Don't be entirely surprised if Michelle Malkin is wearing Pajamas in her next "Vent" video at Hot Air...

Just to continue our trip down memory lane, Peggy Noonan says that it's Pappa Bush meets Jimmy Carter time for GWB, writing bitterly that "President Bush has torn the conservative coalition asunder":

One of the things I have come to think the past few years is that the Bushes, father and son, though different in many ways, are great wasters of political inheritance. They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked. Bush senior inherited a vibrant country and a party at peace with itself. He won the leadership of a party that had finally, at great cost, by 1980, fought itself through to unity and come together on shared principles. Mr. Bush won in 1988 by saying he would govern as Reagan had. Yet he did not understand he'd been elected to Reagan's third term. He thought he'd been elected because they liked him. And so he raised taxes, sundered a hard-won coalition, and found himself shocked to lose his party the presidency, and for eight long and consequential years. He had many virtues, but he wasted his inheritance.

Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.

Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time.

Needless to say, read the whole thing--and check out James Lileks' thoughts on the same topic, about 23:30 into this MP3 clip from Thursday's Hugh Hewitt Show.

If the truth from the 1990s has to be tossed down the Memory Hole, then I guess to compensate, headlines from the 1970s get dusted off for modern use, whether we need them or not: "Iran Hostage Count Rises".

Here's Al Gore yesterday on PBS's NewsHour, being interviewed by Gwen Ifil:

Ifill: You write of a "determined disinterest" in learning the truth, on the part of the Bush administration on pre-war intelligence. You accuse the White House of an "unprecedented and sustained campaign of mass deception," very strong words. And you say that President Bush "outsourced the truth." Are you suggesting that President Bush deliberately misled the American people when it comes to the Iraq war?

Gore: Well, there was certainly a coordinated effort in the White House and in the Department of Defense simultaneously to convey the image of a mushroom cloud exploding over an American city and to link it to a specific scenario, the very strong and explicit implication that Saddam Hussein was going to develop nuclear weapons and give them to Osama bin Laden, and that would result in nuclear explosions in American cities.

Here's a statement issued by the Justice Department in 1998 during the administration under which Gore served:

Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.

And here's Gore himself, five years earlier:

"The suffering inside Iraq can come to an end when Saddam Hussein's regime is replaced," said a top Clinton administration official at the time. "And I hope -- and most of the world community hopes -- that this regime based on terrorism and atrocities against his own people will be replaced. Over time, we hope to achieve that result."

The pivot--not to mention the Assault on Reason--continues apace.

Update: Another reality of the 1990s goes down the Memory Hole, this time courtesy of NPR.

Tim Blair quotes a passage from the New Republic’s Paul Berman regarding the hostility on the left that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has faced, both in Europe and the US:

Something like a campaign against Hirsi Ali could never have taken place a few years ago. A sustained attack on an authentic liberal dissident crying out against injustices in remote parts of the world and even in the back streets of western Europe, a sustained attack that appears nearly to have erased the mention of women’s oppression and the struggle for women’s rights from discussion - no, this could not have happened yesterday, except on the extreme Right.

This is a new event. This is a reactionary turn in the intellectual world.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn--not to mention Castro's many, many critics--might wonder at how new an event it is to be shunned as an apostate by the Western left.

David Frum writes, "It's Divorce":

That's what has happened between President Bush and his party over this immigration bill. And if they insist on pursuing it, I fear it is what will happen between the Senate GOP leadership and the party base as well. The issue has already all but killed the McCain candidacy. A letter from a reader expresses the sadness and anger I see in so much of my mail:

I voted twice for this man and his abdication of the most fundamental executive responsibility, to protect our country from foreign invasion, is cause for regret.

Talk is cheap. The most responsible course of action that this president can take on immigration is to do nothing. Leave it for the next president. Focus on Iraq and then go home.

Signing this bill would render what little good he has done meaningless by comparison.

I wish he were already gone.

If it is divorce, not many want to pay the alimony.

Further thoughts from The Washington Examiner and Jim Geraghty.

Update: Allahpundit notes that the divorce may be mutual:

First it was Chertoff, then Bush, now Chavez: three Republicans, one of them president, another a cabinet member, the third a would-be cabinet member, all not merely criticizing the base’s position on amnesty but impugning their character for taking that position.

A few months ago, I explored the media's Red Queen's Race to the bottom--President Bush seems to engaged in one of his own, regarding the support of his base, and his poll numbers.

On March 11, after viewing 300, I wrote:

Will 300 impact Hollywood? Obviously, not in the short term.With the exception of Spider-Man 3, virtually all of the innumerable trailers yesterday before 300 highlighted Hollywood's current phase: dank, gross, low-budget nihilistic horror films, and, in a very similar genre, the latest effort by Quentin Tarantino, which featured the disgusting image of a buxom young woman whose leg is amputated and replaced with a machine gun, which she alternately walks on and fires at the baddies (baddies being a relative term in a Tarantino movie, of course) by crouching in some sort of kung fu-style pose spraying bullets upward. (No, really.)

Ad Age, which I doubt is a deeply entrenched bastion of Ashcroftian prudery, deplores "the newest rage in Hollywood: torture porn".

As Orrin Judd asks, “If Don Imus needed to be fired, why do the folks in Hollywood who produce such stuff still have jobs?”

Come the quadrennial paranoid "The President's Going To Cancel The Election And Impose Martial Law!" stories, kicking off, as with everything else election-oriented this year, remarkably early. As Extreme Mortman notes, these stories date back to the left and President Nixon---"he HAD to cancel the election, because with Youth in Revolt, he couldn’t possibly win". But I recall at least one regarding President Clinton on World Net Daily in 2000 as well.

In 1973, Daniel Patrick Moynihan looked back on the decade which had recently concluded and said, "Most liberals had ended the 1960s rather ashamed of the beliefs they had held at the beginning of the decade". And part of that sea change in their beliefs was replacing a JFK-era New Frontier optimism towards future progress with an enormous fear of modernity that in many respects continues to this day, seeking to replace life-enhancing technology with a Rousseauvian return to nature.

Perhaps wishing to live out Moynihan's observation, in 1972, Orson Welles narrated and appeared on camera in the McGraw-Hill(!) production of a short film presenting a few of the doomsday-ish concepts from Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. (Toffler's 1980 sequel, The Third Wave was a much more optimistic look at the near future, and blessedly free of the lingering effects of psychedelia which tainted his 1970 book.)

In a way, this is the culmination, the apex of 1970s Merdework, to borrow a Lileksian word. Thrill! To dissonant first generation Moog synthesizers! Gasp! At Orson Welles and his quick paycheck-seeking stentorian sell-no-documentary before-its-time tones--and his omnipresent 12-inch Double Corona Monte Cristo Cuban phallic symbol! Shudder! As Welles fears the technological ramifications of giant mainframe computers with less computing power than your Motorola cell phone!

These first ten minutes are presented as part of an ongoing public service to remind our readers how frightening the aesthetics of the 1970s truly were; more adventurous souls may wish to view the remainder of the documentary, available here.

“Terrorist financing is much trickier to crack down on than conventional money laundering. Because conventional money laundering is when you’re trying to take illicit assets and convert them into assets that are clean, that can be exchanged throughout the financial system. Whereas terrorist financing is often taking thoroughly legal assets and then using them for illegal purposes.”

--Daniel Drezner, on the next Blog Week In Review, coming soon to PJ HQ.

Jules Crittenden joins the Dark Side of the Force.

Don Surber writes--quite authoritatively, I believe--that the war is over, we've won, and we can start to demobilize our massed forces.

