almost immediately to try to find survivors. It's similar to what happened in 911, when a large number of people spontaneously evacuated lower Manhattan across the rivers to New Jersey and Brooklyn.

Unfortunately, this time, even as rapid as the response was, it looks like the people were beyond saving.

Witness Photo
A witness sent this picture to NBC 6. The man said he snapped the photo with his cell phone right after the plane crashed into the water.

(Macabre bit of synchronicity: This past week, I was sent the DVD of the second season of Miami Vice to review for Blogcritics. I watched an episode Saturday with my wife and quipped, "If there's one thing I've learned from Miami Vice, if you're a bad guy who needs to skip town in a hurry, you always fly Chalk's Seaplanes". They featured prominently in several episodes, but I didn't know until just now that they still flew.)

Since Time magazine dropped their "Blog of the Year" award after awarding it to Power Line last year, Michelle Malkin has posted an excellent list of her own.

I'd just add to it Charles and Roger, for starting Pajamas Media to pay bloggers for their efforts, and encourage original journalism from bloggers. That they took more flak than a B-17 over Berlin during the past six months and survived only adds to the accomplishment.

Update: I just received a press release--Time is scrambling to rectify the omission of this category...

Dr. Helen looks at "Dangerous Class Assignments":

My cousin rarely cries. I figure he picked that up from one of us, his brother, me, or one of my brothers. But now, he’s practically in tears. Why? Because the class assignment was for them to write about their experiences with the causes of rape. The girls had to write about times they felt “pressured” by boys. And the boys… well, they had to write about times they tried to “force” themselves on girls. Not pressure them, force them.

I thought the "So, when did you stop beating your wife?" routine was strictly a cliche amongst cold-blooded trial lawyers. Now the concept is spreading to schools, as well??

TCS Daily looks at the original Green Beret, retired US Army Lieutenant General William Yarborough, who passed away earlier this month at age 93.

There's a great passage on how the Green Berets got their famous headgear. Don't miss it.

Woody Allen's long made a career of self-deprecating humor. It was cute and fun to watch when he was the toast of Manhattan, but post Soon-Yi and his long run of tone-deaf movies since the mid-'90s, when a man says stuff like this, perhaps it's best to take him at his word:

Allen said that in America he had received "more than I deserve of adulation", but in the sense of being a big-moneymaking filmmaker he had never been popular.

"I've always had a small audience in the United States. Annie Hall was the smallest money-making Academy Award-winning best picture in history."

Allen called himself a mediocre filmmaker who had squandered "golden opportunities over where I could work with complete freedom artistically".

He said: "I have made some films better than others. But I've disappointed myself most of the time. I've often said that the only thing standing between me and greatness is myself."

As I said at the start of the month, the trailer for the Woodman's new movie actually does look surprisingly good. But geez, layoff the self-deprecation for a while, huh Woody?

The Professor writes:

BUSH DOUBLES DOWN: I just watched Bush's speech. Nothing new there for anyone who's been paying attention to the speeches he's been giving over the past couple of weeks. But one big thing struck me: In this national televised speech, Bush went out of his way to take responsibility for the war. He repeatedly talked about "my decision to invade Iraq," even though, of course, it was also Congress's decision. He made very clear that, ultimately, this was his war, and the decisions were his.

Why did he do that? Because he thinks we're winning, and he wants credit. By November 2006, and especially November 2008, he thinks that'll be obvious, and he wants to lay down his marker now on what he believed -- and what the other side did. That's my guess, anyway.

I've seen this story before.

Update: Michelle Malkin has plenty of links to additional coverage. This post by Real Clear Politics on "The Media's Incurable Myopia" is a must-read.

Another Update: I've seen this one before as well. C'mon folks--think of a new rebuttal!

One More: Gateway Pundit explores the timeline of The Thousand Day War.

Will Collier of VodkaPundit, who presumably, should be one of King Kong's biggest fans, just buries the film:

Quick review of Peter Jackson's new King Kong movie: for God's sake, somebody introduce this guy to a competent film editor and screenwriter.

Longer version (although not nearly as long as the movie): It's not very good. Jackson is an incredibly gifted production designer and producer; he has to be to get movies of this scope made at all, but the sad truth is, he's not a great director.

Will also notes, "The images are beautiful, but the story, which was stretched thin in the original's 100 minutes, just can't hold up to the three-hour torture test". I'm not surprised. As much as I loved the original, it's awfully thin, pulpy gristle to grind three hours out of.

Yesterday, the folks in The Corner had some interesting thoughts on whether or not the film's initial box office was hurt by the combination of gushing reviews that emphasized how emotive Kong was, coupled with the fact that you know he's going to eat the asphalt on 33rd Street at the end of movie.

I know, I know, I like to kid. Of course they won't. Mickey Kaus hit it spot-on while it was occurring:

I don't think they were happy just because Bush has suffered a blow. I think it's because the hurricane and its New Orleans aftermath at least seemed to solve a big problem for anti-Bush commentators and politicians. Previously, they couldn't grouse about the Iraq War without seeming defeatist (and anti-liberationist and maybe even selfishly isolationist). Even the Clintons never figured a way out of that trap. But nature has succeded where they failed; it has opened up a way out, at least temporarily.

The LA Times now reports that the deaths in NO were not disproportionately among the poor. The storm, and the response, did not discriminate.

Add this to the fact that black folks died in proportionally smaller numbers than whites. Quick stats are that black folks comprised 67% of the population but represented 59% of those who passed. White folks comprised 28% of the population but represented 36% of the deaths.

Everything you read about Katrina was wrong, and was, sorry, racist. An enormous amount of PR damage was done to the US, and race tensions were fanned without any factual basis. Will the MSM address this?

Hmm. Bogus reporting that inflames racial tensions. This could be as damaging to society as violent videogames. We need Congressional hearings!

Update: Greg Hanke emailed me a prediction he made on September 10th:

The MSM will never acknowledge that they exploited the situation to bash President Bush. Liberal bias means never having to say you're sorry.

Meanwhile, Keith D. Milby writes:

Hurricane Katrina might have caused more damage than first realized. It appears that extensive damage might just now be coming to the surface that was done by the media coverage and that same coverage now seems to be causing damage to the media.

* * *

After all of this, how can the media ever be trusted with the facts. One can only hope that the media gets whats coming to it. If for no other reason than to rectify it's shameful reporting in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, so that it never happens again. If one award is given to any reporter for this shameful episode it will truly be a disgrace.

Another Update: Instalanche! Welcome Glenn Reynolds' readers. For lots more on Katrina and the media, click here and just keep scrolling.

Ten days ago, I wrote that the mindset of the American left seemed permanently trapped in 1972 inside of a causality loop set on 1972. Michael Barone agrees:

What are the lessons of the past 25 years?

First, that American military power can advance freedom and democracy to all corners of the world. Under Reagan and his three successors, America has played a lead role in extending freedom and democracy to most of Latin America, to the Philippines and Indonesia and almost all of East Asia, and, most recently, to Afghanistan and Iraq, with reverberations spreading through the Middle East. Area experts said, often plausibly, those countries' cultures were incompatible with democracy. Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and brave men and women in those nations proved them wrong.

Second, that markets work and that lower taxes and less onerous government produce more economic growth than the alternative. About 43 million jobs have been created in the United States since December 1980, while the number in the more statist nations of western Europe is on the order of 4 million. Markets are creating millions of jobs in nominally Communist China and once socialist India.

Third, that politics and effective government can, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, change the culture. The crime-control methods pioneered by New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the welfare reforms pioneered by Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, imitated around the country and followed up by federal legislation, resulted in huge decreases in crime and welfare dependency.

These lessons have been widely learned and widely applied by George W. Bush and also to a large extent by Bill Clinton. But not, curiously enough, by those who see themselves as the best and the brightest, our university and media elites. They would still like to see America's power reined in, as it was in the 1970s. They are insouciant about the costs that larger and more intrusive government and higher taxes impose on the economy. They think that leniency and subsidy are the appropriate responses to deviant and self-destructive behavior. They think our most important right is a right to kill our unborn children. You have to be awfully smart, someone once said, to believe something so stupid. And to be so blind to the clear lessons of the past quarter century of history.

What will it take to break the cycle?

Update: Certainly not this!

Time magazine lists its "Persons of the Year": Bono, Bill Gates, and his wife, Melinda.

No, really!

Regarding the last choice, in an email to Michelle Malkin, Steve Den Beste nails it:

I think the unspoken subtext of this is that before he got married, Bill Gates was a carnivorous capitalist. Melinda tamed the beast, and that's why she's lauded.

It seems to have been Africa's fate to become a theater of empty talk and public gestures. But the impression that Africa is fatally troubled and can be saved only by outside help - not to mention celebrities and charity concerts - is a destructive and misleading conceit. Those of us who committed ourselves to being Peace Corps teachers in rural Malawi more than 40 years ago are dismayed by what we see on our return visits and by all the news that has been reported recently from that unlucky, drought-stricken country. But we are more appalled by most of the proposed solutions.

I am not speaking of humanitarian aid, disaster relief, AIDS education or affordable drugs. Nor am I speaking of small-scale, closely watched efforts like the Malawi Children's Village. I am speaking of the "more money" platform: the notion that what Africa needs is more prestige projects, volunteer labor and debt relief. We should know better by now. I would not send private money to a charity, or foreign aid to a government, unless every dollar was accounted for - and this never happens. Dumping more money in the same old way is not only wasteful, but stupid and harmful; it is also ignoring some obvious points.

If Malawi is worse educated, more plagued by illness and bad services, poorer than it was when I lived and worked there in the early 60's, it is not for lack of outside help or donor money. Malawi has been the beneficiary of many thousands of foreign teachers, doctors and nurses, and large amounts of financial aid, and yet it has declined from a country with promise to a failed state.

In the early and mid-1960's, we believed that Malawi would soon be self-sufficient in schoolteachers. And it would have been, except that rather than sending a limited wave of volunteers to train local instructors, for decades we kept on sending Peace Corps teachers. Malawians, who avoided teaching because the pay and status were low, came to depend on the American volunteers to teach in bush schools, while educated Malawians emigrated. When Malawi's university was established, more foreign teachers were welcomed, few of them replaced by Malawians, for political reasons. Medical educators also arrived from elsewhere. Malawi began graduating nurses, but the nurses were lured away to Britain and Australia and the United States, which meant more foreign nurses were needed in Malawi.

When Malawi's minister of education was accused of stealing millions of dollars from the education budget in 2000, and the Zambian president was charged with stealing from the treasury, and Nigeria squandered its oil wealth, what happened? The simplifiers of Africa's problems kept calling for debt relief and more aid. I got a dusty reception lecturing at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation when I pointed out the successes of responsible policies in Botswana, compared with the kleptomania of its neighbors. Donors enable embezzlement by turning a blind eye to bad governance, rigged elections and the deeper reasons these countries are failing.

Update: Bizzy Blog notes that, "Time’s 'People Who Mattered' Are Framed with Bias-Tinged Pictures and Captions". Of course, that's nothing new for Time.

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds posts a spot-on comment from one of his readers:

Funny, the MSM has become much more pro super-rich folks since the super-rich became movers and shakers in the Democratic party. Wonder why?

Another Update: Ever the contrarian, Orrin Judd sees the upside of Time's picks:

The Left has long dreamed of transnational institutions and rules running the world, yet here are individuals, nevermind states, that matter more.

One More: Ed Morrissey sums it up in four words: "Time Jumps The Shark". And here's why:

The true newsmakers this year, as Michelle Malkin notes in photos, were the people who went into the streets and overthrew dictators and autocracies in order to gain freedom for their nations -- in most cases, through non-violence. Ukrainians had their Orange Revolution; the Lebanese forced the Syrians to beat a hasty retreat across the Bekaa Valley after 29 years of military occupation following the murder of a pro-freedom statesman; and Iraqis faces bombs and death threats three times to in voting for a democracy and a new constitution to replace a genocidal tyrant in the heart of the Middle East, the first time that has ever occurred in an Arab nation.

Pick any of those examples, or roll them up into one pro-democracy movement that has tyranny on its heels throughout Southwest Asia and North Africa. Those were the real newsmakers this year. Instead, Time decided to go as obscure as it possibly could and picked three fine people whose impact on 2005 will have us all wondering what the hell they did to deserve the cover of Time by 2007.

OK, One More: Lawhawk asks, rhetorically, "Was There No One Better?", and provides some overlooked suggestions.

The New Zealand premiere of local hero Peter Jackson's new version of King Kong got more than it bargained for:

Movie director Peter Jackson is the king of special effects but even he was outdone when the audience was shaken and stirred by an earthquake during a preview screening of his new blockbuster "King Kong".

The quake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale hit Wellington about an hour into the film and at first it was difficult to tell what was happening.

The theatre was already filled with the sound of the roaring of the sea and scraping metal as onscreen a ship belonging to the eventual capturers of King Kong was smashed against the rocks of the sinister Skull Island.

However it soon became clear that the technical wizardry of the maker of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy did not extend to shaking the seats and walls.

But the show must go on. The tremors stopped after a few seconds and after some nervous laughter, the audience stayed planted in their seats as the three-hour screening continued uninterrupted.

The quake struck at 9.09 pm (0809 GMT) and was centred about 25 kilometres (16 miles) northeast of Wellington. There were no reports of serious damage.

Of course, that was the moviegoing experience that had everything, even prior to the quake: screaming babies, loud adults, folks talking on their cell phones...But like Kong's audience, I didn't expect the Sensurround experience on top of all that.

Horsefeathers looks at Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner's Munich:

Without the bullwhip and hat, but with his camera, his moviola, and his trusted young sidekick, Tony Kushner, Steven Spielberg has set out to do what no great head of government alone or in concert, no statesman, not even Winston Churchill, not even the United Nations when it was still shiny, hopeful, and had clout, has been able to do since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire—solve the riddle of the Middle East.

Befitting such an heroic undertaking, Time Magazine has put Spielberg on its cover and given him eight pages of copy and pictures with which to hyp…er…celebrate his new movie “Munich,” which the magazine calls his “Secret Masterpiece.”

In the fantasy world of Steven Spielberg, ever since he was a little boy making movies, every hero has had a secret bit of magic up his sleeve with which to win the struggle against evil and this time the magic is his new movie “Munich.” It is with “Munich” that he plans to solve the Arab/Israeli problem. How? You’ll be surprised.

It took me years and years to master the Japanese art of eating sushi. While I was learning, I felt a bit like David Carridine in Kung Fu, except I didn't have Keye Luke as my mentor, I didn't shave my head or wear a polypropylene skull cap, and I didn't play the miscast Occidental star of a 1970s series about the mysteries of ancient Oriental fighting techniques.

Fortunately, you need not endure such rigorous training (or strained blogger references to 1970s TV shows) yourself: just follow this easy to understand guide, and in about eight minutes, the mysteries of the sushi bar will be revealed to you, too.

(Truth be told, if you're already a sushi junky, you may enjoy this a lot more.)

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff writes:

The other key development is the blurring of the distinction between the blogger and the traditional political commentator. As John has pointed out, the Harriet Miers confirmation struggle was conducted largely on the internet, but the key players who brought about the demise of that nomination were not traditional bloggers. Rather they were print media types like David Frum and others associated with the National Review. Had they been confined to writing in the hard copy versions of the National Review or the Weekly Standard, they probably would not have been able to reach their audience frequently enough to have made a difference. But the internet left them unconstrained, and thus able to produce the steady drumbeat that helped sink Miers.

The MSM's power is at its greatest when it has boots on the ground and bloggers don't. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated this. When bloggers have boots on the ground, we tend to win. And bloggers are getting boots on more and more ground all the time.

Two sobering looks at a Europe which has collectively moved beyond Christianity. First up is John Lloyd in The Financial Times, via The Brothers Judd:

This decline is significant for Britain, even if most of its citizens don’t actively care, for two reasons. First, there has never been an organised, non-Christian challenge to the established Churches on their own territory before. Judaism, itself declining in the UK, was never much interested in converts and is determinedly patriotic: no synagogue service is complete without wishes for the health of the monarch and the government. Now, however, the established Churches face in Islam a faith that is militant, self-confident, fundamentalist (even where it is, by its own lights, moderate) and linked to communities of largely recent immigrants that are growing while the older established communities of the UK are shrinking. On one estimate, there will be more Muslims in mosques than Christians in churches by 2013. It is presently the faith of the future: it grows through rising birth rates and through conversion, including among the young urban poor to whom Christianity still ministers and does much to assist, but does not appeal. Yet unlike the other faiths, it has little interest in dialogue or even understanding, has many adherents who are militantly anti-Semitic or anti-Hindu and it links Christianity to the oppression of the Muslim and, above all, the Arab world.

Second, care or not, the thought that the Christian religion will actually dwindle into real insignificance is a sobering one. What then becomes the standard for morality? Politics? But political parties are themselves declining and their ideologies are no longer convincing as moral poles, even to themselves. Civic duty might sustain a working morality; so too might feelings of charity, or pity, or remorse. But these latter emotions have come to us through Christianity, even if we have secularised and bureaucratised them. If what sustained them is, or becomes, too weak to continue the tradition, what happens to them?

In practice the lack of belief in divine presence is just as likely to lead to humans avoiding responsibility: if there’s nothing other than the here and now, who needs to settle disputes at all? All you have to do is manage to defer them till after you’re dead — which is pretty much the post-Christian European electorates’ approach to their unaffordable social programmes. I mentioned in the Daily Telegraph a couple of weeks back the amount of mail I get from British readers commenting with gloomy resignation on various remorseless trends in our island story and ending with, ‘Fortunately I won’t live to see it.’ When you think about it, that’s actually the essence of the problem: hyper-rationalist radical secularism reduces the world to one’s own life span. Why try to ‘settle disputes’ when you’ll be long gone? Faith is one of those mystic cords that binds us to our past and commits us to a future.

So I’d say Polly’s got it all wrong. The meek’s chances of inheriting the earth are considerably diminished in a post-Christian society: chances are they’ll just get steamrollered by more motivated types. You don’t have to look far to get the cut of my jib. And you can’t help noticing that since abandoning their faith in the unseen world Europe seems also to have lost faith in the seen one. Consider this poll taken for the first anniversary of 9/11: 61 per cent of Americans said they were optimistic about the future, as opposed to 43 per cent of Canadians, 42 per cent of Britons, 29 per cent of the French, 23 per cent of Russians and 15 per cent of Germans. Three years on, I’ll bet those European numbers have sunk even lower.

Michael J. Totten, Pajamas' man in Lebanon, visits the capital of Egypt:

“You have to revise your expectations downward in Cairo,” Praktike said, as though he knew what I was thinking. “This probably looks Stalinist to you.”

“It isn’t that bad,” I said. “Libya is Stalinist, and this is better than that. But it’s not pretty.”

“No, it’s not pretty,” he said. “But you get used to it.”