Fred Thompson is entering the presidential race, according to USA Today. Of course, in a sense, he's been in for several weeks at least via the Web, which "has allowed me to be in the hunt, so to speak, without spending a dime", Thompson says.

Is July 4th the date?

Building on George Orwell's “Politics and the English Language", John Leo explores how badly English has descended--particularly in academic usage--since Orwell wrote his seminal essay over 60 years ago.

As President Bush taps Robert Zoellick to be president of the World Bank, Larry Kudlow writes, "both the IMF and the World Bank are unnecessary artifacts from a bygone, post-WWII reconstruction era", and asks, "do we really need the World Bank?"

Meanwhile, Wired's "Danger Room" blog wonders why the U.S. needs embassies in the Middle East, noting that they're essentially hardened concrete bunkers, designed much more to keep terrorists out, than to foster goodwill with the people at large of those countries.

As I wrote late last night, John Hawkins polled about 50 conservative bloggers and found that zero believed "that the bill in the Senate would, if passed, secure the border and stop the influx of significant numbers of illegal aliens into the United States".

Meanwhile, Rasmussen polls from a much broader sample of the general public and finds..."Just 16% believe the Senate bill will reduce illegal immigration", according to Bryan Preston of Hot Air, who writes:

Distilled, the bill is a turkey and most of America knows it. Or, most of America doesn’t want “what’s right for America.” Take your pick, Republicans. Take your pick, Mr. President.

In their regular Bloggingheads-style video debate, Jonah Goldberg and Peter Beinart have quite an interesting conversation on what makes Robert Novak tick.

And speaking of Bloggingheads, Glenn Reynolds and Conn Carroll debate the new, new and old, old journalism in general.

With Star Wars' 30th anniversary this month, I have a review of J.W. Rinzler's The Making of Star Wars, over at Blogcritics. If you saw the film five or ten times on its opening run, this thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated book will bring back a flood of memories.

John Hawkins crunches the numbers, including the results of this question:

5) Do you believe that the bill in the Senate would, if passed, secure the border and stop the influx of significant numbers of illegal aliens into the United States?

Yes: (0%)
No: 49 (100%)

Read the rest, here.

Yes, JFK would have plotzed over this. Yes, Bill Clinton and Teddy Kennedy will, too. But so what? This is the greatest innovation in voting technology, ever.

We can only hope and pray that it's approved for American use in time for the 2008 elections. I'm sure its manufacturer won't lack for beta testers, though...

Back in January, we linked to a post by David Frum, who wrote:

The day will come, and probably soon, when American liberals and the American left will wake up to the fact that (as Tom Wicker said of Richard Nixon in the book of the same name) on domestic issues Bush was "one of us." Much as they disliked Bush's foreign policies, cultural style, and political methods, he actually had more in common with them on domestic issues than he did with his own political base. It will someday be very hard to explain why liberals so hated Bush. I suppose it just goes to prove that - despite all those left-wing books about the false consciousness of those poor deluded rubes in Kansas - culture trumps economics for elites at least as much as for ordinary voters.

Today, Jonah Goldberg writes:

Richard Cohen discovers something some of us on the right have been saying for a while: if you hold your head just so and look at Bush from the right angle, he looks an awful lot like a liberal.

Related thoughts from Ed Morrissey; it's also worth re-reading Jonathan Rausch's "The Accidental Radical" from four years ago, which remains a pretty good look at Bush's overall governing "strategery".

Newsbusters spots Newsweek Celebrating "'Ecosavant' Al Gore As The Hot New Sensitive 'Beta Male'"; meanwhile, Tim Blair runs roughshod over Time's coverage of Gore's Assault On Reason with a full metal fisking.

Over on my wife's Bizlawblog, some potentially significant business news:

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in McNamee v. IRS, No. 05-6151 just affirmed a federal trial courts determination that the owner of an LLC (limited liability company) can be held personally liable for unpaid payroll taxes. This is a significant decision, which may well be appealed to the Supreme Court. But meanwhile, let's look at its significance.

Read the rest.

One of Charles Johnson's readers get the standard form letter that Google's been sending out every year since at least 2005 regarding their lack of a Memorial Day splash page, despite having pages commemorating World Water Day, and the birthdays of Edvard Munch, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Percival Lowell, and Ray Charles. (Though the international celebrity with a huge fanbase born on December 25th remains oddly unnamed each year by Google...)

Because the art designers at Google seem remarkably stumped by the unique design challenge that is Memorial Day, Zombietime is soliciting reader help.

Zombie is requesting that contest entrants keep things as tasteful and reverent as possible. Call me unnecessarily cynical and churlish, but something tells me though, whatever they design just won't make the cut with Google.

Like I said on Sunday:

What's especially fun is watching members of "Big Recreation" tie themselves up in knots when they feel the need for self-persecution over the eeeeevils of so-called manmade Gerbil Worming or Glowball Warmening, as Tim Blair is wont to malaprop.

"Air Canada offers carbon-offset ticket".

(Via Relapsed Catholic.)

Gee, what a shocker--give an audience little more than an army of threequels, then wonder why they won't bite at the processed cheese-like food. But it's also a reminder of the trap that the movie industry is caught in, as pop culture continues to fracture. The sequels (particularly the sequels to pre-existing franchises, such as the movies based on comic books, old TV shows, and best selling novels such as the James Bond and Tom Clancy movies) are the most predictable vehicles at the box office, but you can only go to the well so many times before audiences tune out these days.

Of course, how slowly they tune out varies, and unfortunately, there are probably enough tickets sold--and enough DVDs will be sold--to know that in a couple of years, we'll be looking at the summer of four-quils.

As Canadian blogger Small Dead Animals writes, "Britain's descent into a surveillance state has been one of the creepier developments over the last twenty years. Just when you think it can't get worse it does".

Like the man said...

If Dan Rather's ratings on HD-Net ever start to drift below the blockbuster status I'm sure he's currently enjoying, network owner Mark Cuban may wish to bring some attractive (and, let's face it, younger) female talent to offset Rather's more geriatric demographic, much like CBS did in the early 1990s, when it pared Dan with Connie Chung.

Might I suggest two possible candidates, both recently unemployed, for the co-anchor chair, whose talents will seamlessly complement Dan--and Cuban's--worldview?

Meanwhile, IowaHawk and Jim Treacher look at saving another modern television benchmark with even higher ratings, before it too, stumbles from its current lofty artistic heights.

"The odd thing about the conversation is I could tell it was the first time he’d heard this argument", Tony Blair notes:

I was stopped by someone the other week who said it was not surprising there was so much terrorism in the world when we invaded their countries (meaning Afghanistan and Iraq). No wonder Muslims felt angry.

I said to him: tell me exactly what they feel angry about. We remove two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes; we replace them with a UN-supervised democratic process.

And the only reason it is difficult still is because other Muslims are using terrorism to try to destroy the fledgling democracy and, in doing so, are killing fellow Muslims.

Why aren’t they angry about the people doing the killing? The odd thing about the conversation is I could tell it was the first time he’d heard this argument.

Given how even more attached to hidebound folk-Marxist nostalgia for 1968 the BBC is than even America's own collective MSM, I'm not at all surprised.

Here's a sobering fact: according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, there are only three US World War I vets still alive.

The Chicago Tribune profiles one of them: Frank Buckles, who at age 106 is the youngest of the three. The Tribune notes that quite appropriately, "Buckles will serve as a marshal in the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington, sharing the starring role with actor Gary Sinise".

(H/T: OJ)

A few months ago, we celebrated our fifth anniversary in the Blogosphere; this week Power Line celebrates theirs as well, as Hugh Hewitt writes:

Powerline's trio are thus the most significant citizen journalists of the first age of internet journalism, and wold be even had they not toppled Dan Rather. Like it or not --and those on the left won't-- their coming into being and their writings and associated endeavors will be studied far into the future. They didn't just occasionally make the weather in American journalism over the past five years, they changed the weather patterns. They set a standard, delivered a product, and obliged MSM to change how it dealt with citizen journalists and their work. They were aided in this by tens of thousands of other bloggers, of course, but to a degree not yet even remotely appreciated Powerline's authors had an enormous and lasting effect on American journalism.

If that sounds like hyperbole, remember that Mary Mapes, CBS's erstwhile producer who, along with Ra^therGate's namesake, foisted the scandal on the public, later admitted that she hadn't even heard of Power Line--nor any other Weblog on the starboard side of the 'Net. And prior to both parties' presidential conventions in 2004, when the TV networks had to fill hours of time somehow and interviewed bloggers, and then Ra^therGate itself, the general public as a whole had never really heard of blogs. For the previous three years, I felt compelled to explain in query letters to editors and publishers just what the heck a blog was. After 2004, there was no need to.

I think a big part of the credit for Ra^therGate should also go to Charles Johnson for his famous "throbbing memo" gif--once it hit the 'Net, the countdown officially began on both Dan's reputation, and his career at CBS--and of course, Buckhead of the Free Republic forum for initially noticing that there something seemed amiss in the documents that CBS uploaded to attempt to support their story. But beginning with "The Sixty First-Minute", there's no doubt that Power Line did much to advance the story--and in doing so very much helped to put the Blogosphere as a whole on the map.

As Ed Morrissey writes, "If You're Reading This Blog Today..."

... you can thank a veteran, either one who gave his life in service to his country, or one who gave his youth and health. America has never lacked for heroes, men and women who exemplify patriotism, honor, duty, and sacrifice. All of us, whether Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, have members of our family who have devoted time in their lives to our country; we're all connected to them.

And if you're reading Google today, once again, you'd have no idea today was anything more than just another day.

Update: Power Line spots the New York Times applying its own special focus to Memorial Day.

Mickey Kaus explains why--amongst many, many, many other reasons--"the L.A. Times is doomed":

The following teaser appears, not on the front page, but at the bottom of the first page of the B section in today's Los Angeles Times.

Lindsay Lohan arrested The actress, 20, is arrested on suspicion of drunk driving after hitting a curb and shrubbery in Beverly Hills. B3

P.S.: By the time LA residents got up to get the Sunday paper, the Lohan story had already led Drudge and been replaced by a fresher bit of news. Meanwhile, the New York Post featured an inch-and-a-half headline, plus picture, on its tabloid front page:

LINDSAY DRUG SHOCK Stash found after DUI bust

That's the New York Post of the same day as the LAT, even though the story happened in L.A. and the Post is produced in New York. ... The Post account is also juicier. ...

Being, you know, actually in L.A., the L.A. Times should be chock-a-block full of sexy, newspaper-selling, browser-clicking front page--and Front Page--worthy scandals. But this is far from the first time it's had a hot story pop up in its own backyard, only to be scooped by a hustling New York paper (in other words, not the almost equally lethargic NYT), buried, or ignored totally.

Or as Mark Steyn told John Hawkins a couple of years ago:

In London, the most competitive newspaper market in the world, papers thrive by encouraging distinctive controversial voices. In America, the average Gannett or other monodaily prefers a tone of self-regarding dullness. As my friend John O'Sullivan put it, "They neither offend nor delight" - as a matter of policy. Yes, they're broadly “liberal,” but not in a lively virtuoso engaging way, only in a dreary J-school way. I think they're missing the point here. They don't realize that they do have competitors now, in new media. In 1978, having driven your print competitors out of business, you could afford to be a dull city newspaper. I don't believe you can now.

And there's absolutely no reason (other than the numbing effects of political correctness and the entrenched institutional belief that the news is a "calling" and not a business) to be a dull paper in a city loaded with as many juicy stories as L.A.

Sorry to dust off Telly Savalas' old Players Club TV commercial pitch, but I wanted to remind you of the evil planet-crushing dangers of...."Big Recreation"!

“Big Oil” sounds a bit sinister.

“Big Tobacco”, likewise.

“Big Pharma”…uh, what?

And now I’m being told to fear “Big Recreation“.

Big Recreation?

Like “Evil Kitten”, it doesn’t matter what the adjective is, because the noun just defeats all attempts at scare tactics.

Oh, nooosss! I’m going to be relaxed and entertained to death!! Will they stop at nothing??

What's especially fun is watching members of "Big Recreation" tie themselves up in knots when they feel the need for self-persecution over the eeeeevils of so-called manmade Gerbil Worming or Glowball Warmening, as Tim Blair is wont to malaprop.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Related: Just in time for Memorial Day, puritanical Newsweek conjures up its inner nanny in regards to outdoor cooking.

Don Surber writes that while there's talk of outsourcing coverage of local events in American newspapers to overseas reporters, readers are more than willing to go overseas themselves for a story if it doesn't fit the seemingly monolithic MSM's template:

As my next post pointed out, the major American newspapers continue to ignore the story of a graphic torture handbook being discovered at an al-Qaeda safehouse.

They were awfully quick to play up the UN’s latest cheapshot at the US. An organization whose human rights council includes every human rights violator from Burkina Faso to Zimbabwe should be laughed off the world stage.

Instead, the American newspapers treat UN press releases like the holy grail.

But American readers have the Internet. And foreign nations are publishing reports on al-Qaedan Torture — actual torture, no panties on the head or False Stories about flushed Korans.

It will be interesting to see if op-eds start appearing in newspapers discussing the torture manual--assuming that's the case, it will be yet another example of opinion writers assuming that their readers are more than a little familiar with an event that their local newspapers couldn't be bothered to report. Or as I wrote a few months ago:

In the early days of the Blogosphere, the mantra was that while Big Media would do the reporting, you'd go the Blogosphere for opinion. But increasingly, it's been the Blogosphere that's been doing the heavy lifting.

That post has numerous example of this phenomenon in action; there will be many more to come in the next few years.

Update: More on this topic from Ed Morrissey.

From what I've heard, once you go dual, you never go back. I'll let you know--I'm experimenting with dual 19-inch LCD monitors. Surprisingly, it was a PITA to install, because apparently my PC's ATI videocard, which is designed to simultaneously pump out both VGA and DVI video--and hence allowing two monitors--apparently had a defective DVI output. But now that I've replaced the card, and have both monitors working, it seems like it should improve workflow with recording programs such as Cakewalk Sonar, and video programs like Adobe Premiere Pro. Not to mention experimenting with rotating the monitor 90 degrees for Word documents.

Besides, it looks bitchin' cool to boot. Maybe I'll add a third!

Needless to say, the Associated Press's collective mindset would be well-at-home at the Whitney Museum's "Summer of Love" exhibit; their reporting emphasis has changed little since the days of LBJ and RMN, Jules Crittenden writes:

I thought body counts went out with the Vietnam War. The AP is kicking off Memorial Day weekend with a fresh body count in Iraq.

How come no mention of Americans killed in Afghanistan since last Memorial Day?

The AP story leads with the number of new graves opened for dead American soldiers since Memorial Day last, but only those killed in Iraq. Why this slight? Are the dead in Afghanistan not worthy of respect in the eyes of the Associated Press? It is possible that this article is not about honoring the dead at all, or even about reporting the news, but just another thinly veiled editorial attack on the Bush administration? Would the Associated Press be so callous as to use American dead in this manner, as a political tool?