He led me into what counts in Cairo as a nice restaurant. The floors were orange tile. The chairs were made of wicker. A mild feeling of gloom hung over the place like a cloudy day just before rain. It was not even remotely like what you can easily find in Beirut’s fashionable neighborhoods.

“Do you like living in Cairo?” I said as we sat down. A beaming waiter brought us two menus and bowed.

“Well, it’s a big sprawling mess,” he said. This was certainly true. “You either hate it or love it. I think I’m in the latter category. I was bored back home in the States, and I’m not bored here at all.”

I worried that I would be bored and alienated into depression if I lived in Cairo after I saw all the sights. Going from Beirut to Cairo was like descending into a poorly lit basement. Some Americans who would visit Cairo and expect to like it won’t go anywhere near Beirut. This is incredible to me. For one thing, far more people have been killed by terrorists in Egypt than in Lebanon over the past fifteen years. Forget its reputation: Beirut is culturally, intellectually, economically, and politically more advanced by an order of magnitude. It’s unfair when Lebanon is described as Third World. Egypt, though, without question is Third World.

How far the mighty do fall. Fifty years ago Cairo was a relatively wealthy, liberal, cosmopolitan jewel of North Africa and the Middle East. Don’t even think of blaming Islam for its present wretched condition. Gamal Abdel Nasser and his secular Free Officer regime demolished this place with intellectual, political, and economic bulldozers. Hosni Mubarak’s ridiculously named National Democratic Party, which is really just a euphemism for the calcified military regime from the 1950s, has done absolutely nothing to improve things in the meantime. Wall Street Journal reporter Stephen Glain aptly described Egypt as a “towering dwarf.” I don’t think the description can be improved on.

Back in September, we linked to a brilliant post over at the Gates of Vienna blog on the “Coalition Against Civilization”, a bunch of folks who like to hand out bumper stickers that read "Visualize Industrial Collapse!" and instruction manuals on how to achieve just that.

It's important to maintain the lifestyle 24/7, which is why Joanne Jacobs looks at...drum roll please....The Eco-Baby Shower!

There were no gifts trimmed in glittery wrapping paper and nylon ribbon at Susan Rosenkranz's baby shower in September.

There were no baby-themed paper plates for the soon-to-be mother, no streamers of pastel crepe paper or cakes accented with plastic rattles.

If the men and women gathered in the glow of reusable Christmas tree lights hadn't been plying Rosenkranz and her husband with gifts, it might have seemed like just any environmentally conscious couple's potluck party. But there were gifts: a green wooden dragon, organic cotton receiving blankets, baby outfits in paw print and jungle motifs and used children's books, to name a few.

Incidentally, my wife and I saw Joanne speak on Wednesday in San Jose to promote her new book, which profiles a San Jose charter high school that prepares underachieving Mexican-American students to succeed in college. She gave a most enjoyable reading of one its chapters, and we took her up on her offer to purchase two copies of the book--one for ourselves, and another for the charter school itself. Henry Cate has a thorough round-up of the event. I was surprised at how diverse the crowd was--including a few folks who will probably attend an eco-baby shower or two of their own.

And speaking of visualizing industrial collapse, Glenn Reynolds has a collection of links, live from the barracades of the latest World Trade Organization meeting.

Andrew Stuttaford looks at the changing relationship of King Kong and his women, over the past seventy years.

This sneering attack on The Chronicles of Narnia by Polly Toynbee in England's Guardian has gotten fairly wide play in the Blogosphere, so I'll only quote from a short segment of it, but by all means read the rest, to see the very definition of the left's tolerance for diversity in full bloom:

Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart. Every one of those thorns, the nuns used to tell my mother, is hammered into Jesus's holy head every day that you don't eat your greens or say your prayers when you are told. So the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion's breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged.

* * *

Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peale in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis's view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis's earth.

Does any of this matter? Not really. Most children will never notice. But adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sickbag handy for the most religiose scenes. The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw gives the film five stars and says, "There is no need for anyone to get into a PC huff about its Christian allegory." Well, here's my huff.

Meanwhile, Cathy Seipp looks at Narnia naysayers on the right:

Recently, I was wondering what the religious fanatics who dislike the "evil" magic in the Harry Potter books think of Lewis, considering that Narnia also features magic, even though it is clearly Christian. So a reader pointed me to an astonishing website run by a Tennessee piano tuner named Steve Van Natten and his daughter, Mary.

Unlike typical anti-Harry Potter fundamentalists, who often haven't even read the books that so infuriate them, the Van Nattens have studied Lewis very, very closely, and their site is loaded with citations and footnotes. They think, among other things, that Lewis was actually a pagan sun god worshipper and occultist, not a Christian, although they suspect that the famous Anglican was also a secret Catholic, which in their view is just as bad as being a pagan. I've never been able to understand that whole anti-Catholic thing — nor how you swear allegiance to the sun as well as to Rome.

But I did learn an interesting new term meandering around Van Natten-land: "King James Only-ist." This is a person who thinks anyone who reads a version of the Bible other than the King James one is a heretic headed straight for hell. The Van Nattens, apparently, are King James Only-ists. They think people such as Pat Robertson are dangerously progressive.

And the Van Nattens are, I'm sorry to say, very far from alone in their opinions. Reportedly, there are more than 500 websites devoted to attacking Lewis for exposing children to dangerous "occult" ideas through Narnia, as well as for being too accepting of other religions.

* * *

The Van Nattens offer up a strangely compelling American folk art that can't be faked. They also complain, for instance, that Lewis smoked and drank and that he used the word "ass" four times in books written for children.

OK, he was writing about a donkey in these instances, Mary Van Natten admits, and "being British, it probably did not mean the same to him as it does to Americans (as a swear word), but he could have left it out, especially since he only used it four times and did use 'donkey' in other places. However, considering the filthy state of his mind, it is possible that he thought this cute."

As it happens, the name of the Van Natten website is Balaam's Ass, not Balaam's Donkey. But apparently that particular use of the word "ass" is allowed, since it's directly from the King James Bible, and the website warns that no one under 18 should enter.

However, I noticed that its name did get them listed on a couple of porn aggregators emphasizing anal sex. And I'd say they kind of deserved it.

Big round-up of where we stand in this front of the culture war, over at
Pajamas HQ.

For more on this topic, click here, and just keep scrolling.

And be sure to check out Mark Steyn's moving look at "White Christmas" and its author, Irving Berlin.

Glenn Reynolds examines the Cory Maye case over at his MSNBC blog. In a follow-up post, he writes:

Meanwhile, a number of people wonder why the Tookie Williams case has gotten so much more attention than the case of a quite-likely innocent man on death row. I can only speculate: Williams was from Los Angeles, where celebrities abound, and his case gave media folks who wanted to put California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in a tight spot an opportunity. Also, Cory Maye was defending his home and family with a handgun, something the celebrity media types tend not to favor. (Plus, there's no fear of riots.)

Whatever the reasons, Cory Maye hasn't gotten the attention his case deserves. I hope that will change.

I find it revealing that a significant number of conservatives I know (and even work with) either oppose the death penalty on moral grounds or are inclined to. But they are consistently put off by the radical chic crowd, which has grown deceitful, narcissistic, and married to agendas no conservative would ever sign on to.

AP reports that Time Warner has entered into talks with Google:

Time Warner Inc. ended talks with Microsoft Corp. Friday and entered into exclusive negotiations with Google Inc. over a $1 billion investment and a broader advertising partnership with America Online, executives close to the talks said.

Shutting out Microsoft sets the stage for a high-profile agreement between two titans of the Internet. Under the deal, expected to be announced as early as next week, Google would pay Time Warner $1 billion for a 5 percent stake in AOL, said one official with direct knowledge of Time Warner's negotiating position.

Google, which operates the Internet's dominant search tools, also agreed to highlight AOL's Web properties as sponsored links and integrate AOL's video clips in its fledgling Google Video service. In exchange, AOL will continue providing Google's search engine to its subscribers.

Officials described the negotiations on condition of anonymity because no agreement has yet been formalized. The deal could be finalized next week, when Time Warner's board meets in New York.

Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes, especially when it involves the tao of MoDo, as Mickey Kaus observes:

We all have our bubbles: From the NYT's Wednesday columnist pages--

OP-ED COLUMNIST W. Won't Read This

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: December 14, 2005
Never ask a guy who's in a bubble if he's in a bubble. He can't answer.

To continue reading this article, you must be a subscriber to TimesSelect.

Stephen Schwartz says that when it comes to many wars, the media and leftwing intellectuals, and the rest of us see two different things--“two wars, two worlds", he calls it:

Let me add another prediction, as easy as looking out the window and checking the weather. Peace and reform will prevail in Iraq, even with U.S. and other coalition troops still on the ground, but the story will end for the MSM. I will never forget the comment of the then-city editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, who I will spare embarrassment by preserving anonymity, after Violeta Chamorro, leader of the anti-Sandinista civic movement in Nicaragua, won that country’s presidential election in 1990. “Nicaragua is no longer a story for us,” the editor declared. Without violence that could be blamed on the U.S., there was no news. In reality, there had been little news from Nicaragua in the Chronicle for some time, because the paper, like an overwhelming majority of MSM organs in the U.S. and Canada, erroneously and smugly forecast that the Stalino-Sandinistas would sweep the vote. They were wrong.

“If it bleeds, it leads,” is an MSM cliché. But I have to add that the bloodshed is only relevant when the MSM can use it to boost their individual fantasies about Vietnam and thus propagandize against the U.S. Atrocities in Iraq count more than atrocities in Chechnya.

The degree to which the MSM, academia, and other members of the Western intelligentsia live in a fantasy world of narcissistic self-righteousness is extraordinary. But the phenomenon is not new. It first became visible during the Spanish civil war of 1936-39, the original exemplar of what I call a theory of “two wars, two worlds.” The Spanish war as experienced by the people of that tormented country, involving deep-going social issues, unresolved history, and the impact of what we now call globalization, was entirely different from the war as it was experienced by intellectuals -- mainly leftists -- in place s like London and Manhattan. For this reason, when George Orwell published a veridical account of the war, Homage to Catalonia, it sold few copies in Britain, although it is now considered one of the greatest political works of the 20th century.

A many-sided paradigm was established in Spain. The populace saw themselves fighting desperately and unrelentingly for a radical, even libertarian view of freedom, which is why they held out for three years. But their authentic voices were seldom heard; by contrast, foreign leftists projected the view that the harmless Spanish were defending peace against German and Italian aggressors. In this way, the American vs. European conundrum on which I have written elsewhere -- defense of freedom vs. the quest for peace -- was also manifested.

In Spain, the foreign left, and such avant-la-lettre paragons of the MSM as Herbert Matthews of The New York Times, presented Stalin as the best friend of the antifascists when in reality, as immortally chronicled by Orwell, the Muscovite tyrant’s secret police minions worked to undermine their Iberian allies. When the Spanish war became a conflict between Franco and Stalin, it was lost for the left, since the Spanish workers and peasants would not risk their lives for the Kremlin dictator. But a legend about Spain had grown up among the Communists of Brooklyn, who were then numerous, and it remains the dominant narrative about the Spanish war for non-Spanish intellectuals. It is a “second Spanish civil war” that has almost nothing in common with the real war in which real people were killed.

The phenomenon was repeated in Nicaragua and the former Yugoslavia. The genuine conflict between Sandinistas and contras in the Central American post-revolutionary republic was utterly unlike the propaganda war between the two sides’ supporters in Washington. The contras, indigenous Nicaraguan peasants who fought for little more than beans and rice, were portrayed in the U.S. media as mercenaries incited by Ronald Reagan to loot and rape. But more violence was committed by the armed bodies of the Sandinista regime, instructed by East Germans, than by the contras. In the end, the Nicaraguan people voted for Mrs. Chamorro, whose party was associated with the contras. Once again, reality on the ground had nothing to do with the verbiage in the North American and European media.

Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on Democrats and Iraq:

For some time, a large number of Americans have lived in an alternate universe where everything is supposedly going to hell. If you get up in the morning to read the New York Times or Washington Post, watch John Murtha or Howard Dean on the morning talk shows, listen to National Public Radio at noon, and go to bed reading Newsweek it surely seems that the administration is incommunicado (cf. “the bubble”), the war is lost (“unwinnable”), the Great Depression is back (“jobless recovery”), and America about as popular as Nazi Germany abroad (“alone and isolated”).

But in the real adult world, the economy is red-hot, not mired in joblessness or relegating millions to poverty. Unemployment is low, so are interest rates. Growth is high, as is consumer spending and confidence. Our Katrina was hardly as lethal as the Tsunami or Pakistani earthquake. Thousands of Arabs are not rioting in Dearborn. American elderly don’t roast and die in the thousands in their apartments as was true in France. Nor do American cities, like some in China, lose their entire water supply to a toxic spill. Americans did not just vote to reject their own Constitution as in some European countries.

The military isn’t broken. Unlike after Vietnam when the Russians, Iranians, Cambodians, and Nicaraguans all soon tried to press their luck at our expense, most of our adversaries don’t believe the U.S. military is losing in Iraq, much less that it is wise now to take it on. Instead, the general impression is that our veteran and battle-hardened forces are even more lethal than was true of the 1990s — and engaging successfully in an almost impossible war.

Nor are we creating new hordes of terrorists in Iraq — as if a young male Middle Eastern fundamentalist first hates the United States only on news that it is in Iraq crafting a new Marshall Plan of $87 billion and offering a long-oppressed people democracy after taking out Saddam Hussein. Even al Jazeera cannot turn truth into untruth forever.

Instead, the apprentice jihadist is trying to win his certification as master terrorist by trying his luck against the U.S. Marines abroad rather than on another World Trade Center at home — and failing quite unlike September 11.

IOW, RTWT, as the cool TLA-dropping kids are wont to say.

Jim Geraghty asks:

Isn't it delightful to see some images from Iraq that aren't death, destruction, and chaos? Isn't it a long-needed breath of fresh air to see ordinary Iraqis smiling and giving "the finger" to those who would oppose their elections, instead of that ever-present mugshot of Zarqawi and the latest beheading tape? Isn't it actually comforting to see our troops, our guys, starting to recede into the background of the story, and see the Iraqis managing their own government?

Boy, did we need that. Thank God.

Elsewhere, Jim finds a holes in the "Zarqawi captured, then released" story and asks, "The alleged capture and release allegedly occurred a year ago. Why are we hearing about this now? This news just happens to break on the best day for Iraq since January?"

(Maybe when Iowahawk is back, Zarkman himself will give us the skinny...)

Update: Speaking of the elections, Ed Morrissey asks, "Did the Times miss the story? Or are they just hoping that the rest of us did?"

Maybe elections in Iraq only gets MSM approval when the leading candidate receives 99.96 percent of the vote--and controls their output.

Update: Say, maybe the Times was saving an election round-up for their upcoming book...

Well, this move certainly makes sense:

Commentator Robert Novak, who hasn't been seen on CNN since swearing and storming off the set in August, will leave the network after 25 years and join Fox News Channel as a contributor next month.

Novak, 74, said Friday he probably would have left CNN anyway when his contract expired this month even if it hadn't been for the incident.

The suspension actually served to eliminate a delicate problem for CNN, which had received some criticism for keeping the political columnist on the air with his involvement in the CIA leak case.

A Novak column in July 2003 identified Valerie Plame as a CIA agent eight days after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence before the Iraq war. Novak wrote that two administration officials were his sources, but he hasn't identified them and Plame's outing sparked a special prosecutor's investigation.

Novak walked off the set in August during a political debate after James Carville said that he's "got to show these right-wingers that he's got a backbone."

Novak quickly apologized, but CNN never let him back on the air. A CNN correspondent, Ed Henry, said he had been about to ask Novak on the air about the leak investigation, but Novak said that had nothing to do with why he walked off.

"I'm sorry it ended that way but I am confident if it hadn't happened that I would still be leaving CNN," he said. The network has been de-emphasizing political content, and canceled the long-running debate show "Crossfire."

Novak said he was the last on-air personality who had appeared on CNN during its first weekend on the air in 1980 to still be with the network.

The decision to leave was by mutual consent and there were no hard feelings, he said.

"I have no complaints," he said. "I had a 25-year run with CNN. That's longer than most marriages, I think."

Crossfire was cancelled by CNN’s new president, Jonathan Klein, because he thought it was just “a bunch of guys screaming at each other” and did “nothing to illuminate the issues of the day.” Klein was right, but whose fault was that?

Sorry for the lack of posts on this historic day. (Fortunately, Pajamas was your one-stop-shop for Iraqi election coverage. Just ask Zarqawi...)

All sorts of back-end blogging issues today, which would take far too long to go into and would put the geekiest Webgeek to sleep faster than sodium pentathol.

Watch for regular posting to resume shortly.

The "permanent collections" of major art museums are often anything but, writes Hilton Kramer in The New Criterion.

(Via Terry Teachout.)

Pajamas Media has exclusive live blogging from the Iraqi elections.

Co-Maximum Pajamahadeen Roger L. Simon writes:

Omar and Mohammed of Iraq the Model have done a remarkable job lining up reporters in eight provinces for PJM: Erbil, Kirkuk, Mosul, Babil, Najaf, Kerbala, Samawa, Basra as well as Baghdad of course. For those of you who don't know, the newspapers have been closed in Iraq for security reasons. Some of their reporters will be working for Pajamas Media. A translator has been hired to translate their material from Arabic into English. Omar and Mohammed have the first (Reynolds blessed) Sonys sent to bloggers in the field by PJMedia. Several of the reporters will have rented cameras. We have no idea what we are going to get. This is an experiment.

The election won't be perfect. It might not even be good. But they are trying.

We're doing what we can, but in the end it's up to them.

Wish them luck.

Betsy Newmark (who just cancelled her Newsweek subscription) explains American--and French--history to Jack Murtha.

Update: Further thoughts from Hugh Hewitt.

On EconLog, Arnold Kling sees one of his ideas bearing fruit:

Tyler Cowen points to this essay suggesting that newspapers convert to nonprofit status.

Over three years ago, I wrote:

The newspaper business is going to die within the next twenty years. Newspaper publishing will continue, but only as a philanthropic venture.

My guess is that we will see a number of financial models for news and commentary, including some of those listed in Tyler's blog post. But two trends will drive newspapers toward nonprofit status. One is that as people get wealthier, they will indulge in their desire to become patrons of the media. The other is that the economics of for-profit newspapers will continue to deteriorate, particularly as they have to compete with high-quality donor-subsidized newspapers.

There's also the nostalgia factor. As Kling wrote in Tech Central Station:

The "tip jars" that webloggers use are one form of micropatronage. However, I am more persuaded by a model in which content producers are subsidized by corporate philanthropy or non-profit foundations. As Kohn points out, some magazines today are funded by this model. Indeed, that is the model for the very e-zine that you currently are reading.