I’m beginning to get the impression there is nothing more important to the Associated Press in its Iraq reportage than the number of “American soldiers killed in this unpopular war.” That phrase, with a number, is typically trotted out no later than graph three in AP stories on Iraq. It’s as though the body count is the sole measure upon which all decisions and action must turn. There certainly has been no effort by the Associated Press, or other major news organizations on the ground in Iraq, to examine progress in anything but the most dismissive manner, with a quick revert to body count.

What would the recently deceased pioneering New Journalism war correspondent David Halberstam think of the AP's hidebound reactionary approach?

He'd support it wholeheartedly, of course.

Update: Related thoughts from Chris Muir.

We've written about Annie Jacobsen a couple of times here back in 2004 and 2005. The author of Terror In The Skies and the original column (which originally appeared on a financial Website called Woman's Wall Street that Jacobsen frequently contributes to) that the book derived from received plenty of skepticism from--shocker--those wishing to displace their fears of terror.

Ed Morrissey notes that in light of the details contained within an FBI report obtained by the Washington Times via a Freedom of Information Act request, "It appears that a few people may owe Jacobsen an apology".

I wonder if Snopes will update its page on the incident Jacobsen described to reflect the background information on one of the passengers in question that Ed describes.

Update: Related thoughts from Philip Pidot, who notes, "Maybe Jacobsen was lucky to suffer only derision and disregard. Today, she might well have been slapped with a defamation lawsuit".

From Dean Barnett, here's a moment of tolerance and diversity, courtesy of “Actor/Activist” Ben Affleck:

First, during the conversation, Ben Affleck said of Mitt Romney, “The Mormonism thing is really suspect.” I’m not screaming racism. I’m not even insinuating racism. I am quite confident that Ben Affleck has nothing but love in his heart for all peoples. Probably more so for peoples who share his political views than those who don’t, but I’m sure he’s a man of goodwill. After all, he is the man who gifted society with “Gigli.”

I am noting, however, that much like Peggy Noonan’s drive-by last week regarding temple garments, it is acceptable in the mainstream to say thing about Mormons that wouldn’t be acceptable regarding any other minority. Can you imagine someone like Affleck saying in regards to a different candidate, “The Muslim thing is really suspect” or “The Jewish thing is really suspect” and not getting called on it?

Regarding the latter, isn't that how the word "Neocon" became such a euphemistic epithet in the media? And speaking of which, for some overall perspective, it's worth revisiting Rod Dreher's look at the dog that didn't bark.

As the New York Times reported in March of last year, Vermont "is losing young people at a precipitous clip":

Vermont, with a population of about 620,000, now has the lowest birth rate among states. Three-quarters of its public schools have lost children since 2000.

Vermont also has the highest rate of students attending college out of their home state — 57 percent, up from 36 percent 20 years ago. Many do not move back. The total number of 20- to 34-year-olds in Vermont has shrunk by 19 percent since 1990.

The Times claimed Vermont's Republican governor, Jim Douglas, "is treating the situation like a crisis", quoting him as saying, "There's an exodus of young people. It's dramatic. We need to reverse it. The consequences of not acting are severe."

Maybe it's just me, but this action doesn't sound like it's on the cutting edge of demographic repair:

Gov. Jim Douglas used six pens Friday to sign his name to a bill that will ban school buses from running their engines while parked on school grounds, except under special circumstances.

Seated in the library at Browns River Middle School, Douglas rewarded a seventh-grade social studies class for its efforts on behalf of the bill by coming to the students to transform the legislation into law. He handed the pens he used to five students who led the lobbying effort and their teacher, Patty Brushett.

“This is a great step forward for our state,” Douglas said, listing benefits such as fuel conservation, improved air quality and reduction in greenhouse gases…

George Crombie, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, joined Douglas for the ceremony and presented the school with a sign to post by the driveway.

“These signs will go to every single school,” Crombie said. The red sign reads, “Please turn off your engines for our health.”

Paging Julia Gorin and Mark Steyn--your next columns await.

As Tim Graham notes, "The Left Eats Its Own", but then, they often do. And not just the brain-eating zombies in San Francisco, either.

Tim Graham spots ABC's Jake Tapper claiming that "the most surprising part" of Al Gore's Assault On Reason "was Gore's implication that if a more competent person had been president during 9/11 -- like, say, him -- 9/11 might not have happened":

Gore argues that the president does not need enhanced domestic surveillance powers he has sought and received, often in secret, just competent use of the information already available. He points out, for instance, the fact that 9/11 terrorists Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almidhar were already on a State Department/INS watch list.

He does not flatly state that 9/11 would not have occurred during a Gore administration. But, he writes, "whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable, it almost inevitably leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes."

Then, using a study from the Markle Foundation, Gore shows how "better and more timely analysis" -- not the increased data sought by the Bush administration -- would have led to other hijackers Salem Alhazmi, Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and so on. Bush received that dire warning in August 2001, Gore notes at two different points in the book -- "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." -- which he refers to as "a headline more alarming and more pointed than any I saw in eight years of six-days-a-week CIA briefings."

Gore notes that he took pre-9/11 warnings seriously, even if Bush did not. After all, "unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden an immediate threat" is "inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the president," Gore says, noting that as vice president he "made that very point to President Clinton when he had the opportunity to seize an al Qaeda operative who was planning an attack against us. And the president took my advice, though the individual we attempted to capture escaped."

But instead, Gore writes, incompetence rules the day and Bush has "taken us much further down the road toward an intrusive 'Big Brother'-style government -- towards the dangers prophesied by George Orwell in his book 1984 -- than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America."

It's a strong charge, laid out carefully, with tidbits dropped here and there throughout the book. I've covered Al Gore for years. He rarely misspeaks, never miswrites. He is smart and deliberate.

He's omniscient, our Goracle--too bad he couldn't prevent this attack on the World Trade Center. Or this bombing. Or this one, for that matter.

To be fair though, at least Al believes that 9/11 was caused by bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Rosie must be aghast.

Not that there are a whole lot of other blogging parodies out there of course. But this is exactly what my day looks like--including the moment when the scale model of stonehenge.blogspot.com descends on wires.

Run at 78 RPMs, and it would be exactly what the Professor's day looks like.

(Via Katie Favazza and Outside The Beltway.)

Ted Kennedy on immigration now and then...and then.

Jules Crittenden has this week's Great Moment In Headlines--and the story behind it is a pip, too.

But what role do the 72 midgets play?

In honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, Mark Steyn makes the Spice Run To Kessel and back, reprinting his reviews of the original film, plus its recent prequels. Qapla'!

(Whoops--sorry, wrong galactic empire...)

Libertas' "Dirty Harry" begs Richard Schickel's indulgence, proceeds to review Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End, whose plot (and by plot, read: reasons by the writers to generate swordfights, terabytes worth of bitchin' CGI, or both) he finds remarkably convoluted:

Every added plot point does the unthinkable. It crowds Jack Sparrow out of the film. Throughout, Sparrow’s frequently left literally in the background mugging or reacting or out of focus with the other extras. It was like watching the debut of Abbott and Costello in One Night In The Tropics; you just wanted to scream, We don’t care about any of this, let Jack do something! And yes, he’s given his moments, and yes, they’re the highlights, but nothing’s as inspired as before. Good comedy requires a good story or it becomes episodic. Sparrow reminded me of that guy in Airplane! who would dash in and out firing wisecracks.

Oh sure, I get Johnny Depp and Stephen Stucker confused all the time, too.

Seriously though, that was exactly the reaction I had to the first sequel to Pirates Of The Caribbean. The original film earned enormous goodwill through Johnny Depp's inspired performance. It was so deliberately over-the-top, goofy and good-natured, that it lifted what would have been an otherwise routine popcorn film into something that had much more of a heart than the average assembly line Hollywood CGI-fueled action flick.

But the sequel last year reminded me of something that Richard Lester once said, when he compared The Beatles' Help to their much more inspired first movie, A Hard Day's Night. This is a paraphrase, but it was something along the lines of, "We couldn't just repeat A Hard Day's Night, so the sequel just sort of ended up trapping the Beatles in their own movie". Or as Lester told Steven Soderbergh in 1999:

If you didn't want just to do a colour version of A Hard Day's Night and you think "Well here are these people playing themselves and we don't want to see what they do in their work, we can't show you what they do in their life because that's X-rated so what are we going to do with them?" We have to therefore make them passive responders to some external stimulus and that was how Help! came about.

And that's what the second Pirates Of The Caribbean movie felt like to me--instead of Depp in the foreground, with the action occurring naturally behind him, it felt much more like Johnny Depp trapped in a zillion dollar equivalent of a typical Disney theme park ride, passively responding to the external stimulae.

And it sounds like little has changed with the threequel. Oh well--at least there's Keith's cameo.

Andy McCarthy writes, "Good for Senator McCain on his sharp rebuttal to Senator Obama. May I add one point, though, that continues to make me nuts?"

Senator Obama says: "It is time to end this war so that we can redeploy our forces to focus on the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 and all those who plan to do us harm."

Senator Obama, are you proposing that we move U.S. troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, where you guys keep saying the "real" War on Terror is?

There is also a very good chance that bin Laden and some al Qaeda hierarchy are in Pakistan. When you say "redeploy," are you suggesting that we invade Pakistan?

Read the whole thing. As McCarthy writes, "Folks, let's not let these guys get away with this".

I don't think it's quite two-way capable yet, but still, your wrist TV awaits!

Sadly though, here's one person who won't be on it--at least for now. But she left in quite a huff, not surprisingly.

The poor get richer--and the rich become more numerous.

But who will get credit?

In his Daily Telegraph column, Tim Blair writes:

GLOBAL warming alarmists actually make a great deal of sense. That is, once you imagine that every time they open their mouths they're talking not about the environment but about Islamic terrorism.

Put that particular informational adjustment in place and suddenly even Tim Flannery begins sounding wise.

Bob Brown? You'd vote for him in a heartbeat.

And Al Gore's hard-hitting documentary about the Islamist threat - An Inconvenient Faith - might face the occasional bombing attack, but would otherwise be crucial viewing for those wishing to be informed on the great menace of our age.

Let's work through several typical greenoid statements to see this process at work, whereby formerly irrational and fear-mongering comments on global warming (confirmed kills: exactly zero) become entirely reasonable and defensible when framed as statements on Islamist terror (confirmed kills: many thousands and counting):

Read the rest.

Last summer, Jonah Goldberg wrote:

The No. 1 movie in America today is a fun, family-friendly romp of a cartoon about sending Jews to the gas chamber.

Just kidding.

It’s actually the movie Cars by Pixar. But according to some people, there’s not much difference. Indeed, the No. 1 movie in the hearts of liberals and environmentalists is An Inconvenient Truth, starring Al Gore, a man who believes that the threat posed by the internal combustion engine is not only the gravest peril mankind faces, but that defeating it is a moral imperative equal to stopping the Holocaust.

Reverend Al needs to start preaching to his choir a lot louder.

Related thoughts from the Anchoress, who wonders why Al won't sit down to a debate on his pet topic.

As Tim Blair writes, "Chicks Get Midgets", adding that "One of the great mysteries of modern times is finally solved by an Israeli radio journalist":

Speaking to an Arab affairs expert on the reports that Islamic Jihad is threatening to send scores of women suicide bombers to blow themselves up near IDF troops if Israel starts an operation on the ground in Gaza, she enquired what awaited such women in heaven, the equivalent of the notorious 72 virgins ready to serve the male shahids. The answer: dwarves who will serve them.

Larry Summers and Drew Gilpin Faust could not be reached for comment.

"The record-breaking Cornishman who is staying awake for 11 days"--Thus breaking Keith Richards' 1974 record by two hours!

Scrutinize it, says NGO Watch, and Gerald Steinberg of the New York Sun.

In The Washington Examiner, Lorie Byrd writes:

An aspect of the war on terrorism that gets too little attention, yet is as important as any other, is the media war. Whether they realize it, members of the mainstream media are participants in the war on terrorism, and nowhere is that more evident than in Iraq.

Blogger Bill Roggio, who has embedded as a journalist in Iraq and Afghanistan, says the enemy’s documents reveal that much of their strategy revolves around manipulation of the media. An enemy unable to beat us on the battlefield is employing a strategy of attacks planned specifically for maximum media coverage and effect.

A media which shouted "quagmire" even before the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein (just as David Halberstam deployed the first Q-word sighting in regards to Vietnam in 1965) is all too eager to be rolled. Especially since their base readership eats it up, as well.

Wendy Kaminer writes that "The ACLU is becoming very selective about what it considers 'free' speech:

"ACLU Defends Nazi's Right to Burn Down ACLU Headquarters," the humor magazine The Onion announced in 1999. Those of us who loved the ACLU, and celebrated its willingness to defend the rights of Nazis and others who had no regard for our rights, considered the joke a compliment. Today it's more like a reproach. Once the nation's leading civil liberties group and a reliable defender of everyone's speech rights, the ACLU is being transformed into just another liberal human-rights group that reliably defends the rights of liberal speakers.

This transformation is gradual, unacknowledged and not readily apparent, since evidence of it lies mainly in cases the ACLU does not take. It's naturally easier to know what an organization is doing (and advertising) than what it is not doing. But a review of recent free-speech press releases turns up only a handful of cases in which ACLU state affiliates defended the rights of conservative, antigay or otherwise politically incorrect speakers. And lately the national organization has been remarkably quiet in several important free-speech cases and controversies.

Cognitive dissonance after 9/11 previously caused a similar transformation that has dramatically diluted Amnesty International's reputation, as Steven Den Beste noted four years ago. So I can't say I'm surprised to see the ACLU already far down the same path.

(Via Betsy Newmark.)

"It is only infidels that go into journalism and into the media. That’s actually the main reason. If you say you are a journalist you are saying you are an infidel.”

(Geez, and after all Reuters and the BBC have done for them, too.)

Ed Morrissey spots an op-ed in the L.A. Times today written by a woman named Caroline Paul:

Her brother, Jonathan Paul, awaits sentencing for arson in connection with the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, and a terrorism component of his conviction could multiply his sentence. Caroline angrily denounces the application of terrorism in his case:

MY BROTHER IS considered one of the biggest domestic terrorists in the country. You probably haven't heard of him, and I think that's odd. After all, he's dangerous. He's trying to overthrow our country. He "doesn't like our freedoms," or so President Bush has said of terrorists in general, so I suppose that applies to my brother too.

Let me tell you a little bit about him. He likes the History Channel. He's a Trekkie. He cried (in secret) at the corny 1980s movie "Turtle Diary." He's good at fixing things. And, most important, he has devoted his life to stopping animals' suffering. To this end, he has broken the law. He crept into animal laboratories to free dogs. He dismantled corrals to release wild mustangs. He impersonated a fur buyer to film the treatment of minks. He put himself between whales and whalers despite warnings that his boat would be impounded and that he would be jailed. And nearly 10 years ago, he burned down a horse slaughterhouse in Redmond, Ore. It is for this final act that the U.S. government considers him among the ranks of Osama bin Laden, Eric Rudolph and Ramzi Ahmed Yousef. ...