In the future, it may very well turn out that both independent journalists and newspapers will require philanthropic support in order to operate. At that point, newspapers, with their high overhead, will be less likely to survive than independent journalists. However, I am sure that the New York Times and a few other newspapers will have sufficent nostalgia value in the eyes of some future wealthy mogul to ensure ongoing funding.

Steve Green on Hollywood's dearth of heroes:

Shakespeare's tragedies still resonate all these centuries later because in the stories he told, the world was just – it was people who were flawed.

Most of Hollywood's tragedies can't sell tickets even on opening weekend because in the stories they tell, the people are still flawed – but only because the entire world is crap, too.

Shakespeare taught us that the wicked would get their just desserts. Hollywood wants us to think that we're all wicked, and deserve whatever we get.

Considering the state of the world – and considering many people now have big TVs and DVD libraries chock full of genuine heroes and heartfelt tragedy – it would be nice to be reminded now and again with new movies that we aren't all doomed. It would be nicer still to be reminded that even if we are doomed, maybe we don't deserve to be.

Hollywood honchos continue to wring their hands over why you've stopped going to the movies. They blame ticket prices and DVD availability. They had better start considering the fact that filmmakers are so disconnected, so nihilistic, that the hopelessness and hostility they feel toward the world now permeates their work. Americans will no longer go see movies which are nothing more than the manifestation of the backwash of malignant narcissists. We're also sick and tired of listening to actors lecture us about how awful the US is, and more recently, why a cold-blooded mass murdering gang founder should have been given clemency. Enough is enough.

Not only will we not go see films which insult us, we refuse to support an existential worldview. We happen to think life does matters, that decency is a good thing, and that people are inherently good, not bad. We also have stopped believing the lie that Americans are bad people. We looked away for 4 decades as that lie was spread, but that time is over.

So you can take your gay sheepherder, noble communist supporting reporters, big-business is evil, Americans are hopelessly and inherently corrupt and violent and unfaithful movies and go to Cannes where at least the Parisian set will love you. But that won't exactly pay the
bills, will it?

Ticket sales are way down, and Hollywood wallows in self-pity, wondering what America really wants. The studios collect a stack of comment cards nine miles high that show Americans are craving
movies about NASCAR racers who join the Marines, go to Iraq, and kill terrorists with martial arts kicks. The comment cards also indicate that most Americans have no idea where the accent falls on “Affleck.” With all of this in mind, astute producers greenlight a picture about how Edward R. Murrow valiantly kept Joe McCarthy from introducing the Patriot Act. Quentin Tarantino starts another film where some guys, okay?, hip guys in black suits, dig? (who turn out to be neo-Nazi, Christian, Canadian separatists) fly planes into public schools. The
cockpit-encounter dialogue is killer. Why do they call it a cockpit, man? You don’t think that’s gay? You think the whole shape of the plane is an accident? It’s all just suppressed homoeroticism, man. In the climax, the bad guys will ram their Boeing into a school that refuses to teach Intelligent Design.

The lack of positive Hollywood films to commemorate the bravery displayed on 9/11 by firemen and rescue workers, the passengers of Flight #93, as well as American soldiers who have fought to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq has been startling.

This exchange was at the end of a slugfest of an interview between Hugh Hewitt and the L.A. Times' Michael Hiltzik:

HH: If you think the L.A. Times is healthy, and you don't know why it isn't, I can't help you. I really can't. You cannot heal what you cannot get...

MH: Well, luckily, I don't think we're not turning to you for our help.

HH: What was that?

MH: I said luckily, we're not turning to you for our help.

HH: Or to people who listen to me for subscriptions, right?

MH: Well, I guess not.

HH: All right. That's what I thought.

MH: All right.

HH: Michael, thank you for that last, late-arriving, but nevertheless much welcome burst of candor. If you're listening, the L.A. Times does not want you to subscribe.

Update: Holy cowboy! Malcolm Muggeridge, call your office: it's the flyover-country friendly family values ad for Brokeback Mountain!

In The New York Sun and his blog at National Review Online, Jim Geraghty writes that Wal-Mart now has what he describes as "a presidential-campaign-style war room":

Various unions want to organize Wal-Mart workers. They’re welcome to try, just as the corporation is welcome to try to persuade its workers that it’s a bad deal for them in the long run.

But the anti-Wal-Mart forces have been, depending on your point of view, remarkably innovative, remarkably below-the-belt, or perhaps both. And the company has responded with its own public relations effort to defend its reputation, a presidential-campaign-style war room.

If every big and/or controversial company in America isn’t looking at this p.r. strategy, they ought to be – Halliburton, Microsoft, pharmaceutical companies, the oil industry, health care providers. Traditional p.r. methods may not be up to the challenge of a world of the blogosphere, attack documentaries, talk radio, bookshelves groaning under the weight of angry tomes, etc. When there isn’t a political campaign going on, there will be these surrogate campaigns – except in these, there are no election days, just a continuing cycle of attack and counterattack.

If you think you're big enough to warrant one...take it as a sign to start setting up shop.

Over at TCS Daily Robert McHenry explores Wikipedia after the John Seigenthaler debacle and says that very little has changed.

How can it? The very concept is fatally flawed, McHenry notes:

A little more than a year ago I first wrote about Wikipedia. In that article I attempted to make two points: that the basic premise of the project is fatally flawed and can only be embraced as an article of faith, and that the project lacks a proper concern for ordinary users, those who are not in on the game.

The premise is this: By making every article open to the revisions, corrections, and updates offered by any and all users, the collective knowledge and wisdom of the whole community will find expression in each article. In short, every article will get better and better. The flaw is this: Many revisions, corrections, and updates are badly done or false. There is a simple reason for this: Not everyone who believes he knows something about Topic X actually does; and not everyone who believes he can explain Topic X clearly, can. People who believe things that are not the case are no less confident in their beliefs than those who happen to believe true things. (In case this point interests you, I have written extensively on it.) Consequently, it is far more reasonable to expect that, while initially poor articles may indeed improve over time, initially superior ones will degrade, with all tending to middling quality and subject to random fluctuations in quality. Note that this has nothing to do with the vandalism or the ideological “revert wars” that are also features of Wikipedia’s insistence on openness and that apparently occupy much of the volunteer editors’ time and effort.

Like my wife, Neo-Neocon is a big fan of Tom Lehrer, and is sad to report his advanced case of Bush Derangement Syndrome. She quotes Lehrer as saying:

"I'm not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them..."

The writer of the above quoted article on Lehrer from the Sydney Morning Herald says, "It would be wrong to assume, however, that Lehrer, 74, is bitter and twisted. He proves quick-witted, lively and extremely friendly."

If that's friendly, I'd hate to see him when he's miffed.

Over at the new incarnation of TCS Daily, Michael Rosen examines the lasting appeal of Tom Wolfe's first (and arguably best) novel: The Bonfire of the Vanities.

At the start of the year, we looked at Radical Chic, one of Wolfe's most prescient examples of non-fiction, and in November of last year, one of our most heavily trafficked posts reported on his appearance in San Francisco, very shortly after the presidential election.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dean Barnett, the proprietor of SoxBlog for his upcoming Pajamas Media profile today. And how does he return the favor?

By completely and irrevocably ruining King Kong for me.

Well not completely. And not really irrevocably, either.

But still.

Baldilocks is angry. You'll like her when she's angry.

Found via Pajamas Media, which notes:

Breathless media suggestions, such as one by NBC 4, that Los Angeles and California officials had a "credible" reason to prepare for riots if Stanley Tookie Williams was executed fizzled fast, raising a question among bloggers as to why journalists kept suggesting riots were any more possible than, say, an anti-crime rally.

Update: Speaking of visuals, Zombietime (who's seemingly everywhere in the Bay Area) infiltrated the mob scene outside San Quentin. "Before arriving at San Quentin", Zombie writes, "I had been under the naive impression that the crowd in front would be evenly split between anti-death penalty protesters and pro-death penalty protesters. I was sorely mistaken. I quickly learned that the crowd was 99% anti-death penalty. And a substantial proportion of them were avowed socialists, since several radical groups showed up en masse."

To be fair, the local Bay Area TV news definitely let their viewers know that everybody they interviewed was anti-death penalty. But as Zombie also notes, any mention of the crowd's radical politics was sanitized for the protection of the delicate viewers at home.

The marzipan meme: The Long Tail of the Internet Cake is born!

"Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism. Pick any two."

--James C. Bennett, at the end of a post on Australia's Sydney Beach Riots.

Speaking of which, Tim Blair has more, including a link to the runner-up in the semi-daily Quote of the Day post:

Wouldn’t it be easier to ship both sets of thugs off to some faraway island where drunken violence and cop-bashing are acceptable cultural norms? The UK perhaps?

Update: And speaking of England and violence...

Evil Pundit explores "some of the common pathological fears of the Left". Meanwhile, Dr. Helen looks at the mental health thought police, and Mark Steyn examines their equivalent ranks in European governments.

Update: Clive Davis writes:

I'm always struck by the uniformity of views among the artists and literati I've interviewed. For almost all of them, the notion that there might just be another point of view simply doesn't exist. It's their religion, really, which is ironic, since they usually make a point of saying how much they distrust religion. Other people's religion, that is.

The Political Pit Bull notes:

Michael Yon's heart-breaking photo of Major Beiger holding an Iraqi girl in his arms is nominated for photo of year in TIME Magazine.

You can see the other nominees and then vote for Yon's photo here.

It's currently at 59 percent in the voting--and it will be interesting to see where it finishes.

Regret The Error is a blog that reports on "corrections, retractions, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media". They've got a big round-up on "The Year in Media Errors and Corrections".

Tough to argue with their choice of "Best Error" of the year.

(Via Mary Katharine Ham.)

The Anchoress has some thoughts on bigotry and intolerance.

I guess I was one of the few folks who didn't mind the name Tech Central Station--but it's now TCS Daily (short for Technology, Commerce and Society) with a swanky new look.

And speaking of TCS, Libertas links to my recent article there on Hollywood's woes. Thanks guys!

It's a rough, tough life reporting on the federal government, especially when it involves the ultimate indignity: being forced to fly on Air Force Two, and eating its horrible, horrible food.

Finally, one paper is willing to fight back: The Washington Post is mad as hell about the overcooked meat and the poor quality of the flan, and dammit, they're not going to take it anymore!

(Maybe this is why the press supported Kerry: the catering was so much better on his charters.)

James Lileks has a round-up of the big events of 2005 in his typically witty style, which begins:

Behold: 2005 was the most important year in human history.

Okay, maybe not. There have been better years, and worse ones. The Goths did not sack New York City.

More Lileks:

It certainly didn’t feel like a golden age. It’s difficult to believe you live in the best of times when Hollywood recreates The Dukes of Hazzard and the producers are not stoned in the public square on general principle. We all recognize hard times—when you’re in a gas line, you feel it. But good times we sometimes notice only in the rearview mirror.

There was something of a peevish quality to 2005. Perhaps it’s the year itself; odd-numbered years sound indecisive and inconclusive—shave-and-a-haircut without the two bits. Odd- numbered years never have an Olympics. No great clanging election campaigns. They slump and wander. By contrast, even-numbered 2006 has a hard, clear sound to it, a ring of promise and purpose.

Most of what occurs in any given year will be forgotten. 2006 will be the same, unless aliens land, or someone perfects cold fusion, or North America is depopulated by bird flu and tumbleweeds bounce down the streets of Fargo (more than the usual number, that is). But toting up tomorrow’s details will have to wait. For now, let us review what was memorable and forgettable in the year just now ending.

...You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow. Salon's Cary Tennis goes from proffering sex advice to sedition in his latest column.

Gay Patriot dubbed such folks 12/12 Democrats, but as I wrote in 2002, I remember one television commentator on election night in 2000 who blew a gasket at the initial results:

I'll never forget the last presidential election, watching [Jonathan Alter of Newsweek's] tirade on NBC at about 1:30 in the morning Pacific Time when Alter demanded that Gore be handed the election, despite the outcome in Florida. (When Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert lecture you on the Constitution, as they did to Alter afterwards on the air, you know you're really out there.)

Update: Related thoughts, here

Stanley "Tookie" Williams was executed last night, expiring at 12:36 AM Pacific Time according to the TV news. Pajamas has a big round-up, with lots of links.

Update: Michelle Malkin has a detailed post with photos of the mayhem outside San Quentin. She writes:

An estimated 2,000 gathered outside, shouting and obstructing a FOX News analyst doing a live shot.

In a previous post, Michelle documented the Hollywood celebrities who lobbied for Tookie's clemency.

Another Update: Grimly amusing unintentionally ironic headline from CNN: "Warden: Williams frustrated at end".

I'll bet he was.

Jim Geraghty watches Syriana so you don't have to. Here's one of the many things he learned about the Middle East from the movie:

Hezbollah is an honorable neighborhood watch program that intervenes when the local thugs are torturing an American. Kind of like Spider-man with a turban.

Read the rest, unless "you still plan on see it and want to try to understand the Byzantine plot and ADD pacing on your own pace".

Dan of Gay Patriot compares and contrasts 9/11 Democrats and 12/12 Democrats.

What is a 12/12 Democrat? Read the whole thing, as many 9/11 Democrats are wont to say. And Charles Krauthammer's "Pressure Cooker Theory" essay is well-worth revisiting for additional insight on this topic.

John Hawkins compiles "The 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes For 2005".

If the L.A. Times doesn't know who the blogs in their own backyard are, it's abundantly clear that The New York Times isn't exactly wired into the heart of the Blogosphere, either.

Update: Ed Morrissey adds:

If any one article proved how out of touch the Exempt Media truly is regarding the blogosphere, [Michael Crowley's piece in the New York Times Magazine] is it. And if [Editor & Publisher magazine] wanted to demonstrate that its reputation for news analysis is vastly overblown, they've managed to do it here.

I missed this essay by The Anchoress when she first posted it this past spring, but apparently, it's still very much in demand:

I suggest that when Mohammed Atta and his pals killed 3000 Americans in New York, and a few hundred more in Washington, D.C., they also struck a blow to the Popular Culture and its providers, which buckled their knees and left them breathless. Regrouping, that culture has spent the last four years staggering about the ring on wobbly pins, insisting that they are alright, that nothing has changed, but the crowd, sensing a loser, is starting to jeer. It may never receive a fatal blow, but its championship days are surely behind it.

People are weary of being lectured to by the media and the culture it promotes. They are tired of being told via sitcoms that their values are silly or via senators that the people they elect are losers. They are tired of reading that the traditions they wish to share within their communities are divisive if they insult an atheist, with no corresponding recognition that an atheist’s tirade is often filled with hate. They are sick of turning on a good cop drama, looking for an hour’s simple entertainment, only to learn that people like themselves, who hold with deeply-held religious beliefs, are really monsters of unenlightened hatred. To get away from that, they flip to C-span, just in time to learn that their traditional family units are insultingly heteronormative.

Wherever consumers of mainstream news and entertainment turn they are being lectured to by a punch-drunk media telling them that the terrorists they rightly disrespect are their moral equals, that relativism is truth and truth is unknowable, that their children are incapable of self-restraint, that failure to appreciate their elite and enlightened betters make them “knuckle-dragging, salivating morons.” They listen to elected officials like Ted Kennedy, a so-called icon of public service refer to them – the public he is supposed to be serving - as “Neanderthals.”

The mainstream media have a strong left hook, and they have used it to bludgeon the sensibilities of a trusting, agreeable and curious public for decades. But in the weeks and months after 9/11, the public saw the gods and goddesses of television wonder if their Emmy awards should not be held at a military installation, because, of course, the terrorists would want to hurt our prettiest people. They listened to so-called comedians like Bill Maher suggest that a celebrity pedophile “servicing” a young boy sexually was not as bad as a beating by a schoolyard bully. They watched an old-guard news anchor, on the eve of a national election, promote demonstrably faked documents questioning the military service of one candidate, even as he resolutely refused to ask a single question about the credibly-doubted service of another candidate, and they realized that the towering heavy-weight they had long supported was nothing but a chump who perhaps, finally, needed to be brought down with a good uppercut from the right.

What has happened to the mainstream media, in all of its incarnations, is this: The champion, the Mighty Pop Culture, has taken a hit and gone down. It will probably rise again, but never with the same mythic status of a favorite. Once humbled and brought down, its weaknesses have been exposed; the crowd will watch knowingly, just as ready to jeer as to cheer.

Whether the giant egos who manage from the corners can handle the laughter remains to be seen.

Cathy Seipp explains how the Blogosphere works to the L.A. Times:

KINDER-HEARTED people than me have been fretting lately about the impending loss of 85 editorial jobs at the Los Angeles Times. But I'd up the number to include anyone who had anything to do with the unbelievably lame cover story on the L.A. blogosphere in the Dec. 1 Calendar Weekend, including the editors responsible for it.

If you missed that piece, allow me to summarize. An article called "Blogging L.A." included neither the much-hyped L.A.-based commercial blogging enterprises that began this year (the Huffington Post and Pajamas Media, of which I'm a member), nor any of the major L.A. blogs (Kausfiles, the Volokh Conspiracy, Little Green Footballs, et al) except L.A. Observed and Defamer, and then only in passing.

Readers of this story would also have no idea that proto-blogger Matt Drudge began the Drudge Report here (his right-hand man, Andrew Breitbart, who still lives in L.A., recently began a news service called Breitbart.com) nor that the rise of influential (and profitable) big political blogs is, I'm sure, one reason traditional newspapers have been losing circulation and advertising — thus the loss of those 85 editorial jobs.

Instead, Times readers were told about tiny, diary-style L.A. blogs, the kind that defined the medium about five years ago. You'd also have no idea that since the post-Sept. 11 explosion of political blogs, L.A. has been the capital of the blogosphere. [Not the least of which is because it's where Pajamas Media's HQ is located as well--Ed] But The Times — which has a sorry tradition of ignoring trends in its own backyard — has been missing that story from its beginning.

In October 2001, a staff writer wrote a seminally off-target piece that seemed almost entirely innocent about L.A. blogs, focusing instead on those in New York. And the paper's longtime media writer, the late David Shaw, was famously hostile to blogs, when he bothered to notice them at all.

How obscure are the blogs discussed in Calendar Weekend? The story opened with one that gets just 15 daily visits, and closed with another that no longer exists. What kind of L.A. blogs did these upstage? Just as one example, Little Green Footballs, which played a major role exposing CBS' National Guard memos story as a hoax last year, gets at least 50,000 hits a day. A cynic might suspect that The Times tries to make blogs seem as boring and inconsequential as possible, in order to staunch the flow of readers and advertisers from newspapers to the Internet.

"Politics runs heavy too," staff writer Scott Martelle wrote, "with intense, phlegm-flecked rants…." That would be spittle, obviously, in such an instance, not phlegm, and thanks a lot for making me stop to consider the difference. Then there's his strange reporting and analysis. "Blogging has yet to break out of its relatively small corner of the Internet," he (mis)informs readers. "Only about 5% of all adults contribute to blogs."