Don't let me give you the impression that I think arson is something to be taken lightly. I do not. The irony is rich in this case: I was a San Francisco firefighter for 13 years. I was angry and dismayed that my brother chose arson as a route to stop animal suffering. But "a classic case of terrorism"?

Indeed it is--read the rest of Ed Morrissey's post for some (of the many) reasons why.

(Related story here.)

"Syriana Writer Weds Oil Heiress".

Read the whole thing.

Blog Week In Review is celebrating its first anniversary with three quarters of its original line-up: Austin Bay, Glenn Reynolds, and Tammy Bruce. (Sadly, Eric Umansky had a scheduling conflict, but promises to return sometime this summer.)

From my point of view in the producer's chair, I think the sound quality on this one is the best yet; I've been very fortunate to have the time to experiment and fine-tune things. So please have a listen, here.

Victor Davis Hanson writes on "European Sobriety":

So it is they, not us, that are returning to sobriety in matters of the trans-Atlantic relationship, and they are doing this not because of affection for George Bush, but despite their anxiety about him. And that is good news, since it suggests the warming exists apart from personalities, and reminds us that if the so-called and much deprecated “West” were ever to act in unison (the former British commonwealth, Japan, the US, and continental Europe), then radical Islam would simply have no chance against 8-900 million of the planet’s most productive, ingenious and democratic peoples.

At some point, European statesmen are going to bump into a great truth: that they spend almost nothing on defense, but intrinsically have access to the United States military, both by shared values, or at least the memory of shared values, and the allegiance of the American people to this now ridiculed, now archaic notion known as the “West.” All they have do is to occasionally show some warmth to the United States, and we crazy American people whether in World War I, II, the Cold War, or the war on terror, give our all to them—at no cost. We sense that Merkle and Sarkozy and the majorities that elected them, finally fear that they were reaching the point of American exasperation at which the old ties were broken for good, adn Europe was truly to be on its own, and thus pulled back—in time?

Futher down, don't miss Hanson's thoughts on "What, then, is the radical Left good for?"

On her newly spiffed-up site, The Anchoress goes X-Treeeeeme: "Oh, I think it’s definitely time. Let’s do it - let’s impeach President Bush".

Read the whole thing.

On Tuesday, I linked to Instapundit and Steve Green's posts on what Steve once called "Death By Veganism". A reader emailed yesterday:

I have a co-worker who is a strict vegan. Fortunately he is not one of those evangelical vegans, it doesn’t bother him to eat lunch with someone who is having meat nor does he try to sell “the benefits” of the diet to anyone. When asked he will tell you that he just cannot bring himself to eat anything that would have had “eyes”. I can accept that reason from him, he is one of those true gentle souls who would not intentionally harm anything unless it was life or death.

About five years ago, he was rushed to the emergency room and was hospitalized for massive internal bleeding. He almost died from it. It turned out that his vegan diet does not provide enough iron to keep his blood from breaking down. He now has to take iron pills that are so large you can magnetize them. He does joke about setting off metal detectors at the airport with them and such but he has also become a bit more careful now. He realizes that the vegan diet is not as “healthy” as it is cracked up to be so he takes supplements to make up for the deficiencies.

That sounds a bit like what ultimately killed Marty Feldman, according to his bio page on the Internet Movie Database.

(It's actually pretty surprising that those details are still on Feldman's page, considering how evangelical on this topic most bios in the IMDB have become. Either someone puts in that seemingly every actress and most actors in Hollywood are vegetarians of some stripe; or perhaps the site is vetted by PETA. Or both.)

Drink at your high school prom, make the front page of your local newspaper.

(Which is yet another way to keep a growing youthful narcissism in check, I suppose. But fortunately, such youthful indiscretions were more accepted--not the least of which by my parents--in the more sophisticated and nuanced culture of the past.)

Iowahawk explores the ramifications inherent in the numbers hidden within a recent (and entirely satiric) Pew Poll.

(My take? I think they're still seething over the cartoons negatively depicting one of their most important messianic figures.)

John Goldberg on the sudden--if not entirely surprising--rehabilitation of John Ashcroft's rep amongst the Beltway left:

If in 2002 I had written that by 2007 Democrats would be singing Ashcroft’s praises as a man of integrity and sound temperament, I would have been laughed out of the room. Right now, predicting a rehabilitation of George W. Bush elicits similar guffaws from the same crowd. But the fact is, if Ashcroft can be rehabilitated, anyone can be.

Read the whole thing.

In late April, Glenn Reynolds called it “Trying to execute a pivot in time for 2008”; Al Gore made his probably before 2003; John Edwards has completed his.

(As did these people of course; but to the best of my knowledge, they haven't yet announced their candidacies...)

Ace of Spades note the many ways that American newspapers try to spin a rather alarming fact discovered by a recent Pew poll:

One in four younger U.S. Muslims support suicide bombings.

As Ace writes, "This is what j-school taught them? How to actively withhold information from the public?"

The late David Halberstam once boasted that, "We give a jarring perception of reality to people"--but when the news gets too jarring, liberal journalists are perfectly prepared to withhold it or reshape it as necessary.

Update: Much more from on the actual numbers of the poll from Michelle Malkin.

Apologies to the Gumby Brain Surgery sketch--just to be on the safe side though, if you're worried that your tinfoil hat doesn't provide maximum protection, better pick up a pair of these.

Jonah Goldberg on Ron Paul, in his video debate with Peter Beinart.

When Ronald Reagan met Bobby Kennedy in front of 15 million viewers on CBS--and left RFK muttering to his aides, “Who the f—- got me into this?”

Glenn Reynolds reviews a topic (which Steve Green once posted on in the early days of VodkaPundit): "Death By Veganism", and Nina Planck's new book, Real Foods, whish apparently has launched a vegan-fueled flamewar on its Amazon review. A reader emailed the Professor this:

The Vegans are on the attack... Planck just wrote an op-ed piece in the NY Times today (May 21) discussing the lethality of unsupplemented Vegan diets (after yet another couple was convicted of murder for starving their infant by withholding animal protein.) But now it's payback time, so the Vegans have come to try to destroy Planck for bringing science, not sentiment, to the subject of nutrition.

Politics and PETA won't keep a baby alive when it's deprived of the essential amino acids that can only be found in animal protein. And none of these Vegans have read Planck's book...I have, and it's good.

Glenn adds:

I had a girlfriend who was on a vegan diet. She came down with Kwashiorkor. Luckily, the folks at Cornell Student Health diagnosed it quickly, even though it's a protein-deficiency disease normally found in starving third-world children, because they had seen it so often among women on vegan diets.

Am I the only one who had an instant flashback to Tom Wolfe's "The Great Relearning" essay from Hooking Up upon reading that? There's an earlier version of it online here:

“Start from zero” was the slogan of the Bauhaus School, a tiny artists’ movement in Germany in the 1920s that swept aside the architectural styles of the past and created the glass-box face of the modern American city during the twentieth century. I should mention the soaring exuberance with which the movement began, the passionate conviction of the Bauhaus’s leader, Walter Gropius, that by starting from zero in architecture and design man could free himself from the dead hand of the past.

The hippies sought nothing less than to sweep aside all codes of restraints of the past and start out from zero. Among the codes and restraints that people in the [hippie] communes swept aside—quite purposely—were those that said you shouldn’t use other people’s toothbrushes or sleep on other people’s mattresses without changing the sheets or, as was more likely, without using any sheets at all.

And in 1968 they were relearning…the laws of hygiene…by getting the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot. This process, namely the relearning—following a Promethean and unprecedented start from zero—seems to me to be the leitmotif of the 21st century.

Sadly, they'll be no end to either the enormous desire to Start From Zero--or the Great Relearning which inevitably follows--in the coming years.

In the New York Sun, Gary Giddens reviews the classic DVD re-release of the week: 1949's The Third Man, which reunited the stars of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton, under the able direction of Carol Reed. Reed not only supplies Welles with one of the most memorable entrances to a movie, (about a half-hour in, after which Welles owns the film), but allowed Welles to supplant Graham Greene's otherwise brilliant script with one of the great speeches in the history of the medium, which by all accounts, Welles wrote himself:

Don't be so gloomy--after all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

(And if that speech sounds familiar, it's probably because you've seen on this blog's homepage, below Welles' scene-stealing grin from his entrance to the movie.)

Steve Chapman writes, "It's 10 p.m. Do you know how big your child's ego is?"

Fortunately, the antidote is easy: repeat the dosage of this visual downer enough times until the New Hopelessness kicks in amongst youngsters.

Gail Heriot explores "Religious Beliefs & Behavior of College Faculty".

The paperless office? It's certainly not Al Gore's, which is overflowing with dead tree publications. As Ann Althouse wrote recently:

I keep reading about how hybrid cars and compact fluorescent lightbulbs can reduce the production of greenhouse gases, but I have yet to see an article about the savings that could be achieved if we were to stop delivery of newspapers and magazines and do all of our news reading on line.

For example, The New Republic has a nice "Good Citizen's Guide to Reducing Global Warming" -- PDF -- but they never say you really ought to cancel your subscription to the physical magazine The New Republic and read on line. You should still pay them for full access on-line, and you should buy TimesSelect for the NYT, but isn't it shameful to have this whole stack of newsprint delivered every day?

It should be especially shameful for the Goracle. And note the three big screen LCD monitors. As Rush Limbaugh quips, "The only people who need three 30-inch monitors turned on at the same time are people like me, radio hosts, stockbrokers, and the men and women at the CIA's op center". (Plus the additional 30-inch LCD TV set in the right of the shot.)

Hey, I think everyone has the right to as many monitors on their desktops as they want. But then, I'm not the Elmer Gantry of environmentalism. If Gore weren't worshiped by well over two-thirds of Beltway journalists, they'd crucify him over the disparity between what he preaches, and the way he lives. But much like the typical Hollywood celebrity, he's golden.

James Taranto spots this online chat involving a Post reader and Warren Brown, the Washington Post's car columnist:

Clifton, Va.: Warren, my wife and I are considering a minivan in the near future. I like the idea of the Mazda5--truly a "mini" van--but saw that it's basically a Mazda3 with more seats and more metal. How woefully underpowered is the 5?

Warren Brown: Ah, Clifton,what do you mean by "underpowered"? For many people, the 153-hp offered by the Mazda5 is quite enough. For others, it isn't. Again, you can go to hell or to jail in a 153-hp vehicle just as fast as you can get to either one of those places in something with more horsepower. My thing is this: Horsepower should be taxed. The more you get, the more you pay. That seems fair to me in a world where only a few of us, mostly in military uniform, are paying dearly to secure oil for the horsepower the rest of us want. Or, is it that you accept the myth that we're fighting for "freedom" in Iraq?

Astonishing, but as Taranto adds:

You see this all the time: writers who cover sports, technology, the arts or in this case cars, but wish they were political pundits, apparently believing their actual beat isn't "important" enough. But almost invariably the political rants they insert into their work are as insipid as this Brown bit. C'mon, Warren, wouldn't you rather be a first-rate car columnist than a fifth-rate Molly Ivins?

In one paragraph, Brown manages to make the NPR Car Talk guys to sound like actual automotive buffs, which really takes work.

Is it safe to say that just as Deborah Howell, the Post's ombudswoman, dubbed William Arkin as one of the best-known "anti-military military bloggers", that Brown is the anti-car car guy? Or is he simply anti-reader? Sometimes it's hard to tell these days with newspapers.

Update: Related thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson and Glenn Reynolds.

The Red Queen's Race continues to march on.

In the L.A. Times, Richard Schickel discovers the Blogosphere. I used to really enjoy Schickel when he wrote movie reviews for Time magazine 30 years ago (including the article behind one of my favorite Time covers for obvious reasons; note the poster in my den). But with a reaction that's much like my Bing Crosby-worshiping father hearing Led Zeppelin for the first time, Schickel does not like the successors to his genre.

At all.

But then, no one in a legacy industry likes to come face to face with his successors.

Update: Not surprisingly, "Dirty Harry" of the heavily trafficked group film criticism blog Libertas takes umbrage with the screedy Schickel. I'm kind of surprised that apparently, no one at Blogcritics has yet posted anything about Schickel's rant, as Eric Olsen's pioneering site did much to create a salon for Blogospheric criticism from perspectives much more diverse than the monolithic LA Times.

To be fair to Schickel, the ability to instantly self-publish does not immediately make someone H.L. Mencken, of course. There’s lots of dross in the Blogosphere—but then, there’s lot of dross everywhere; Sturgeon’s Law is inviolable. But it most assuredly includes newspapers and magazines, as well. Readers have long since known that the “halo effect” that was provided by being chosen to be in print by gatekeepers such as editors and publishers has faded badly over the last several decades. That's one of the reasons why newspapers are being abandoned in droves (as the circulation figures at Time and the LA Times help to illustrate) as readers seek alternatives.

“A bleak, grim era for people who want to see doors slide open with a little ‘woosh’ sound”.

--In the Strib, James Lileks surveys the dreadful 1970s science fiction landscape, and the 1977 film that changed everything, ironically by returning Hollywood as a whole to what it did best, after a self-imposed near-disastrous decade in the wilderness.

It also helped to keep the more esoteric aspects of Hollywood afloat for a time. Lileks writes:

Granted, it helped sweep away all the off-kilter independent visions that populated '70s cinema, but hey, no one ever stopped Robert Altman from shooting a funky, multiplot film about 27 quirky people on a giant orbital death-star.

Ironically, as I mentioned in January of 2006 in my profile of the now-deceased Altman:

In Easy Rider, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind writes that in the late '70s, "the Star Wars profits made it possible for [then-20th Century Fox studio head Alan Ladd Jr.] to shelter Altman during the second half of the decade".

But then, Star Wars' profits helped to shelter the industry as a whole, long before the movie industry had the revenue from DVD, VHS and sales to cable and satellite TV to fall back on. Not to mention another Star Wars innovation: toy merchandising on a scale never before seen--the success of which caught not just Hollywood by surprise.

Mickey Kaus on immigration; Mark Steyn has a modest proposal in response.

Meanwhile, as Hugh Hewitt gets under the boilerplate and read the fine print, he advises, "Send Lawyers, Clerks, Judges, And Background Checks".

Guns and money probably wouldn't hurt, either.

Spring is normally a lovely time to be in Manhattan, but it couldn't have been much fun inside the Grey Lady's offices last month--reader Dart Montgomery writes in with a link to an AP report that notes, "New York Times Revenue Slips 2.2 Percent in April on Weakness in Print Media Groups".

So when will the inevitable reshuffling occur that reassigns Maureen Dowd to covering the Jets and Giants, and puts Paul Krugman on Con-Ed hearings?