Update: Jim Geraghty has some related thoughts:

A year ago, Michael Barone wrote, “what hath the blogosphere wrought? The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans’ adversaries in Old Media. Both changes help Bush and the Republicans.” The left side of the blogosphere grew a bit more sophisticated this year, and got better at getting their arguments in the mainstream media. But Media Blog and many other right of center blogs focused on the blogosphere's fact-checking biased, bad, and sloppy reporters.

Democrats had a nice year in the off-year races, with the wins by Kaine and Corzine, and shooting down Arnold’s referenda. But there’s nothing persuasive to suggest that the blogs on the left were any big help to the party in those fights. The midterm elections of 2006 may be a better measuring stick of the effectiveness of each sides’ blogs.

Mark Steyn looks at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, and concludes, "But seriously folks, this clown is dangerous":

So let's see: We have a Holocaust denier who wants to relocate an entire nation to another continent, and he happens to be head of the world's newest nuclear state. (They're not 100 percent fully-fledged operational, but happily for them they can drag out the pseudo-negotiations with the European Union until they are. And Washington certainly won't do anything, because after all if we're not 100 percent certain they've got WMD -- which we won't be until there's a big smoking crater live on CNN one afternoon -- it would be just another Bushitlerburton lie to get us into another war for oil, right?)

Update: Related thoughts from Hugh Hewitt.

On Monday, I wrote:

Botox is powerful stuff. It can make a man look decades younger. And apparently sound that way as well, as Senator Kerry reverted to his radical chic 1971 days yesterday on Face The Nation...Kerry appears not to have learned much beyond his "Jengis" Khan days.

Sen. John Kerry's appearance last Sunday on "Face the Nation" suggests he's mastered the nuanced finesse of betraying his contempt for American soldiers without accusing them of behaving in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.

The Massachusetts Democrat has come a long way since 1971.

Back then, Mr. Kerry had the starring role as the principled and decorated Vietnam War veteran testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about supposed war atrocities committed not by the Viet Cong but by his fellow vets.

Kerry earnestly testified that other American soldiers said they had raped, cut off ears and heads, randomly shot at civilians and razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of the marauding mass murderer of Mongolia. They must have been remarkably discreet; Kerry never actually saw any of it.

Speaking with host Bob Schieffer about Iraq, Kerry said, "There is no reason ... that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the ... of ... the historical customs, religious customs."

Kerry has not come such a long way from 1971 after all.

H/T: Power Line.

Roger L. Simon looks at his days of writing for Richard Pryor:

Some time in 1979, shortly after I had done The Big Fix for Universal, the studio called to ask if I would like to write a movie for Richard Pryor. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Pryor was at the top of his game then, acknowledged by many to be possibly the greatest standup comic of all time. Not only that, he was a cultural icon of extraordinary proportions, the very voice of black America, "Daddy Rich." What more could a Jewish white boy who grew up on Miles Davis want than to work with this man?

When I first went out to Pryor’s spread in Northridge with Thom Mount and Sean Daniel, the "baby moguls" then running Universal, Richard was dead drunk. It was a harbinger of things to come, but I never blamed Richard for his legendary substance abuse problems. He was, as the cliché goes, his own worst enemy. His famously turning himself into a human torch while freebasing cocaine is proof enough of that.

When I actually started to work with Richard, I would drive afternoons out to that Northridge place - a sprawling Spanish estate with its own boxing ring and Shetland pony that wandered wild around the grounds - where I would be greeted by his housekeeper. “Would you like some quiche?” she would say, ushering me into the kitchen. “Mr. Pryor’s asleep.” It didn’t take me long to figure out that was a euphemism for "wired to the ceiling on coke." After a while, sometimes hours, I would be ushered up to his office and we would talk about the script.

Tim Blair has the initial details. There is conflicting early speculation as to its cause, including sketchy information that possibly involve a plane crash.

Just got back from seeing The Chronicles of Narnia, which brought back all sorts of childhood memories--and then some: we read the story in school but I had forgotten so many of the details.

Quick review: all-in-all, this was just wonderful, and highly recommended--fun, as they used to say in a more innocent time, for the whole family.

I'll try to post more later, but these Narnia-related links should keep you busy if you haven't read through them yet.

Immediately preceding a long, detailed post about key documents of the Saddam Hussein regime that the Pentagon refuses to release to the Weekly Standard, Ed Morrissey has some thoughts on Joe Lieberman, currently a "new prize to be claimed -- or shunned" in Washington, as Ed describes him:

When [Democrat Congressman Jack Murtha] went specific, the Republicans finally took the initiative and forced a vote in the House on immediate withdrawal. Murtha complained that he didn't mean "immediate" -- at least at that time -- but the logistics of disengaging 150,000 troops on active missions and evacuating them and their equipment and support from the theater of battle would take at least that long under the most expedited of schedules. That folly resulted in the abandonment of Murtha and the notion of retreat on a devastating 403-3 vote, or at least so we thought. We thought the Democratic leadership would finally act responsibly out of sheer survival instinct, but instead they became more unhinged -- forcing voices of reason within their own ranks to publicly oppose the defeatism they espouse so passionately.

That brings us to Joe Lieberman, a tough man to love. He has long been a voice of conscience in the Democratic Party. He was the first to officially denounce Bill Clinton's activities with Monica Lewinsky, making his stinging rebuke on the Senate floor while still speaking against impeachment. That led to his partnership with Al Gore for the 2000 election, and the resulting mess when Gore tried to sue his way into the White House. (Yes, it started with an Al Gore lawsuit because he wanted to change the rules for recounts; you can look it up. They lost the initial lawsuit, too.) Instead of acting as a conscience, Lieberman silently assented to this bald attempt to take through the courts what the Democrats failed to take at the polling stations, a verdict eventually reached in three separate recounts, the last conducted by the media themselves.

How did the Democrats repay Lieberman for his loyalty? They shunned him in 2004, when he should have been the leading candidate for the presidency. He waited too long, perhaps, to announce his candidacy, wanting to give Gore another shot at running so he could endorse the former VP. Gore then shivved Lieberman by endorsing Howard Dean instead of his own former running mate -- just three weeks before Dean's campaign completely collapsed. The Democrats could have waltzed into the White House on a Lieberman-led ticket, but instead chose John Kerry and ignominious defeat at the hands of their most hated enemy.

One has to wonder why, under the circumstances, Lieberman hasn't left the party that so obviously has left him. His dogged loyalty probably explains that, and that makes his latest stand all the more remarkable. Lieberman is no babe in the political woods; he understands perfectly what his statements did to the Democrats. Instead of openly wondering what motivated Lieberman to take this kind of action, Reid and other Democrats in party leadership should ask themselves why they made it necessary for him to do so.

In the meantime, the Bush administration should continue to show Lieberman respect -- not just as an ally on Iraq war strategy, but also the respect due an honorable and formidable political opponent. Lieberman is not and will not be a Republican if he hasn't switched by now, and the GOP should remember that.

But hey, what-ifs are certainly fun to argue.

CNN has the details.

Listen up all you rank sentimentalists in Red America--Gwyneth Paltrow says it's time for you--yes you!--to get over 9/11:

I find the English amazing how they got over 7/7. There were no multiple memorials with people sobbing as they would have been in America. There, they are constantly scaring people but at the same time, people think nothing of going to see a therapist.

The death from alcoholism at 59 of a famous soccer player has proved that the mass hysteria that followed Princess Diana’s demise was by no means an aberration in British life but rather a permanent feature of it.

Born into a working-class Northern Irish Protestant family, George Best was possibly one of the most talented soccer players ever. Slight in build, he was extremely handsome and once had considerable charm. He played for Manchester United and sometimes was called the fifth Beatle.

Unfortunately, his abilities began to decline as he started to live the high life. He was at his peak for perhaps four years. He soon became an alcoholic. Later, rather disarmingly, he said that he had spent a lot of money on drink, women, and gambling—the rest he just frittered away.

His long decline was in fact extremely sordid. He was violent to women, none of whom could tolerate him for long. He frequently appeared dead drunk in public and once went briefly to prison for drunk driving. He never gave up drinking, despite having had a liver transplant at 56.

The outpouring of ersatz grief that followed his death was extraordinary. His death filled the press and the airwaves of Britain and Ireland for days.

When I first read Pajamas' story on the aftermath of Tuesday's brutal massacre in Dongzhou village, I thought for sure it contained a typo:

Word spread via several media sources that Chinese authorities were attempting to cover up the massacre of 20 demonstrators in South China by buying the bodies

Another villager whose relative, 31-year-old Wei Jin, was killed in the shooting, said local officials had offered the family hush money if they surrendered Wei’s body.

“They offered us a sum but said we would have to give up the body,” the villager said. “We are not going to agree.”

Update: Gateway Pundit has photos, and--shades of 1989--reports, "Tanks Move on China Town":

The situation at Dongzhou Town, Red Bay, in the city of Shanwei, Guangdong Province is rapidly deteriorating. According to the villagers, the government has not only arranged tanks to occupy the city, machine guns have also been set up, ready to strafe villagers on the street at anytime. Up to now, 70 people are known to have been shot to death. Most of the dead are young people in their twenties. The dead bodies were buried to destroy any evidence of the shootings. Families are not allowed to claim the bodies of their relatives.

This Christmas, "Trust the Manolo most sane men do not wish to wear the cheap novelty tie".

And if you're not sure what to look for, trust the Ed that this is a great place to start.

Tim Blair has the best advice yet on the subject of global warming.

Newsmax reports:

American Family Association (AFA) has announced that it is ending its boycott of Target because the company has announced that it will include Christmas in their advertising and in-store promotions.

"We are pleased to learn that Target has heard our concerns and decided to use Christmas in their advertising and marketing efforts. Since the company has responded positively, we see no need to continue the boycott,” said AFA Chairman Donald E. Wildmon.

Nearly 700,000 people had signed up to join the Target boycott at afa.net on the AFA website. Wildmon said that many companies have decided to drop their ban on Christmas.

In their official statement, Target said: "Over the course of the next few weeks, our advertising, marketing and merchandising will become more specific to the holiday that is approaching – referring directly to holidays like Christmas and Hanukkah. For example, you will see reference to Christmas in select television commercials, circulars and in-store signage.

"We do not have a policy or intention of excluding the word ‘Christmas’ from our holiday advertising or marketing. Christmas images and themes have been used in our advertising and marketing in the past and you will continue to see these images and themes in the future.”

"We think you will see a different approach next year,” Wildmon said.

(Of course, for online retailers, the answer is even simpler.)

Cathy Seipp looks at leftwing parents who use their small kids as walking political ads:

My sister has a new project that involves buying me various t-shirts she thinks express my bossy inner personality. Recently she got me one that says, "Stupidity Is Not a Crime, So You're Free to Go."

Now I don't normally wear t-shirts with slogans on them outside the house. Too corny, like putting emoticons or "LOL" in email. But this shirt is nicely cut and since I hate shopping, lately I've been running out of clothes. So not long ago I threw it on when I dashed out for a quick lunch and a movie.

There I was, eating a hotdog in the sunshine at an outdoor L.A. mall, when a mother passing by with a small child smiled, hesitated for a moment, and then volunteered: "I'd like to send that shirt to our president!"

"Well," I said pleasantly, "I wouldn't, I guess, since I voted for him." (I wish I'd thought to add perkily, "I'd like to send it to Cindy Sheehan, though!" but my mind was in a hotdog-induced funk.)

"Oh..." she said, flabbergasted.

"That's OK," I added. "But you should know that not everyone is on the same side politically."

At this point, her son, about four years old, began a pantomime of stomping on ants as he yelled, "Stomp Bush! Stomp Bush! Stomp Bush!" Evidently he'd been trained to do this, like an organ grinder's monkey, whenever the word "president" is mentioned.

"No, no," the woman told her son, rather helplessly, "she likes him." The boy, however, continued his stomping and shouting.

"Gosh," I observed, "isn't he just adorable?"

Actually, of course, I thought the boy was yet another wretched example of contemporary parenting. Because I don't care what your politics are or who you voted for, no small child should be taught to disrespect the presidency like that.

If Narnia represents a return to Hollywood's long tradition of family-friendly movies prior to the late 1960s, Steven Spielberg's upcoming Munich is still firmly stuck in Tinseltown's dark 1970s era of moral equivalence--in this case, between Israel and the Palestinian terrorists who wish to destroy it.

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the liberal New Republic concludes a long review of the film with a look at its writer:

All this is consistent with Tony Kushner's view that Zionism, as he told Ori Nir of Haaretz last year, was "not the right answer," and that the creation of Israel was "a mistake," and that "establishing a state means f***ing people over." (If he really seeks to understand Middle Eastern terrorism, he might ponder the extent to which statelessness, too, can mean f***ing people over.) When Avner's reckoning with his deeds takes him to the verge of a breakdown, he joins his wife and child in Brooklyn and refuses to return to Israel, as if decency is impossible there. No, Kushner is not an anti-Semite, nor a self-hating Jew, nor any of those other insults that burnish his notion of himself as an American Jewish dissident (he is one of those people who never speaks, but only speaks out). He is just a perfectly doctrinaire progressive. And the progressive Jewish playwright Tony Kushner's image of Israel oddly brings to mind the reactionary Jewish playwright David Mamet's image of Israel: For both of them, its essence is power.

The Israeli response to Black September marked the birth of contemporary counterterrorism, and it is difficult not to see Munich as a parable of American policy since September 11. "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values," Golda Meir grimly concludes early in the film, and one is immediately grateful for the un-Cheney-like sensation of a dissonance. Yet the film proclaims that terrorists and counterterrorists are alike. "When we learn to act like them, we will defeat them!" declares one of Avner's men, played by Daniel Craig, already with a license to kill. Worse, Munich prefers a discussion of counterterrorism to a discussion of terrorism; or it thinks that they are the same discussion. This is an opinion that only people who are not responsible for the safety of other people can hold.

Hugh Hewitt links to a San Francisco Chronicle article listing a 16.6 percent drop in circulation over the last six months.

As Hugh writes, "That's the sort of stunning decline that makes advertisers notice that they are having trouble breathing".

I wonder if the Chronicle blames it all on Craigslist?

Needless to say, there's lots of Narnia coverage today, including:

Pretty amazing video of an octopus tucking into his dinner: a live shark.

While Reuters seems bent on entering David Irving terrority, in an essay in Tech Central Station, Stephen Schwartz looks at attempts by academics to whitewash the blood-stained history of the Soviet Union. Anne Applebaum has touched on this issue as well.

James Taranto notes curious--if sadly, not very surprising--language from the wire service whose post-9/11 performance has been, to say the least, problematic:

Yesterday we noted that a Reuters dispatch, titled "Iran's President Questions Holocaust," included this sentence: "Historians say six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust." A later version of the dispatch, however, deleted the words "Historians say" and presented the Holocaust as fact: "The Nazis killed some 6 million Jews during their 1933-1945 rule."

But today, Reuters has a new formulation:

Historians say six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. Regarding this widely-accepted view, Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official Iranian news agency IRNA . . .

Reuters, of course, famously forbade its "reporters" from referring to the Sept. 11 attacks as an act of terrorism. "We're trying to treat everyone on a level playing field," said Stephen Jukes, the "global news editor," in September 2001. Apparently Reuters thinks Holocaust deniers are entitled to a "level playing field," even if that means downgrading a historical fact to a "widely accepted view."

Update: Related thoughts from Roger L. Simon, and Hugh Hewitt.

The conservative Libertas film blog raves over Narnia. So does the liberal New York Daily News.

Hadn't heard this one before, but considering Pete Seeger's background and the subtext of the song "Little Boxes" (and its famous refrain of "Little boxes made of ticky-tacky", what James Bennett writes certainly makes sense:

The song was actually written by Malvina Reynolds at the time she was a Communist Party USA member.

The political context of the song was interesting. Right after World War Two, the Communist Party USA, seeking to capitalize on its wartime link to "our ally, Uncle Joe Stalin", lanched a big organizing drive around one of the major general complaints of the time, which was the lack of available housing. The CPUSA's drive was centered on demands for a gigantic government housing program to build government-owned "worker's apartments". This drive quickly petered out as the veteran's housing loan progam and rapid suburban development rapidly produced millions of single-family houses, to the delight of returning veterans and wartime workers who had been renting chicken coops and trailers.

"Little Boxes" was written after the collapse of the CPUSA's last major popular campaign, and is a sort of snarky critique of the cause of its irrelevance. It also marks the Left's shift from critiqueing the market economy for producing too little, to critiqueing it for producing too much -- substituting an aesthetic critique for an economic one. This in turn was a symptom of the collapse of any trace of a working-class base for the hard Left, and its replacement by a bohemian-intellectual base.

The specific houses in question were the multi-colored developments on the hills just south of San Francisco. I remember seeing them on my first trip to that area and thinking them charming. Eventually I learned that they were the "ticky-tacky" in question. It's a sort of reverse Marie Antionette --- criticising the peasants for eating cake when they could have had nice Soviet-style high-rise concrete block apartments instead.

Update: A reader emails:

FYI I live in one of the little boxes made of ticky-tacky, in southern-most San Francisco.

It's a little two-bedroom, one bath 50's box, painted pink and white. I had the good fortune to buy it nearly 10 years ago.

Market value for a comparable house in our neighborhood? $900,000-$1,000,000.

The Anchoress links to a powerful essay by Marvin Olasky on the racism displayed by the MSM in their coverage of Hurricane Katrina and writes:

When the retrospects of 2005 are playing, later in the month, the story of Katrina will be told again. Will the press tell it straight, even unto admitting just how shoddily they had done their jobs? Or will we get the racism rehash?

That soft "poof!" you just heard in the distance was the sound of Barbra Streisand's head exploding ala Scanners, as her butler handed her the latest edition of the L.A. Times, containing Jonah Goldberg's op-ed:

Sure, as a political force, Hollywood is against torture, which ranks somewhere in the parade of horribles ahead of SUV ownership and perhaps even voting Republican. No doubt Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin have delivered many a dinner table stemwinder against the Bush administration's defense of "coercive measures" in extreme circumstances.

And to be fair, the Hollywood crowd isn't alone. Back here in Washington, the issue of torture has largely united liberals and divided conservatives. One of the main disagreements is what people mean by torture. If you mean hot pokers in unwelcome places, pretty much everyone is against it, save perhaps in the famous "ticking time bomb" scenario.

But the meatier part of the argument is in the more nuanced area of "coercive measures," "stress positions" and what one unnamed official once described to the Wall Street Journal as "a little bit of smacky-face." Some, such as Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, want even that stuff banned (but acknowledge that if it comes to a ticking time bomb situation, well, "you do what you have to do," as McCain put it).

Others go even further. Naturally, human rights groups are appalled by the suggestion that harsh treatment is ever justified. Similarly, blogger Andrew Sullivan dismisses the ticking time bomb as a "red herring" and argues that "you cannot raise or lower the moral status of mass murderers with respect to torture. The only salient moral status with respect to torture is that the mass murderers are human beings."

In other words, it doesn't matter what the person you are coercing did or why you are coercing them in the first place. Torturing an evil man to save innocent lives is no less a sin than torturing a noble man in order to snuff out innocent lives, or just for the fun of it. The way Sullivan and those who agree with him see it, torture is torture is torture — and torture is always wrong, even when defined as intimidation and "smacky-face." "Not in my name" is their rallying cry, often with the sort of self-righteousness that suggests that those who disagree must admire cruelty.

And that's where Hollywood comes in. Politically, the entertainment community is fairly two-dimensional in its liberalism. But artistically — and to its credit — Hollywood seems to grasp that life can be morally complicated. After all, tactics that qualify as torture for the "anti" crowd show up in film and television every day. On "NYPD Blue," Andy Sipowicz, played by Dennis Franz, smacked around criminals all the time. In "Guarding Tess," Nicholas Cage shot the toe off a man who wouldn't tell him what he wanted to know — and told him he'd keep shooting piggies until he heard what he wanted.

In "Patriot Games," Harrison Ford shot a man in the kneecap to get the information he needed in a timely manner. In "Rules of Engagement," Samuel L. Jackson shot a POW in the head to get another man to talk.

And the audience is expected to cheer, or at least sympathize with, all of it. Now, I know many will say, "It's only a movie" or "It's only a TV show." But that will not do. Hollywood plays a role in shaping culture, but it also reflects it. It both affirms and reflects our basic moral sense (which is one reason why it dismays some of us from time to time).

It is hardly imaginable that Hollywood would — or could — make long-running TV shows or successful movies in which the protagonist is a soaked-to-the-bone racist. Why? Because audiences would reject the premise, and so would filmmakers. But, last I checked, there were no howls of outrage when a racist mayor in "Mississippi Burning" was brutalized and threatened with castration in order to give up information. Heck, the movie was nominated for six Oscars, including best picture.

The issue here is context. Coercion of the sort we're discussing is used by good guys and bad guys alike — in films and in real life. Just as with guns and fistfights, the morality of violence depends in large part on the motives behind it. (That's got to be one of the main reasons so many on the left oppose the war: They distrust President Bush's motives. Very few of Bush's critics are true pacifists.)

(Via Betsy Newmark.)

That was unbelievably loaded headline on this MSNBC story, as of 4:45 PM Pacific Time yesterday. It's since been revised a couple of times, as more details of the incident at Miami International have come in. (It currently reads an only slightly less loaded "Marshals defend Miami airport shooting", but as of now, you can still see the original headline in Google's cache, before it scrolls into the ether.)

I love the astonishing presumption of guilt against the air marshal by the MSM, but as Glenn Reynolds writes, linking to this Pajamas Media round-up:

It's tragic, but as the InstaWife was saying this morning, traveling with a bipolar who's off his meds is like traveling with a diabetic who's not taking insulin: unwise.

Last night, Orrin Judd linked to an exceptional--and exceptionally prescient article by James Webb from the online edition of the May/June 1997 American Enterprise magazine.

Give it a quick read--I'll hang out here until you're done.

Back? Great. Is there anyone who doubts that the scenario it describes would be repeated in some form right now, if there was a President Kerry--or heck, even President Bush--and a Congress whose both halves were controlled by Democrats?

A couple of days ago, Glenn Reynolds wrote:

The Republicans have a lot of problems. Given a halfway palatable alternative, I would have supported a Democrat last time. But the Democrats are far too incoherent, if not outright irresponsible, on national security to trust. And every time they seem to have their act together, it falls apart again. Too bad.

Update: Roger L. Simon (who knows of whence he speaks) writes, "my suggestion to the fuddy-duddy progressives mourning 1968 is to live in 2005. Remember what your shrinks told you - live in the now".

Indeed^TM.

Another Update: California Conservative reminds us that radical boomers long ago lost their sense of humor. As I've written before, political correctness kills comedy.

Well, for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan that is, according to Tim Blair. (Somebody alert Patty Murray.)

Meanwhile, Tim spots the return of an old friend:

Defence spokesman Lieutenant Commander Andrew Lincoln said the PRT will face a number of challenges including the harsh Afghan winter.

James Lileks frequently refers to "Googie"-style architecture in his Daily Bleat (he did so just yesterday, in fact). This site tells you all you need to know about it.

(And this book, even more.)

Over at Tech Central Station, Glenn Reynolds writes that everything you know about sprawl is probably wrong.

The White House sent out "Happy Holiday" cards recently; Pajamas Media and The Anchoress have some thoughts and links. While I can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment, I do agree with Jim Geraghty when he writes:

Look – the reason many of us cringe at “Happy Holidays” is that we don’t want anyone to feel social pressure or a stigma to change their personal choice or preference of what to say during this time of year. (Renaming Christmas trees to "Holiday Trees" is just silly; Hanukah and Kwanzaa don’t feature a big tree with a star or angel on top. It would be every bit as silly to call the big candelabra with nine candles the “Holiday Menorah.”)

If you want to say, “Merry Christmas,” say “Merry Christmas.” If you want to say, “Happy Holidays,” say, “Happy Holidays.” Ditto Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Indian New Year, Boxing Day, Beethoven’s Birthday, or whatever. You can’t offend me with an offer of goodwill; and anyone who does get offended really, really needs to switch to decaf.

However, if George W. Bush is writing “Happy Holidays” on his cards, I doubt he’s capitulating to social pressure or folding under the stern glare of the ACLU or Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It’s his card - well, the RNC paid for it - and it’s his call. I’m not going to draw my sword over a card that features the presidential pups instead of a manger.

And I'm sorry, Bush “claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one?” What is this, excommunication based on Christmas cards?

It strikes me that there are some conservatives out there who were completely willing to give George W. Bush a pass for huge spending hikes, signing campaign finance reform, Harriet Miers, but putting “Happy Holidays” on his cards constitutes a deal-breaker.

Update: Orrin Judd looks at the White House's Hanukkah Menorah Lighting Ceremony, which Scott Johnson of Power Line (who attended) describes as an evening to remember.

Another Update: In other holiday-related news, PunditGuy has video of The Ultimate Christmas Light Show.

Clive Davis, one of the many great journalists and bloggers I met at the Pajamas Launch in New York last month, has a first look at Hollywood's take on The Chronicles of Narnia.

Update: Just in time for Narnia's debut, La Shawn Barber has added a handsome new blog on her Website titled "Fantasy Fiction For Christians", with plenty of Narnia and Harry Potter coverage.

Tammy Bruce has some thoughts on Pearl Harbor Day. Here's an excerpt:

For all of you who have served and are serving now: we will never forget. My generation, we 40-somethings, know we live the extraordinary lives we do because of your courage and sacrifice. Do not worry--we will make sure your work, your success, and your legacy will continue. Thank you all for wearing the uniform. And to the families of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, at Pearl Harbor and throughout that horrific war and the wars that followed, thank you for your gift to this nation, and a free world.

And as a little aside--do you know what happened on December 7, 2001? The Taliban surrendered at Kandahar in Afghanistan. Yes, we will win wars, but unfortunately the world will always cough up another fascist enemy. And because of the example of those who came before, our boys defeated that beast called the Taliban on the same historic day. And as this war continues, we know we fight in the name of everyone who has died for this nation.

Of all the things we learned during World War II, from its beginnings in 1933 when Japan invaded China, it is to never mistake not being at war for peace.

I've gotten a surprising amount of email over the past 24 hours from my Tech Central Station piece on Hollywood yesterday, most of which has been extremely positive. (Most of the nays have been based around the theme that "it's not the politics in Hollywood that suck, it's the scriptwriting". Well, sure. But what mindset drives the bulk of the writing?)

Speaking of scriptwriting, Kate Wright, producer and author of Screenwriting is Storytelling read my article and emailed me some thoughts on the upcoming Memoirs of a Geisha:

Memoirs of a Geisha moves along at a clipped pace with sumptuous visuals and superior production values. Then, all of a sudden, whammo, we’re in -- World War II -- but wait, there’s no Rape of Nanking, no Invasion of Mongolia, no Pearl Harbor?! We’re smack in the middle of what looks like an American invasion? Oh, the war’s over now, and we’re in the middle of the American occupation…

Now we meet this sleazy United States Colonel who’s in charge of doling out the reconstruction monies. The lascivious Colonel requires a lust-bribe in the form of an invitation into a bacteria-laden hot tub with the lead Geisha to play “Truth or Lies” and he blurts: “In America, we call that marriage.”

But the ugly American Colonel doesn’t stop there. He’s such a lout he just has to have that innocent self-sacrificing Geisha girl – he’s a “he-said-she-said” rapist, too?!

The final button belongs to the drunken Geisha friend who has fallen into prostitution to survive that nasty occupation: “Y’know those Americans, they’re all bastards!”

Oh, really -- those Americans -- all bastards?

So, that’s what the Memoirs of a Geisha producers think of their “fiduciary obligation” to the shareholders.

Update: Found via Dave Johnston, C/Net has a great profile of Andrew Breitbart, whom I interviewed for the TCS piece.

VodkaPundit links to three wire service articles which state that a shot was fired onboard an American Airlines jet parked at the terminal at Miami International Airport, and theorizes:

We've known for a couple years that al Qaeda has gotten friendly with ELN, FARC, and some elements of the Huga Chavez regime in Venezuela.

A passenger who claimed to have a bomb in a carry-on bag was shot by a federal air marshal today on a jetway connected to an American Airlines plane that had just arrived from Colombia, officials said. Media reports quoted sources as saying the person's wounds were fatal.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Doyle said after the plane had parked at the gate, a passenger indicated there was a bomb in the bag. The passenger was confronted by air marshals but ran off the plane, Doyle said.

A team of air marshals pursued and ordered the passenger to get on the ground. The passenger did not comply and was shot when apparently reaching into a bag, Doyle said.

The plane, Flight 924, had just arrived from Medellin, Colombia, and was headed on to Orlando.

Airport and Miami-Dade County police officials said they had no immediate comment. American Airlines officials confirmed the shooting was on a jetway.

"All I know is that it was on the jet bridge, outside the aircraft,'' American spokesman Tim Wagner said. "I don't know yet if the passenger had been on the plane and was getting off, or was starting to board the aircraft.''

Martin Gonzalez, spokesman for Colombia's civil aviation agency, said the flight "left normally with no problems.''

He said he did not have a list of passengers who were aboard the plane.

A few times recently, I've come across essays on the Web concerning ancient history, listing the birth and death years of famous men of the late Roman era followed not with B.C. and A.D., but the letters B.C.E. and C.E.

As usual, I'm late to the party, but an Associated Press article explains the latest round of newspeak from academia's P.C. cleanup police:

Yesterday, we mentioned Barbra Streisand's cri de coeur over Jonah Goldberg's column being picked up by the L.A. Times, as part of a package that replaces Robert Scheer, formerly the Times' most prominent far leftist.

Naturally, Jonah is positively giddy about being mentioned by name by La Streisand:

Chanukah came early for the Goldberg household last month. On November 23, Barbra Streisand wrote a letter to the editor complaining that the Los Angeles Times picked me up as a columnist. As gleeful as I was, I declined to respond. But now, just last night, Ms. Streisand chose to post to her website the "director's cut" of her original letter to the editor, which apparently had been edited for space and, no doubt, for content by the LA Times. I could resist no longer.

As I said in my Tech Central Station piece, hopefully King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia will allow Hollywood to salvage its dreadful year--if they're good films that ingratiate themselves with audiences and build-up positive word of mouth.

My friend Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News (whom Nina and I had dinner with while in New York the week of the Pajamas launch) goes crazy over Kong:

Peter Jackson's "King Kong" is the most thrilling, soulful monster picture ever made. At last, it can be said without irony - I laughed, I cried.

Oh, how I cried. The sequence in which the 25-foot beast and Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), the blond actress he adores, slide together on a frozen pond in Central Park is one of the most innocently romantic moments ever put to film.

"King Kong" is also scary. And funny. It's everything people have ever wanted from the movies - action, romance, surprise, plus every monster menace you can buy for a budget north of $200 million. In addition to a roaring, snorting Kong, there's a stampede and deadly pileup of prehistoric dinosaurs, plus spiders and creepy-crawlies of every degree of bloodthirsty.

In short, it's brilliant.

The gorilla of the original 1933 horror pic and its campy 1976 remake was occasionally to be pitied - poor thing, in love with a screeching blond! But this Kong is an awesome creature: magisterial, melancholy, tender. When he loves, he loves completely and selflessly. Ann Darrow is a lucky woman.

Kong turns in the most moving performance of the year, even if it's against the rules to give an Oscar to something that's equal parts CGI, movie wizardry and the facial expressions of Andy Serkis, the actor who made "Lord of the Rings'" Gollum so devilishly complex.

Jackson slips in clever, sneaky commentary on the nature and ethics of the entertainment biz, particularly the film industry - whose box-office "King Kong" is poised to conquer the minute he's let loose in theaters next week.

Our post from this weekend on allowing online customers to choose the Holiday greeting of their choice made this week's Willisms' Carnival Of Classiness line-up. And the other posts he chose are equally well worth your time.

I interviewed Andrew Breitbart, co-author of Hollywood Interrupted on what happened to Tinseltown this year. His thoughts and mine are over at Tech Central Station.

Update: Dr. Helen (the InstaWife) writes, "I Love Art--It's the Artists I can't Stand".

Heh--Indeed.

Meanwhile, the Blogfather himself has some thoughts on something I touched on in the article, what Alvin Toffler called the "prosumer" movement, and how it's threatening Hollywood.

Another Update: As I was saying...

Orrin Judd looks at "The Christmas classic that almost wasn't", and reminds us that in some respects, television executives have changed very little since 1965.

Update: "And, Lo, the Network Execs Were Sore Afraid".

Especially to those of us who grew up in southern New Jersey, Princeton always had a reputation as an elite Ivy League College. But that was then, and this is now: Roger L. Simon writes they're "about to hire a professor with a pututative PLO past".

He'll be joining Peter Singer and Cornel West. Will Chutch be next?

In 2004, overall giving to U.S. colleges and universities rose by 3.4 percent. In contrast, that same year Princeton had a drop of 45 percent (or about $100 million) in donations.

Gosh, for the life of me, I can't imagine why.

On his spiffy new Weblog, Michael Barone compares and contrasts the hiring practices of Wal-Mart and General Motors. He finds Wal-Mart coming out ahead because it's not stuck in a 1930s-era labor model:

[Back in the 1930s] management micromanaged workers according to the work-study principles of Frederick W. Taylor, who saw workers as mechanical cogs who should have zero initiative and instead should perform their jobs in the way that time-study experts determined was most efficient. (On Taylor, see the excellent biography by Robert Kanigel, The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency.) Workers and union representatives argued, plausibly, that these experts were demanding too much work per hour or minute. The workers, union leaders argued, again plausibly, needed someone to represent their interests against the demands of the efficiency experts.

But as Wal-Mart executives might argue, Toto, we're not in Taylorite America anymore. Wal-Mart certainly isn't. Wal-Mart does a superb job of keeping track of inventory and sales and putting on its shelves products consumers want. But it also encourages employees to go out of their way to help customers—to show initiative in their work. Those who do a good job can hope to get management jobs.

Wal-Mart critics look back to post-World War II America and express nostalgia for what they call the family wage. It was assumed that all workers were men who were the heads of families, who needed and wanted a job that would pay enough to raise their families, who sought to retire as soon as possible (remember, workers hated those Taylorite jobs) on a decent pension. A much smaller percentage of working-age Americans were in the labor force in those days, and very few of them were women. At the same time, the divorce rate was much lower, and so there were very few women in need of a job to support their families. Also, much lower percentages of those above 65 worked or wanted to work. There were many more jobs involving hard physical labor, and many men were physically worn out even before reaching 65.

We live in a different America today. Many men in their older years and many women of all ages want part-time work; Wal-Mart has jobs for them. Many adults have not done particularly well in our schools but still want a chance to rise in their jobs; Wal-Mart has opportunities for them. Many workers don't need expensive health insurance, because their spouses have it, or because they're eligible for Medicare; Wal-Mart doesn't force them to forgo wages in order to pay for an expensive healthcare package.

So the Wal-Mart flexible model is more responsive to the needs and desires of the work force than the one-size-fits-all General Motors model. Certainly, Wal-Mart provides a lot more jobs than General Motors does. And, of course, Wal-Mart has done yeoman work of providing low prices for consumers—and especially for low-income consumers. You may not like Wal-Mart—and, remember, no one can force anyone to shop there—but it does seem more in sync with the way America works today than does General Motors.

Hybrid cars raise 650 volts worth of safety issues for firemen and paramedics rescuing passengers from a crash.

Over at HughHewitt.com, Mary Katharine Ham looks at Howard Dean in words and pictures.

Meanwhile, in his syndicated column, James Lileks writes:

A recent poll indicates seven of 10 Americans think Democrats' attacks on our illegal, incompetent, Halliburton torture-rama oil war depress the morale of troops. The survey, reported by that wild-eyed intemperate rag The Washington Post, also found the majority of Americans think the Dems' 24/7 gloom-gab isn't intended to win the war, but to "gain a partisan political advantage."

Power over principle? In Washington? Clutch your heart and find a fainting couch. Still, it must baffle the true believers. Dissent is patriotic, you know.

George W. Bush lied, Saddam Hussein was in a box labeled Secular He-Man al-Qaida Haters' Club, Israel is the problem, and American troops are either hapless bomb-fodder or sadistic torturers. Building a democracy in the heart of the Arab world is a distraction from finding Osama, the death of whom will cause the entire radical Islamist movement to stop fighting and take up Amway.

Everything is going wrong, the world hates us, and if you vote for us we will give every terrorist in a secret CIA jail a lawyer, fresh underwear, urine-proof holy books and a Powerball ticket.

To say that's not inspiring would be a misunderestimation, as the president might note. That doesn't mean the Dems are wrong; just because Cassandra didn't set her predictions to an Andrew Lloyd Webber show tune doesn't mean she wasn't right. But the message appears to have had the opposite of its intended effect.

The Democrats have convinced most Americans that they'd have left Saddam chuckling in his palaces after 9/11, that they'd oppose any war against a sworn enemy of the United States unless Richard Clarke personally saw its president give a ticking nuke to terrorists and lead them in a stirring rendition of "New York, New York."

Worst of all, they seem to want it to be 1973 again -- as if the nation yearned to bob for horse-apples in the vat of shame.

Granted, the loss of Vietnam was great for the Democrats. But it really wasn't very good for the rest of the country, to say nothing of the Vietnamese.

There's a curious nostalgia for the '70s among the old-guard institutional left; America had been humbled, which was good for humanity, and we were facing a future of scarcity and decline, which was good for the planet.

Beneath it all runs a rushing river of adolescent nihilism, roiling with contempt for that vast human stain known as Western Civilization. If it hasn't given us universal health care, gay marriage and the replacement of Wal-Marts with local co-ops by 2007, well, to hell with it. And those co-ops had better offer reusable bags for our groceries. Hemp bags.

This strain of American defeatism never died; it just slank away and chewed its tongue until the time was right. And that's now!

According to a Drudge Report story on the TV season-in-planning, we can expect several post-apocalyptic shows about the End of America, either by plague or societal collapse. This isn't a case of Hollywood mirroring a nationwide sense of malaise and decline; this is the collective depression of L.A. liberals longing for the good old days when Robert Redford could bring down a president and people cheered -- or at least bought tickets to watch.

But these days, look who's nostalgic for an era that is now even further in the past than the 1950s were in 1979.

Update: Related thoughts, here, and here.

In National Review's 50th anniversary issue, Charles Murray reviews Thomas Sowell's 1987 book, A Conflict of Visions (link to Murray's article requires subscription):

One mark of a great book is a thesis so powerful that after a few years people take it for granted. Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions (1987) is such a book. Its thesis: The policy arguments between liberals and conservatives, socialists and libertarians, do not arise just from differences in priorities regarding freedom, equality, and security. At root, they draw from different conceptions of the nature of man. The Left holds an unconstrained vision: Given the right political and economic arrangements, human beings can be improved, even perfected. Success is defined by what people have the potential of becoming, not by people as they are. The Right holds a constrained vision: People come to society with innate characteristics that cannot be reshaped and must instead be accommodated. Success in political and economic policy must be defined in light of those innate characteristics.

Once you have this framework in your head, the history of the great political debates of the 20th century coheres in a new way. The expansion of the welfare state, how to deal with crime, how to conduct the Cold War, the feminist revolution, colorblind policies versus affirmative action, who should control the schools — whatever the topic, the positions held by Left and Right make sense in terms of each side’s underlying vision of the nature of man.

A second mark of a great book is that it clarifies events that occur after its publication. Sowell wrote A Conflict of Visions during the 1980s, when the modern-liberal vision still had life and the influence of the classical-liberal vision was at its height. People on both sides still knew why they were so passionate about their political beliefs. Now we have the passion, but no why. The political climate is more partisan and bitter than ever, but what are we fighting over? Sowell’s thesis is useful in understanding this new environment.

Start with the Left. The difference between the Left of the 1960s and that of 2005 is that the politicians of the Left no longer believe in human malleability. The last two decades have refuted every basis for that belief, from the failure of Communism to the accumulating science of innate human nature. And so we end up with a politics of the Left stripped of the idealism that used to dignify even its most wrongheaded positions. The Left used to say that people were driven to crime by poverty and that the real crime was to punish them. Now the Left complains about too many people in prison, but it’s a cost/efficiency issue. The Left used to say that greater equality of income would lead to a happier society for everyone. Now the Left tries to play the envy card, but without the egalitarian idealism. On issue after issue, mainstream politicians of the Left no longer even try to appeal to the prospect of changing human beings for the better. Liberalism has become reactionary, trying to hold on to terrain it occupied in the Thirties and Sixties. Using Sowell’s language, we are watching what happens when Democrats have lost faith in the unconstrained vision of the nature of man and have not found anything to replace it.

More Murray:

Now apply Sowell’s explanatory template to the Right. From the founding of National Review — an opening date that I nominate without fear or favor — through the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the intellectual vigor of the constrained vision grew. Then, during the 1990s, we discovered how much the vigor of the constrained vision depended on competition. With the Left intellectually moribund, politicians of the Right began to take the easy way out. It is understandable, because advocating the policies of limited government is psychologically uncomfortable. It requires a politician to say he wants to do things that will cause pain — cut benefits for young women with babies, scrub regulations that putatively protect the environment, or end affirmative action. A decent person can endorse such actions only if he believes that they are essential for the ultimate good, and that means being steeped in the wisdom of the constrained vision of the nature of man. In the aftermath of the Reagan ascendancy, when running and winning as a Republican became so much easier, we got more and more Republicans who wanted to be nice guys. George W. Bush is their leader. And so we have watched a Republican-controlled government take a giant step toward federalizing public education through the No Child Left Behind Act; add a major new unfunded entitlement to Medicare; and, last summer, demonstrate that Republicans in power love pork as much as the Democrats ever did. We are watching what happens when Republicans have forgotten the constrained vision of the nature of man and replaced it with a fuzzy desire to do good.

Update: Speaking of Sowell, he has a brief list of recommended books for Christmas presents at TownHall.com.

It should come as no surprise that the madness of the global warming crowd is a mania just made for Mark Steyn to make sport of, and he does so with great glee in England's Telegraph:

As Steven Guilbeault of Greenpeace puts it: "Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that's what we're dealing with." Got that? If it's hot, that's a sign of global warming, and, if it's cold, that's a sign of global warming.

And if it's just kind of average - say, 48F and partially cloudy, as it will be in Llandudno today - that's a sign that global warming is accelerating out of control and you need to flee immediately because time is running out ! "Time is running out to deal with climate change," says Mr Guilbeault. "Ten years ago, we thought we had a lot of time, five years ago we thought we had a lot of time, but now science is telling us that we don't have a lot of time."

Really? Ten years ago, we had a lot of time? That's not the way I recall it: "Time is running out for the climate" - Chris Rose of Greenpeace, 1997; "Time running out for action on global warming Greenpeace claims" - Irish Times, 1994; "Time is running out" - scientist Henry Kendall, speaking on behalf of Greenpeace, 1992. Admirably, Mr Guilbeault's commitment to the environment extends to recycling last decade's scare-mongering press releases.

"Stop worrying about your money, take care of our planet," advised one of the protesters' placards. Au contraire, take care of your money and the planet will follow. For anywhere other than Antarctica and a few sparsely inhabited islands, the first condition for a healthy environment is a strong economy. In the past third of a century, the American economy has swollen by 150 per cent, automobile traffic has increased by 143 per cent, and energy consumption has grown

45 per cent. During this same period, air pollutants have declined by 29 per cent, toxic emissions by 48.5 per cent, sulphur dioxide levels by 65.3 per cent, and airborne lead by 97.3 per cent. Despite signing on to Kyoto, European greenhouse gas emissions have increased since 2001, whereas America's emissions have fallen by nearly one per cent, despite the Toxic Texan's best efforts to destroy the planet.

Had America and Australia ratified Kyoto, and had the Europeans complied with it instead of just pretending to, by 2050 the treaty would have reduced global warming by 0.07C - a figure that would be statistically undectectable within annual climate variation. In return for this meaningless gesture, American GDP in 2010 would be lower by $97 billion to $397 billion - and those are the US Energy Information Administration's somewhat optimistic models.

Update: In a related topic, Tech Central Station looks at "Cold Britannia":

Man-made global warming, you say? Why should we not be surprised that the UK Met Office is now predicting the coldest winter for nearly ten years? The UK government, cowed by the demands of unrealistic pressure groups, has allowed overregulation, a short-sighted greed for taxes and unrealistic view of the costs of controlling greenhouse gas emissions to leave Britain facing power cuts and an economic shut-down this winter.

PunditGuy predicts that "By this time next year, Wikipedia won’t be Wikipedia anymore". Which makes sense: it's just far, far too easy to cook the books, as former RFK staffer John Seigenthaler, Sr. recently discovered to his horror.

And remember when the Wiki model worked so well on the L.A. Times' op-ed pages?

Joanne Jacobs, whom I interviewed for my first article on Weblogs way, way back in March of 2002, (the Blogosphere's Pleistocene era, I believe)has a new book this month titled, Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the School That Beat the Odds,, which profiles a San Jose charter high school that prepares underachieving Mexican-American students to succeed in college. She also has an article in Tech Central Station titled, "Beating the Scholastic Odds" that's well worth reading.

Update: Speaking of education, Pajamas says that a homeschooled California teenager has won the prestigious Siemens Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science and Technology and has a round-up of links to bloggers--including Joanne.

Last week, we linked to essays by Mark Steyn and Brian Anderson on Hollywood's ever-shrinking ability tell stories that don't involve stock baddies such as Neo-Nazis and eeeeeevil businessmen.

With a few notable exceptions, Hollywood has been making businessmen and corporations villains since the leftwing Young Turks took over in the late '60s. Those young turks are now establishment old men themselves these days (Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese, Coppola, et al), but that doesn't mean that their thinking has changed in any way shape or form since those Medium Cool radical chic days.

Edward Jay Epstein writes that these days, there's another reason why businessmen are typically Hollywood badies:

Why don't the movies have plausible, real-world villains anymore? One reason is that a plethora of stereotype-sensitive advocacy groups, representing everyone from hyphenated ethnic minorities and the physically handicapped to Army and CIA veterans, now maintain liaisons in Hollywood to protect their images. The studios themselves often have "outreach programs" in which executives review scripts and characters with representatives from these groups, evaluate their complaints, and attempt to avoid potential brouhahas.

Finding evil villains is not as easy as it was in the days when a director could choose among Nazis, Communists, KGB, and Mafiosi. Still, in a pinch, these old enemies will serve. For example, the 2002 apocalyptic thriller Sum of All Fears, based on the Tom Clancy novel, originally had Muslim extremists exploding a nuclear bomb in Baltimore. Paramount decided, however, to change the villains to Nazis residing in South Africa to avoid offending Arab-American and Islamic groups. Yet, even if aging Nazis lack any credible "outreach program" in Hollywood, they can no longer be credibly fit into many contemporary movies. "The list [of non-offensive villains] narrows quickly once you get past the tired clichés of Nazis," a top talent agency executive pointed out in an e-mail. "You'd be surprised at how short the list is."

For sci-fi and horror movies, there are always invaders from alien universes and zombies from another dimension, but for politico-thrillers, the safest remaining characters are lily-white, impeccably dressed American corporate executives. They are especially useful as evildoers in foreign-based thrillers, since their demonization does not run the risk of gratuitously offending officials in countries either hosting the filming or supplying tax and production subsidies. The "Mission Impossible" franchise replaced the Russian and Chinese heavies that populated the TV series with, in Mission Impossible 2, a WASPish-looking financier who controlled a pharmaceutical company that unleashed a horrific virus on the world in the hopes of cashing in on the antidote. Here, as in other movies in this genre, businessmen's killings are not just figurative. Unlike other stereotype-challenged groups, CEOs and financiers, lacking a connection with the studios' outreach programs, have become an essential part of Hollywood's new version of the axis of evil.

In February of 2004, just as the brutal election year was about to gather steam, I wrote:

Arguably beginning with Hillary Clinton's "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" quip in early 1998, why have so many conspiracy theories been coming from the left?

There's little doubt in my mind that conspiracy theories have become more and more commonplace. One of my most chilling experiences was a conversation I had a couple of years ago with a good friend of mine. We were sitting having lunch and chatting when she quite casually mentioned that she believes Bush knew all about 9/11 beforehand and let it go forward for his own purposes. A lovely person (a therapist, no less--naturally!), up until that moment she'd never shown any indication of that sort of mindset. But she could not be dissuaded from her idea, and I must say I gave her a wider berth after that.

Along with Dean, I'm an Occam's Razor person myself. I tend to think people are far more likely to be incompetent than cannily and successfully conspiratorial. And I'm aghast that so many people seem to think otherwise.

What's the origin of the need to see a conspiracy behind every unpleasant event? One reason is the desire for order and control--even though, paradoxically, conspiracy theories posit a shadowy world out of the control of most of us. But, like children who want everything to have a reason and an explanation, conspiracy theorists can rest assured that at least someone (if only the conspirators) is in control and that there are few accidents, few random terrible and unpredictable events that we cannot control.

The same, I believe, is true for some of the demonization of Bush: better to believe he's evil but in control than that the situation is inherently somewhat chaotic.

John Fund looks at Gov. Schwarzenegger's "Harriet Miers Moment".

Botox is powerful stuff. It can make a man look decades younger. And apparently sound that way as well, as Senator Kerry reverted to his radical chic 1971 days yesterday on Face The Nation:

You've got to begin to transfer authority to the Iraqis. And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the--of--the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not...

SCHIEFFER: Yeah.

Sen. KERRY: ...Iraqis should be doing that. And after all of these two and a half years, with all of the talk of 210,000 people trained, there just is no excuse for not transferring more of that authority.

Kerry thinks that the American soldiers are the terrorists in Iraq, applying that unique gift of his for moral relativity once again to indict an entire deployment of soldiers as criminals of the same order as our enemy. And Bob Schieffer sat there, without even raising an objection to Kerry's smear. Had Kerry not shown a long track record of this kind of rhetoric in the past -- and had to answer for it repeatedly during last year's presidential election -- one could possibly believe it came out as a slip of the tongue. However, he obviously has never stopped believing that the American fighting man and woman represents the same relative evil as the Viet Cong, the Khmer Rouge, and al-Qaeda.

The Democrats need to answer for this outrage. Is it really the party position that American soldiers terrorize Iraqi civilians? Do they want the Iraqis to do it instead of us? Kerry has unmasked himself and his fellow anti-war zealots for the hypocrites they are.

Update: Jeff Goldstein discovers the checklist that Kerry is working from.

Another Update: James Taranto writes, "The old proverb is right: A haughty, French-looking Massachusetts leopard who by the way served in Vietnam doesn't change its spots.":

Terrorizing kids and children and breaking sort of the customs! Didn't "Jenjis Khan" used to do stuff like that in Vietnam? Note, too, that Kerry isn't against this per se; he just thinks Iraqis should be doing it. It's highly reminiscent of Vietnam, only back then Kerry's words carried some weight because he sold himself as a veteran against the war, whereas now he's just the junior senator from Massachusetts.

Steve Green explains the basics of asymmetrical warfare to Zbigniew Brzezinski:

In today's world, all it takes to take on the Big Bad is 19 young men and a few million dollars in seed money.

When Brzezinski says that bin Laden doesn’t have the "potential for dominating the minds and hearts of hundreds of millions," he's absolutely right. Problem is, bin Laden doesn't have to do any of that. He only needs a hundred million dollars and a hundred thousand followers.

The Soviets didn't nuke us, because they knew we'd nuke them right back. Bin Laden would love to nuke us, because… well, who would we nuke in return?

War-making was once the exclusive domain (mostly) of nation-states. The paradigm, as they say, has shifted. Since he's an old-time Cold Warrior, maybe that's why Brzezinski doesn't get it. The paradigm shift is also why lots of people find this Terror War so unfathomable – and why everybody finds it so frustrating.

Update: Pajamas has a round-up of additional blogger reaction to ZB.

No, that's not the score of the Patriots/Jets game today. That's the amount of errors that Scylla & Charybdis spotted in just two sentences in an L.A. Times piece about Joe Wilson.

Meanwhile, Tim Blair spots another example of the mystical qualities of the New, New Math:

Mother Sheehan asks that her son’s killers forgive her:

If I met the mother of the person whose bullet killed my son, I would say I don’t blame your son, your family or your country. I blame the administration for sending our children to invade and occupy a country that’s not a threat to the United States ... I ask forgiveness from all Iraqis, including the one who killed my son.

Thing is, Casey Sheehan wasn’t killed by a lone gunman; the attack that left Sheehan and seven other soldiers dead involved multiple RPGs and small-arms fire. It’d be quite a crowd from whom Mother would be begging forgiveness, if ever she gets a chance to meet them personally: “You, the guy who launched the first grenade? Please forgive me. And you, the snarling fellow; I understand you were among several shooting at my son. Forgive me. Second grenade launcher, way over in the back there? Next to the third machine gunner? My apologies.” And so on.

When I live-blogged Republican Senators last month for Pajamas, I noticed a lot of big government bureaucratic lingo and a distinct lack of conservatism from guys who advertise themselves as, you know, conservatives. In an essay titled, "Republicanism In Decline", Tony Snow writes that this lack of spark began only months after Republicans won back the House and Senate in November of 1994:

Within months of seizing power in 1995, Republicans began backing away from Big Ideas, from tort reform to the necessary overhaul of the Social Security system. They started consulting pollsters to assay "correct" issues and positions. They played it safe -- or so they thought.

This helps explain one of the great ironies of the age. We live in what ought to be an era of Republican triumphalism. The president's one reliable bit of domestic-policy conservatism, his tax-cut agenda, has succeeded brilliantly. The most recent Commerce Department figures peg the third quarter economic growth rate at a sizzling 4.3 percent -- despite the ravages of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the oil shocks that followed.

Republicans have won the battle over whether centralized bureaucracies can eradicate poverty, or perform social services more efficiently than private or volunteer operations. Throughout the country, the same patterns appear: Where elected officials govern with a light touch and without imposing onerous tax and regulatory burdens, prosperity flourishes -- and people flock to the scene. "progressive" states, on the other hand, are becoming empty husks, with more rigid class distinctions than in any other section of the country.

The GOP also wins big on values. Virtually every time the ACLU files a lawsuit, Democrats lose supporters. Despite these advantages, however, the GOP founders. Its Washington potentates simply refuse to embrace the party's ideals or successes (including the war). They have forgotten the most important rule of political survival: If you want to remain an incumbent for long, you don't jettison your principles. You act on them.

When House Speaker Denny Hastert broke arms to secure votes for a pork-packed highway bill, calling the legislation a "jobs bill," it was an embarrassment. When the president signed a campaign-finance bill he called unconstitutional, he seemed to lack not only conviction, but vision.

Fortunately, irate constituents roused some conservatives from their dogmatic slumbers. Young Republicans rebelled against the apostasy of their elders, especially in the matter of the federal budget, and state parties seized the initiative on everything from spending limitations to school choice.

Capitol Hill Republicans now admit their Democratic colleagues don't want peace -- they want the Alamo. So the GOP is fighting back. Hastert approved calling the bluff of anti-victory Democrats last week by demanding a floor vote on the idea of vamoosing Iraq immediately. He scored another triumph this week by restoring the good name of the National Christmas Tree.

Who knows, he may even figure out the Paradox of Incumbency. Politicians who run just to protect incumbency may save their seats, but only by destroying their party's heart and soul. If you really want to build lasting power in politics, you need to forget about mere incumbency -- and remember the principles that got you elected in the first place.

Update: Hugh Hewitt has a look at Republican inertia as well.

In the first of multi-part series, Academy voter and Pajamas Media co-founder Roger L. Simon "talks out of school" about which films he's voting for in the Academy Awards next year.

Roger's not too fond of summertime hit Batman Begins; in contrast, we found the film to be a worthy restart of the long-running Warners franchise.

I still think the real question though, is whether the Academy Awards can improve its ratings next year. I wouldn't bet on it--as Mark Steyn noted last year during the elections when a Hollywood fundraiser for Senator Kerry went awry, "Having the most popular figures in popular culture on your side can seriously damage your popularity".

Glenn Reynolds links to the wisdom of that sage philospher, Foamy the Squirrel. Foamy makes great points, but his colorful language does not make him, shall we say, safe for the whole family. Or at work.

Update: "Look. Calling a Christmas tree a Holiday tree is like calling a Menorah a candlestick holder".

Mark Steyn writes that it must be "awful lonely being Joe Lieberman in the Democratic Party these days.":

Every time he switches on the news there's John Kerry sonorously droning out his latest pretzel of a position: Insofar as I understand it, he's not calling for a firm 100 percent fixed date of withdrawal -- like, say, Feb. 4, 2 p.m.; meet at Baghdad bus station with two pieces of carry-on. Don't worry, it's not like flying coach on TWA, you'd be able to change the date without paying a surcharge. But Kerry drones that we need to "set benchmarks" for the "transfer of authority." Actually, the administration's been doing that for two years -- setting dates for the return of sovereignty, for electing a national assembly, for approving a constitution, etc, and meeting all of them. And all during those same two years Kerry and his fellow Democrats have huffed that these dates are far too premature, the Iraqis aren't in a position to take over, hold an election, whatever. The Defeaticrats were against the benchmarks before they were for them.

These sad hollow men may yet get their way -- which is to say they may succeed in persuading the American people that a remarkable victory in the Middle East is in fact a humiliating defeat. It would be an incredible achievement. Peter Worthington, the Canadian columnist and veteran of World War II and Korea, likes to say that there's no such thing as an unpopular won war. The Democrat-media alliance are determined to make Iraq an exception to that rule. In a week's time, Iraqis will participate in the most open political contest in the history of the Middle East. They're building the freest society in the region, and the only truly federal system. In three-quarters of the country, life has never been better. There's an economic boom in the Shia south and a tourist boom in the Kurdish north, and, while the only thing going boom in the Sunni Triangle are the suicide bombers, there were fewer of those in November than in the previous seven months.

Meanwhile, Iraq's experiment in Arab liberty has had ripple effects beyond its borders, pushing the Syrians most of the way out of Lebanon, and in Syria itself significantly weakening Baby Assad's regime. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who's spent years as a beleaguered democracy advocate in Egypt, told the Washington Post's Jim Hoagland the other day that, although he'd opposed the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, he had to admit it had "unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon's 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on the agenda, even if only to fight against us. Look, neither Napoleon nor President Bush could impregnate the region with political change. But they were able to be the midwives."

The Egyptians get it, so do the Iraqis, the Lebanese, the Jordanians and the Syrians. The choice is never between a risky action and the status quo -- i.e., leaving Saddam in power, U.N. sanctions, U.S. forces sitting on his borders. The stability fetishists in the State Department and the European Union fail to understand that there is no status quo: things are always moving in some direction and, if you leave a dictator and his psychotic sons in business, and his Oil-for-Food scam up and running, and his nuclear R&D teams in places, chances are they're moving in his direction.

Toppling Saddam was worth doing in and of itself. Toppling Saddam and trying to "midwife" (in Ibrahim's word) a free society would be worth doing even if it failed. But, as it happens, I don't believe it will fail, not just because of Bush but because enough Iraqis -- Shia, Kurds and even significant numbers of Sunnis -- are determined not to let it fail.

Update: Scott Johnson of Power Line writes:

Earlier this week, reader Michael Valois asked Columbia Journalism Review editor Steve Lovelady "what he thought
about the MSM ignoring Joe Lieberman's positive report from Iraq."

You think the New York Times and Washington Post should write a story every time a neocon hawk pens an essay for the Wall Street Journal's editorial page?

Somehow, I don't see that happening...

Indeed^TM.

Related: The Black Book of the Baath Socialist Party. The third in a trilogy largely written during the 20th century, which includes other black books of socialism, both national and international.

Umberto Eco puts modern Europe into context--and by inference, the Blue States of America:

It is the role of religion to provide that justification. Religions are systems of belief that enable human beings to justify their existence and which reconcile us to death. We in Europe have faced a fading of organised religion in recent years. Faith in the Christian churches has been declining.

The ideologies such as communism that promised to supplant religion have failed in spectacular and very public fashion. So we're all still looking for something that will reconcile each of us to the inevitability of our own death.

G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.

The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church -- from strange pagan cults and sects to the silly, sub-Christian superstitions of The Da Vinci Code.

It is amazing how many people take that book literally, and think it is true. Admittedly, Dan Brown, its author, has created a legion of zealous followers who believe that Jesus wasn't crucified: he married Mary Magdalene, became the King of France, and started his own version of the order of Freemasons. Many of the people who now go to the Louvre are there only to look at the Mona Lisa, solely and simply because it is at the centre of Dan Brown's book.

The pianist Arthur Rubinstein was once asked if he believed in God. He said: "No. I don't believe in God. I believe in something greater." Our culture suffers from the same inflationary tendency. The existing religions just aren't big enough: we demand something more from God than the existing depictions in the Christian faith can provide. So we revert to the occult. The so-called occult sciences do not ever reveal any genuine secret: they only promise that there is something secret that explains and justifies everything. The great advantage of this is that it allows each person to fill up the empty secret "container" with his or her own fears and hopes.

As a child of the Enlightenment, and a believer in the Enlightenment values of truth, open inquiry, and freedom, I am depressed by that tendency. This is not just because of the association between the occult and fascism and Nazism - although that association was very strong. Himmler and many of Hitler's henchmen were devotees of the most infantile occult fantasies.

The same was true of some of the fascist gurus in Italy - Julius Evola is one example - who continue to fascinate the neo-fascists in my country. And today, if you browse the shelves of any bookshop specialising in the occult, you will find not only the usual tomes on the Templars, Rosicrucians, pseudo-Kabbalists, and of course The Da Vinci Code, but also anti-semitic tracts such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

I was raised as a Catholic, and although I have abandoned the Church, this December, as usual, I will be putting together a Christmas crib for my grandson. We'll construct it together - as my father did with me when I was a boy. I have profound respect for the Christian traditions - which, as rituals for coping with death, still make more sense than their purely commercial alternatives.

(Via The Brothers Judd.)

Given that so many one-man Weblogs have optional skins the users can chose to change the color scheme and graphics, one way for online merchants such as Amazon and eBay to bypass the whole Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays controversy is to simply offer a choice of greetings for the month of December.

These sites use cookies to keep track of each customer--for example, whenever I log onto Amazon it says (paraphrasing) "Hi Ed, Welcome Back! (If you're not Ed, click here.)" So why not put them to work here? Default to "Happy Holidays" and then allow each customer to choose if he or she wants to change it to "Merry Christmas", "Happy Hanukah", "Happy Kwanza", "Happy Eid", or heck, even "Happy Festivus". And then have a "Happy TYPE HOLIDAY OF YOUR CHOICE HERE" box for anyone who celibrates a day other than the previous listings to fill in.

If individual Weblogs can personalize the appearance of their sites, this sort of thing should be a no-brainer for large operations with dedicated coding teams. It seems like an easy way to add personalized service, make each customer feel welcome, and avoid being written up in these sorts of articles. It also allows for more personalized gift/shopping suggestions, and creates additional demographic data about the site's customers.

So what say, fellas?

Update: Welcome Willisms readers--it's great to make the Carnival of the Classiness again! (Click here to find our first nominated post.)

Steve Green has had several posts this past week on the role of propaganda during war--just keep scrolling.

Meanwhile, Pajamas reminds the MSM that "Um, Actually, There Is A Free Press In Iraq".

Not that CNN and the rest of the media cared when there wasn't.

Power Line links to this hard-hitting essay by J. Peter Mulhern of Real Clear Politics:

When he took the nation’s highest office, George W. Bush famously called himself a uniter, not a divider, signaling a kinder, gentler approach to Washington politics. Fat lot of good it did him. He faces opponents who offer no quarter, even when the national interest is at stake. It is well past time to take off the gloves and return fire.

* * *

The President has nothing to lose by attacking the Democrats and a great deal to gain. Democrats are extremely vulnerable right now and President Bush should press his advantage. It isn’t enough to beat their pathetic arguments. The goal is to beat them and to do so decisively. That goal is well within reach.

The Democrat Party has just entered the McGovern Zone. The nation is at war against deadly enemies and the Democrats are going into an election committed to capitulation. They are gambling everything on failure in Iraq. If, in six months, successful elections have been held in Iraq and we have begun reducing our troop levels there, only a few hardcore nutjobs will still cling to the idea that Iraq is a hopeless quagmire. That idea is all the Democrats have to offer and when it dies the Democrat Party itself will be teetering on the edge of extinction.

We know what an election looks like when one party nails its colors to the mast of the SS Surrender while the other makes steady progress toward “peace with honor.” It happened in 1972. If the Democrats want a rerun it is up to President Bush and the Republican Party to make that rerun as devastating as possible.

Make them pay through the nose for their defeatism, Mr. President. Remember Al Gore sweating and frothing and the mouth as he bellowed that you “betrayed this country.” Throw it back at them with interest.

Attack until they stop twitching and then attack some more. If this seems unpresidential, the Vice President can do it. But one way or another, it’s past time for a serious offensive on the home front.

Fortune favors the bold.

So why, for most of 2005 did the White House just take all these attacks? The easy answer, based on their existing pattern would be to say "rope-a-dope". But that's not the case, according to Fred Barnes:

We now know what was behind President Bush's mysterious refusal for so many months to respond to Democratic attacks on his Iraq policy--a refusal that came at great political cost to himself and to the American effort in Iraq. It wasn't that Bush was too focused on Social Security reform to bother. Nor did he believe Iraq was a drag on his presidency and should be downplayed. Rather, Bush had made a conscious decision after his reelection to be "nonpolitical" on the subject of Iraq. It is a decision he now regrets. And has reversed.

Here's how a senior White House aide explains the decision not to answer criticism of the administration's course in Iraq: "The strategic decision was to be forward-looking. The public was more interested in the future and not the past, since it was just hashed over during the election." The president didn't ignore the subject of Iraq entirely. He delivered a half-dozen speeches on Iraq and the war on terror, including an evening, prime-time address, in the first 10 months of 2005. He just didn't rebut partisan attacks.

Harm was done. "Obviously the bombardment of misleading ads and the earned media by MoveOn et al. had an impact," the Bush aide says, "and culminated during the Libby indictment and the [Democratic] stunt of the closed session of the Senate" on prewar intelligence. "That's when we pivoted."

This morning, we linked to a story about a couple of who gave their infant a shot of vodka to calm her down--which, sadly, if not too surprisingly, did far more than that.

Here's yet another example of what should be blindingly obvious not to give to a baby:

Mom charged with giving baby heroin

(UPI delivered by Newstex) -- A young mother in New Mexico has been charged with giving her newborn son methadone and heroin in an effort to calm his withdrawal symptoms.

Angelica Mendoza was arrested at Carrie Tingley Hospital in Albuquerque, the Albuquerque Journal reported. She is being held in lieu of $200,000 bond.

Mendoza, who was on methadone maintenance during her pregnancy, gave birth more than two weeks ago. She reportedly admitted that on Tuesday, when her 16-day-old son showed signs of withdrawal, she tried to calm him by putting a small amount of methadone on his pacifier.

When her son remained irritable, she tried a mix of heroin and methadone.

The baby, who had to be resuscitated three times, was transferred to the University of New Mexico Hospital.

Hospital security officers said they found a backpack with drug paraphernalia and needles in the infant's room at Carrie Tingley.

National Review is celebrating its 50th anniversary with their next issue, which features this excerpt from Tom Wolfe (registration required to read the rest):

Twenty-five years ago, as I approached the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel for National Review’s 25th-anniversary fête, a reporter beckoned me aside and asked, “Would you call this a reunion of the Neo-conservative clan?”

So I said, “How are you spelling clan?”

When he assured me it was with a c, not a k — given the level of intellectual wit in 1980, that was still a distinction you had to make — I gazed out over the crowd in the ballroom and said, “No . . . what I think you’re looking at are 2500 people who in most cases never laid eyes on each other before but all of whom for one reason or another can’t go along with the party line.”

Now I had to assure him. No, I wasn’t talking about that party. I was talking about the prevailing zeitgeist of the intellectuals — which, it probably won’t surprise you to know, has not changed from that day to this.

I hasten to point out the difference between an intellectual and a person of intellectual achievement. An intellectual is a person knowledgeable in one field who speaks out only in others. When Noam Chomsky was merely the most original, arresting, and widely talked-about linguistic theorist in America, he was never referred to as a leading American intellectual. That came only after he expressed his outrage over American involvement in the war in Vietnam, about which he knew nothing, since he read The Nation instead of Parade. It was the outrage that gained him entry into that “charming aristocracy,” to borrow the words of Catulle Mendès. Or as Marshall McLuhan once put it, “Moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity.”

And speaking of Wolfe, in what surely must be a sign of the impending apocalypse, he'll be appearing in animated form--cartoon like, not necessarily all that agitated--along with Gore Vidal...and Homer Simpson.

(If you're saying the same thing, click here.)

Update: More here.

Last year, shortly after a relatively obscure holiday celebrated on the 25th day of this month by a small but significant minority of approximately 95 percent of Americans, I wrote:

Last year, I felt that Christmas was fading in popularity. This year, I feel a bit more reassured. Next year? It's about 340 days too soon to tell of course, but it will be interesting to see if stores and government, but local and national, have learned anything from the outcry this year.

NEW YORK — The word "Christmas," nearly absent in marketing by major retailers in recent years, has been quietly revived by some stores. Retail expert Jim Lucas says they are responding to consumers' desire to make the holidays more personal — whether they observe Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa.

Retailers such as Macy's are acknowledging Christmas rather than the generic "holiday."

"They are saying this has become very commercial and they want to reclaim the holiday season and make it relevant," says Lucas, head of strategic planning at ad agency Draft Worldwide.

Chains also may be responding to a push by groups such as The Catholic League and American Family Association (AFA) against a generic "winter holiday."

The AFA cited 10 retailers (Kroger, Dell, Target, OfficeMax, Walgreens, Sears, Staples, Lowe's, J.C. Penney and Best Buy) for omitting Christmas in ads. It urges shoppers to go where Christmas is recognized.

"If you are going to make your earnings on the year because of Christmas, why should you be ashamed to call it Christmas?" asks AFA President Tim Wildmon. "People don't buy Thanksgiving gifts."

Lowe's got special note for hanging "holiday tree" banners on lots at its 1,175 stores. It pulled them after complaints. "We wanted to call a Christmas tree what it is," says spokeswoman Chris Ahearn.

The Catholic League says it scored a victory when it pushed Wal-Mart to have a Christmas category on its website, which had Kwanzaa and Hanukkah gift sections.

Other chains giving Christmas a nod:

• Federated Department Stores — owner of Macy's and Bloomingdale's — is making sure its Christmas message is heard after consumer backlash last year over a supposed policy forbidding employees to wish shoppers "Merry Christmas."

A "Merry Christmas" ad thanking shoppers and employees is planned. The theme at Macy's New York store: Christmas in the City. Macy's TV ad features a big band tune mentioning Christmas.

"What we are doing is communicating our position," says spokesman Jim Sluzewski. "We never had a policy not to say 'Merry Christmas,' but clearly this is an issue of concern with a lot of people."

Ads for Dillard's department stores say: "Discover Christmas. Discover Dillard's." But the regional chain says that is not a political statement. "We do not believe it is our place as a retailer to politicize the season," says spokeswoman Julie Bull. "The sentiment expressed certainly applies to the other holidays celebrated this time of year, as well."

Christmas songs and trees are two of the things Victoria's Secret won't be bashful about in its lingerie show airing Tuesday on CBS. "The day is called Christmas. ... It all gears to Dec. 25," says Ed Razek, chief marketing officer.

Even so, Draft's Lucas says not to expect nativities or menorahs in ads. "The pendulum has swung a little away from PC. But if marketers get too specific or too religious, they'd be walking a weird line."

A rie? A roast beef on rie?--Ed Well, leave one out for Santa. Maybe with a bottle of milk. Or a bottle of something else...

While visiting my parents last January, we tuned into the local Philadelphia news reporting on the Eagles on the weekend they were to play the NFC championship (which would send them to the Super Bowl) and asked why the mainstream media couldn't cover politics the same way they cover their local sports teams. In other words, when you watch Philadelphia's Action News at 6:00 PM, you know they want the Eagles to win. When the national ABC news comes on at 6:30, it's not at all clear they want America to win. (Just ask the late Peter Jennings.)

But what if the reverse were true? John Ham of Carolina Journal Online wonders what would happen if ABC's Monday Night Fooball was reported the same that ABC news covers Iraq. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Watching Monday Night Football the other night, it occurred to me that if one imagined the mainstream media covering that game the way they cover the war in Iraq (or the economy), the absurdity of their reporting would be plain for all to see.

* * *

The Colts have become a target of critics since going undefeated so far this year. That so many Colt players have openly expressed a desire to go undefeated the whole season is seen as arrogance and a sense of exceptionalism by many, causing many former friends to turn against them.

The staunch Pittsburgh defense, though out-manned and out-gunned, managed to battle the Colts to a standstill in the second quarter, allowing them only six points. Those familiar with the Colts say this second-quarter swoon reveals a lack of depth on offense due to unmet recruitment goals during the off-season.

The insurgent Steelers, striking sporadically with lesser equipment against the hegemonic Colts, inflicted serious damage with several tackles, a sack and some pass breakups, holding Indianapolis to only two field goals in the 15-minute span. Observers said it looked as if the tide were turning in favor of the insurgent Steelers.

In the third period, the Steelers again held the Colts to a single touchdown, damaging the Colts’ aura of invincibility and giving hope to the insurgents that their time would come. Some critics pointed to the stands as some Colt fans began filing out, saying that this showed the Colts losing support at home.

The Steelers were even stronger in the final period, holding the Colt juggernaut to a mere three points. “I think Indianapolis was just in the wrong game, at the wrong place at the wrong time,” one Colt critic was heard to say.

In spite of California's deep, structural problems, America's economy as a whole is chugging along nicely, though you probably wouldn't know it from the mainstream media. Which is why business-oriented Bizzy Blog has a post headlined, "43% of the Country Believes We’re in a Recession".

As a former financial planner, I've long been astonished at how so many Americans can be ill-informed on basic economic issues. But on the other hand, if the reverse of this headline is true--if say, 86 percent of the country believes we're not in a recession, then it might be a good idea to check your calendar. It probably says 1987 or 2000 on it, with an economy--or at least a stock market--that's just about to peak.

(H/T: Roger L. Simon.)

I had to trim this passage out of my Pajamas profile of James Lileks' Mommy Knows Worst for space requirements:

Today’s parents fear that school nurses are overdosing their kids with Ritalin. But the previous generation of children apparently risked being doped up too. One of the earliest pieces in Lileks’ book, dating back to the 1920s, is what he calls “this bristling jeremiad written by some medical educator who is yelling about ‘The Crime of Soothing Syrups’, which in those days, meant giving your kids a thimble of absinthe or laudanum or opium to keep them quiet!” Lileks isn’t kidding, though. “Seriously—this woman is writing tracts about the women who dope up their kids so that they could have a night of going to the sinful movie theater. So if the idea that it’s probably not good to give your kid absinthe has registered, we’ve made steps in the right direction.”

A Florida couple accused of feeding their 3-month-old baby a lethal dose of vodka to quiet her crying surrendered to police in New Jersey Thursday.

Tim Blair writes:

It’s a quagmire in California:

Recently released crime statistics show the homicide rate in California is 265 percent higher than the death rate suffered by U.S. and British military personnel in Iraq.

Whoa! Things aren’t so good business-wise, either. Nissan has decided to cut and run:

When one little company like Nissan North America pulls out of a great big city like Los Angeles, does anyone even notice?

They do when Nissan is the 80th corporation to do so since 2002.

Nissan’s headed for Nashville.

Nissan Motor Co. announced Thursday it is moving its North American headquarters and nearly 1,300 jobs from California to the Nashville area to take advantage of the lower cost of doing business in the Southeast.

"The board of Nissan decided to relocate our North American headquarters, and we're coming to Tennessee," Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said at a news conference at the state Capitol attended by Gov. Phil Bredesen and other top state officials.

The headquarters, which has been based in Gardena, Calif., will relocate to Williamson County, a suburban area south of Nashville. . . .

Ghosn cited lower real estate and business taxes as major reasons for the move.

"The costs of doing business in Southern California are much higher than the costs of doing business in Tennessee," he said.

Beyond Nissan--and the 79 other corporations that have decamped from L.A. alone since 2002, when a company as deeply associated with California as Fender Guitars relocates to neighboring Arizona, you know the state isn't exactly business-friendly. (Just ask my wife, who frequently intercedes on behalf of business owners.) These problems have accumulated over the several decades of California's exponentially growing hard left tilt, and can't be blamed entirely on Governor Schwarzenegger, but what is Arnold doing to help reduce them? Hiring a former aide to Gray "Rolling Blackouts" Davis as his new chief of staff.

Will the last person out of California please turn out the lights?

Camille Paglia gets down with her bad, bad self.

Found via Charles Johnson, Hans Magnus Enzensberger has a long, detailed essay on "The Radical Loser" that first appeared in early November in Germany's Der Spiegel. Enzensberger places what Freud would call the Death Drive of Islamofascism into the context of 20th century history. Here's but a sample:

At this point, alongside many other examples from history, one cannot help being reminded of the National Socialist project in Germany. At the end of the Weimar Republic, large sections of the population saw themselves as losers. The objective data tell a clear story. But the economic crisis and mass unemployment would probably not have been enough to bring Hitler to power. For that to happen, it took propaganda aimed at the subjective factor: the blow dealt to people's pride by the defeat of 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles. Most Germans sought to blame others: the victorious powers, the "global Capitalist-Bolshevist conspiracy" and above all, of course, the eternal scapegoat, Judaism. The tormenting feeling of being in the position of the loser could only be compensated for by pursuing an offensive strategy, by seeking refuge in megalomania. From the outset, the Nazis entertained delusions of world domination. As such, their goals were boundless and non-negotiable. In this sense, they were not only unreal, but also non-political.

Consulting a map was never going to be enough to persuade Hitler and his followers that the struggle of one small European country against the rest of the world was hopeless. On the contrary. The radical loser has no notion of resolving conflicts, of compromise that might involve him in a normal network of interests and defuse his destructive energy. The more hopeless his project, the more fanatically he clings to it. There are grounds to suspect that Hitler and his followers were interested not in victory, but in radicalizing and eternalizing their own status as losers.

Their pent up anger discharged itself in a war of unprecedented destruction against all those others who they blamed for their own defeats. First and foremost, it was a matter of destroying the Jews and the opponents of 1919. But they certainly had no intention of sparing the Germans. Their actual objective was not victory, but elimination, downfall, collective suicide, the terrible end. There is no other explanation for the way the Germans fought on in World War II right to the last pile of rubble in Berlin. Hitler himself confirmed this diagnosis when he said that the German people did not deserve to survive. At a huge cost, he achieved what he wanted – he lost. But the Jews, the Poles, the Russians, the Germans and all the others are still around.

* * *

In one respect, however, the Islamists are without doubt a twenty-first-century phenomenon: where their understanding of the media is concerned, they leave their predecessors far behind. Earlier disciples of terror also relied on "propaganda through action", but the kind of worldwide attention achieved today by a nebulous grouping like Al Qaida was not granted to them. Trained by television, computer technology, the Internet and advertising, Islamist terror now gets higher viewer ratings than any football World Cup. The all-important massacres are staged in Hollywood-inspired style, modelled on disaster films, splatter movies and science fiction thrillers. This too is evidence of a dependency on the hated West. In the media output of terrorism, the Society of the Spectacle as described by the Situationists comes into its own.

More momentous still, however, is the strategic use of suicide attacks, an invincible weapon that cannot be seen by surveillance satellites and which can be deployed practically anywhere. It is also extremely cheap. In addition to these advantages, this form of terror also exerts an irresistible attraction on the radical loser. It allows him to combine destruction and self-destruction at the same time as acting out both his megalomaniac fantasies and his self-hate. Cowardice is the last thing he can be accused of. The courage that is his hallmark is the courage of despair. His triumph consists in the fact that he can be neither fought nor punished, since he takes care of that himself.

Contrary to what the West appears to believe, the destructive energy of Islamist actions is directed mainly against Muslims. This is not a tactical error, not a case of "collateral damage". In Algeria alone, Islamist terror has cost the lives of at least 50,000 fellow Algerians. Other sources speak of as many as 150,000 murders, although the military and the secret services were also involved. In Iraq and Afghanistan, too, the number of Muslim victims far outstrips the death toll among foreigners. Furthermore, terrorism has been highly detrimental not only to the image of Islam but also to the living conditions of Muslims around the world.

The Islamists are as unconcerned about this as the Nazis were about the downfall of Germany. As the avant-garde of death, they have no regard for the lives of their fellow believers. In the eyes of the Islamists, the fact that most Muslims have no desire to blow themselves and others sky high only goes to show that they deserve no better than to be liquidated themselves. After all, the aim of the radical loser is to make as many other people into losers as possible. As the Islamists see it, the fact that they are in the minority can only be because they are the chosen few.

The project of the radical loser, as currently seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, consists of organizing the suicide of an entire civilisation. But the likelihood of their succeeding in an unlimited generalization of their death cult is negligible. Their attacks represent a permanent background risk, like ordinary everyday deaths by accident on the streets, to which we have become accustomed.

In a global society that constantly produces new losers, this is something we will have to live with.

I've linked several times to Radley Balko's post on "The Conservative Left", because its a great meme, but the specific example that Radley used is worth repeating:

You know, you sometimes get the feeling the day after the polio vaccine was invented, today's left would have run editorials lamenting the good ol' days, when we were a little more cautious about what swimming pools we jumped into, and expressing sadness that we'd now have no new stories about the afflicted overcoming their disability to inspire the rest of us.

I'm not kidding. They're that resistant to change. Every mill that shuts down is a "sign of our sad times." No matter that the new mill will do things better, faster and cheaper than the old one. New farming techniques grow more food on less land. But dammit, if there wasn't something romantic about the old-stye "family farm" that's deserving of government protection. Innovation isn't celebrated, it's excoriated for displacing some idealized vision of the way things once were. In matters of progress and dyanmism, the left is far more conservative than the conservatives are.

Well, I suppose self-pity and bellyaching and sour grapes coming from a dead-tree media outlet over the success of a slick and widely-loved new media outfit like Craigslist really doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

But, holy cow, to make a COVER STORY out of the fact that you and your fellow dead-tree Old Media outlets are getting whupped by better service and greater efficiency (and more timeliness and accuracy)? And then to expect media savvy readers to cry big splashy tears over the fact that you can’t seem to adapt your performance and business models to the new reality? That takes real chutzpah and brings navel-gazing to a whole new level.

Here’s the boldface text from the COVER of the latest SF Weekly. (I exercised restraint in the headline to this post and refrained from calling it by it’s more commonly-known street moniker—“SF, WeAkly.”)

Craig$list.com
The much-loved Web site is taking millions from Bay Area newspapers and causing layoffs that adversely affect coverage. And its founder’s well-intentioned support of citizen journalism has a slim chance of fixing the problem.

Well, gosh, we’re just all broken up for you, New Times Media (parent company of SF Wea…er SF Weekly.)

But the hard fact is, oh mainstream media, the public doesn’t OWE you readers or subscribers or ad revenue. No business is OWED customers. So I’d humbly suggest that perhaps you ought to spend a little MORE energy on “lighting a candle”—delivering better service and adapting your practices to the new reality—and a little less energy on “cursing the darkness”—hating on Craigslist and expecting us in the media buying public to beweep your sad, sad fate.

Gee--and after all they done to earn our trust.

(Via the Blogfather, who notes--and I agree--that not all newspapers are this stuck-on-stupid.)

Update: Geez, speaking of engendering trust...

I watched the DVD of the Robert Redford/Mia Farrow version of The Great Gatsby on the laptop to kill time during the flight a week and half ago between New York and Dallas. I think Tom Wolfe (piqued at the unauthorized usurpation of his trademark white suit by Redford's Gatsby) once dismissed the movie as "Fitzgerald as interpreted by the Garment District", and while the film did put Ralph Lauren on the map, most of the duds the actors are wearing, with their fat ties and wide lapels, seem much more 1970s than 1920s.

But that's the least of Gatsby's problems. I can't quite figure out if Mia Farrow works or not, but Redford, who's far too cinematically pretty to play the self-made Gatsby, and who sort of sleepwalks through his role, seems wildly miscast. As does Bruce Dern, who can't escape his Roger Corman-era psycho biker roles (his Freeman Lowell in Silent Running was merely an interstellar variation on that persona).

But what really sinks Gatsby is a self-conscious pacing that makes Stanley Kubrick's stately Barry Lyndon seem like an MTV video in comparison. That's also the same problem that plagues 1976's The Last Tycoon, Elia Kazan's last movie, with a young Robert DeNiro in a thinly disguised portrayal as doomed Hollywood wunderkind Irving Thalberg.

So will there ever be a decent cinematic Fitzgerald? This article on the various cinematic portrayals of Gatsby says don't bet on it.

And as the made for TV version of Gatsby a few years ago demonstrated, attempting to film Fitzgerald these days presents an additional problem.

John Hawkins looks at "The 10 Most Fascinating People In The Blogosphere For 2005".

On what has been dubbed World AIDS day, James Pinkerton has harsh words for those who don't change their life styles in the midst of the epidemic:

Here's the formula for the AIDS epidemic: First, start with a deadly contagious virus. Second, take no serious measures as dangerous behavior patterns multiply. Third, ignore the obvious lessons of epidemiological and medical history -- try demagoguery instead. Fourth, apply copious amounts of sentiment and red-ribbon artistry to the issue, substituting, in effect, sentiment for science. Fifth, stand back and watch tens of millions of people die.

Repeat these five steps for as long as you wish. If you do so, you will find that AIDS is never cured, no matter how many press releases are issued, no matter how much money is spent, no matter how much earnest good will is expended, no matter how much intellectual capital is consumed.

To put it as bluntly as possible, the main reason that AIDS is spreading to its current deadly dimensions around the world is this: We are practicing the social and political equivalent of laissez-faire when dealing with a killer-virus. And while "hands off" is usually the best approach for generating economic growth, if a virus, on the contrary, gets the equivalent of a free hand, it will also flourish -- but that's the kind of explosive growth we don't want.

Two decades ago, American AIDS activists came up with the slogan, "Silence = Death." But the issue, in practice, wasn't talking about AIDS, but rather doing something about AIDS. So the American slogan became, in effect, "Behavior Change = Life." And the biggest single life-saving change, back then, was behavioral restraint. Gay bathhouses were shut down, and millions of Americans, many of them gay, changed their sexual patterns: They got serious about condoms, safe sex, or outright abstinence. Were these changes tough to live by? Sure. But they beat the alternative. Let's face it: Just as quarantining worked in the past -- remember leper colonies? -- so the same basic idea, of separating oneself from the threat, works today.

Currently in the U.S., it is common for gay men -- especially as one moves up the ladder, in terms of education and health-consciousness -- to say things like, "I don't know anybody who has died of AIDS in five or ten, or even fifteen years." That is, in their medically aware circle -- after the initial wave of deaths in the 80s -- people got the message. And of course, thanks to medical breakthroughs, many of those who are HIV positive can carry on functional lives for the long term.

Today in America, a few incredibly unlucky people get AIDS through freak accidents. But the blunt reality is that AIDS mostly afflicts those who can be diagnosed as terminally reckless. An example is junkies using dirty needles -- or any needle at all. How does society realistically save the life of someone who holds his or her own life in such obvious contempt? As with smoking, drinking, over-eating, gun-playing and drag-racing, some behavior choices simply defy life-saving. Or to take another example, it's recognized by now that anal sex without condoms, known as "barebacking," is widely recognized as a death trip, and yet plenty of people still seem to do it, with the full complicity of modern marketing. At some point, confronted by the lethal combination of lust and greed, even the best-intentioned American public-health advocates have to throw up their hands in defeat.

Govindini Murty of the Libertas film blog has some thoughts on Mark Steyn's recent Chicago Sun-Times piece on Hollywood's stifling PC sensibilities:

This is a point that needs much repeating: if you believe in free speech (and I believe there are fair-minded liberals who do), you don’t have speech codes on university campuses, or Political Correctness codes on movie studio lots. Liberals often complain about the Hays Code and censorship in Golden Age Hollywood, but it seems to me that the censorship that exists in Hollywood today as a result of Political Correctness is more insidious - and ultimately far more dangerous to free artistic expression.

* * *

Steyn makes a great point though about why fewer and fewer people are going to the theatres. It isn’t video games, it isn’t DVDs or the internet or reality programming or video soccer that’s killing off box office revenues today - it’s the content of the movies! We constantly make this point on LIBERTAS, and yet it’s amazing how many people still argue that content has nothing to do with it.

Kevin McCullough writes:

We are excited to be launching the opportunity today...between now and Christmas we are asking you to send the ACLU direct "MerryChristmas" cards.

And we aren't talking about these generic "happy holiday" (meaning nothing) type of cards...

Go get as "Christmas" a Christmas card as you can find... something that says.. "Joy To The World", "For Unto Us A Child Is Born", but at least "Merry Christmas", put some of your own thoughts into it, sign it respectfully and zip it off in the mail to

ACLU
"Wishing You Merry Christmas"
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York, NY 10004

On a side note we are developing an E-Card that you will also be able to send. BUT there will be no effect like actually sending a physical card to the office. MuscleHead guidelines apply - please be kind, even cheerful in sending the card. Trust me - kindness will produce more smoke out of their ears than anything untoward you could think of anyway...

(Via Michelle Malkin.)

John Seigenthaler, Sr. was the assistant to Robert Kennedy when he was attorney general under JFK. His Wikipedia entry originally read as follows:

"John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven."

Meanwhile, Pajamas has a round-up of additional Wiki coverage.

A Pajamas Media round-up titled "What will Neo Orleans look like?" states that the one sliver of a brightspot from Katrina is that it gives New Orleans a chance to quickly modernize its infrastructure for the 21st century.

Not germane to the above topic, but certainly to Katrina itself, Michelle Malkin examines the real reasons for the failure of the 17th Street Canal levee in New Orleans.

Woody Allen turns 70 today, and consequently, lots of gushing material is being written about him in the urban newspapers and the wire services. Here's a sample:

Allen himself has a more modest appraisal of his career, at least ostensibly. In Vanity Fair recently, he gave himself a "B" and said that his work paled next to that of Kurosawa and Bergman. The comparison is telling, in that it indicates not the scale of Allen's modesty so much as the extent of his aspiration. He didn't compare himself, after all, to great comedians or other comic filmmakers, such as Chaplin and Keaton, but to towering, tremendously prolific writer-directors of profound stature, who worked without interruption for most of a lifetime. Yes, he gave himself a B. But what would he have given Harold Lloyd? Or Truffaut? Or Hitchcock?

Even if Allen is not Ingmar Bergman -- the greatest of the great in Allen's opinion (mine, too) -- it's also true that Allen at his best has a master filmmaker's capacity for rearranging an audience's molecules. It's hard to remember this when Allen muddies the waters with garbage like "Anything Else" and "Everyone Says I Love You," but films such as "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "Crimes and Misdemeanors" leave audiences transformed. Allen's best films capture the longings and moral preoccupations of his time, while standing at a slight remove. This distance allows for comedy, but also for the perspective that has kept him from getting mired in contemporary myths. His humor, while very funny, is not just funny, but gets at underlying truths. That's why his films are aging well and will continue to blossom over time.

The loss of that goodwill has cost him enormously in the American box office--but then, few mainstream entertainers have been as self-destructive to their career as Allen. As a result, he's increasingly capable of unintentional self-irony, as this recent quote illustrates:

The director, who turns 70 on Thursday, moved away from his native New York locations in 2003 after voicing dissatisfaction with his lack of creative freedom.

He tells Vanity Fair: "I don't feel that (the studios) are qualified to give the input. They wouldn't know a good script from a problem script or how to cast a picture."

As numerous aging auteurs have said, directing is a young man's game, and Woody's career would have seemed to have permanently jumped the proverbial shark (do they sell that at Zabar's?) right after Manhattan Murder Mystery, but he may yet have a solid film or two left in him. As The Gothamist writes:

Have you seen this trailer? If you haven't seen it in a movie theater, chances are it won't have quite the same oomph. Major kudos need to go to the DreamWorks marketing team for putting together a preview that doesn't even pack its full punch until the words "From Director Woody Allen" pop-up on screen. Everything that comes before looks more like a sequel to last year's Closer than anything Allen has done, certainly in recent years. When we first heard of Match Point, we thought it was some Allen comedy dealing with tennis, just like other recent films where he casts a nebbishy substitute for himself to have an affair with some hot young starlet. That doesn't completely seem to be the case this time out, at least not based on this preview. Andrew Sarris raves about the film in the current issue of the NY Observer even though the movie doesn't come out until the end of next month, and it got a pretty enthusiastic reaction at Cannes last May with many calling it the best thing to come from Allen in years. It would be nice to forget most of Woody's last decade, and at first glance, Match Point seems to harken back to his Crimes & Misdemeanors and Husbands & Wives period.

Update: Roger L. Simon, who survived writing for Woody adds, "Never trust anyone over 69".

Right Side Redux has an MP3 of Jonah Goldberg's recent interview on the Bay Area's KSFO on Iraq, immigration, and other topics.