This is pretty cool--via Execupundit, I just discovered that my TCS Daily profile of Robin Aitken's Can We Trust The BBC has been linked to by Arts & Letters Daily, under this blurb:

The BBC: cool and objective in its regard for the news and issues of the day. It reports, you decide – uh, just like Fox News...

Whatever you think of them, it's difficult to imagine the typical Fox pundit sounding quite this condescending while purporting to conduct an "objective" interview with a prominent world figure.

Update: Power Line has a look back at Churchill's (often rather negative) thoughts regarding the BBC of the 1930s and '40s.

Of McCain's F-bombing of fellow Republican Sen. John Cornyn this past week over the immigration bill, Betsy Newmark writes:

Blowing off Cornyn to embrace Kennedy might be a sincere expression of what McCain believes in regarding immigration but it's not a move to endear himself to those whose votes he needs to win the nomination. We're less concerned that the man has a bad temper than why and at whom he chooses to exercise that temper.

Meanwhile, Robert Byers (who's a Duncan Hunter man) believes he hears the death knell for McCain's campaign chances. In a way, McCain's currently lost his stature with two constituencies: his base of voters feels alienated, and his media base of liberal Beltway journalists has already begun to turn towards Obama and Hillary. The latter group was lost the moment the 2008 race began; is McCain too out of touch to win back the former?

Update: Speaking of Blowup, Michelle Malkin spots "The bigger 'F**k you!'"

Yet another example to add to this list, which seems bottomless at times.

Charles Johnson has the developing details.

Newsbusters' Noel Sheppard writes, "an editor for Australia’s The Age, Melanie Griffin, published an absolutely delicious article Sunday slamming the upcoming 'Live Earth' concerts about to be thrown in the name of global warming alarmism". I don't want to reprint Noel's whole post, so here are just a sample of the questions that Griffin asks:

What if all those rock groups donated serious cash to a fund that subsidised alternative energy sources?

What if everyone stayed home?

What if all 2 billion turned off the TV and did something unplugged for once?

As Sheppard writes:

Yes, Melanie, what if?

Of course, the Global Warmingest-in-Chief wouldn’t be able to take to the stage to cheering international crowds that way. And, in the end, although our media refuse to recognize it, that’s what it’s all about.

Indeed it is.

In his review of Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History, which Power Line's Scott Hinderaker describes as "a 1,621-page book (plus another thousand pages of notes on a CD-ROM), twenty years in the making, on the assassination of JFK", Bryan Burrough of The New York Times writes:

What Bugliosi has done is a public service; these people should be ridiculed, even shunned. It’s time we marginalized Kennedy conspiracy theorists the way we’ve marginalized smokers; next time one of your co-workers starts in about Oswald and the C.I.A., make him stand in the rain with the other outcasts. “

Can we put the 9/11 conspiracy theorists out there with them in the rain as well? But since they make up 61 percent of the Times' subscriber base, that would be a lot of people getting wet, along with their spiritual avatar.

Speaking of Kennedy's assassination and what led to so many conspiracy theories being built as a form of displacement, I'm eagerly awaiting James Piereson's new book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution. I wrote about the Commentary article that was its forerunner, last year.

"I'm against torture. I'm also against moralistic, dishonest, self-righteous preening about torture".

--Glenn Reynolds on Andrew Sullivan.

(And for a hip reference to one of the Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones' more off-the-wall tracks in reference to illegal immigration, click here.)

Tim Blair has details.

They can't be bothered showing up for the War On Terror (assuming those three words haven't entirely become samizdat), but according to Radar magazine, "Hollywood Vs. the Paparazzi: It's War!", thus proving the accuracy, at least in one sense, of the first of Robert Conquest's Three Laws of Politics.

Not surprisingly, the overculture which brought you A New Hopelessness applies its nihilism to war memorials as well.

Related thoughts from Michelle Malkin and Mark Steyn.

Like I said, Ronald Paul is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I have ever known in my entire life.

Execupundit's Michael Wade notes that no corner of academia is immune from radical politicization. Meanwhile, Roger Simon explores an exceptional way to "Mau-Mau the Multiculturalists".

(And I'll second that emotion.)

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Lassie and Bruce:

As far as the left is concerned, only someone who has actually served in the military has Absolute Moral Authority to comment on Iraq and the president's handling thereof. Except when he does something like this, of course.

William Arkin could not be reached for comment.

"On the Edge of Blade Runner". Hopefully we're also on the edge of this, as well.

Jonah Goldberg writes, "Let’s stipulate Vietnam was a civil war. So what? There were certainly good guys and bad guys, and let the record show the bad guys won, which was not in our interests. This in turn led to many humanitarian calamities. And, recall, another superpower intervened in that civil war, and it worked out pretty well for the Soviets":

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has been desperate to keep the press from describing the situation in Iraq as a “civil war,” for the obvious reason that the administration will lose its remaining support if the American public thinks this is just a civil war.

OK, but here’s what I don’t get: Why? Why is it obvious that intervening in a civil war is not only wrong, but so self-evidently wrong that merely calling the Iraqi conflict a civil war closes off discussion?

Read the whole thing.

Because there's no escape from the mobius loop of the 1970s, including the same annual spate of eco-apocalyptic doomsday movies, here's Leonard Dicaprio describing his own enviroflick, The 11th Hour:

Well that comes down to the fact that these are extremely complicated issues and can't be put into a format of predigested baby food that is spoon-fed (the audience). These are complicated issues to wrap your head around, and we knew that. But ultimately the most important thing to us was whether you were emotionally moved at the end of the movie. And on a personal level, I believe that has been accomplished. Yes, a lot of the science is very hard to wrap your head around. But I was very clear in the movie. I want the public to be very scared by what they see. I want them to see a very bleak future. I want them to feel disillusioned halfway through and feel hopeless.

Just think of it as another chapter in Episode IV: A New Hopelessness.

While Tim Blair is out test driving his latest ride, I'm putting a different sort of machine through its paces. I'll let you know when the review is online or on dead tree.

Kathy Shaidle writes, "while the Left was unfairly accused of 'creating' 9/11, what they really were responsible for was... Jerry Falwell himself. Without the ERA, Roe v. Wade, Engel v. Vitale and the radical gay and feminist movements, the rise of a Jerry Falwell would never have happened".

You can't move too far in either direction--and as David Frum wrote, the decade of the 1970s, dominated by the post-LBJ "new left", dramatically set the stage for today's society--without expecting a backlash.

Update: Star Parker writes, "The Rev. Jerry Falwell's passing seems to have traumatized the mainstream liberal press. Absent in its coverage of the event is even the normal pretense of objectivity".

(Via Jules Crittenden.)

Prominent GOP leaders booed by party faithful over immigration bill. As Glenn Reynolds notes:

I still don't know enough to know if the bill is good or bad. But if the bill is actually a good bill that the GOP base would accept if they read it . . . then that's an even bigger indictment of the GOP leadership for failing to sell it. At this point, they've either mis-sold a good bill, or produced a bad one.

Hugh Hewitt is reading the actual text of the bill (and needless to say, there's lots of text) and recommends that, "the president and the GOP Senate leadership need to postpone any cloture vote until the law is examined, debated and amended".

That sounds remarkably prudent to me.

Meanwhile, "Oklahoma's Brand of Immigration Reform Barely Makes News; Guess Why?"

Roger Daltry's not buying into the hype of the puritanical "Live Earth" concerts to help raise Al Gore’s stature, and ideally amongst the left, help to dramatically slow the economy by attempting to force Kyoto-style anti-business regulations down the throats of the US government:

JUST when it looked like every rock star on the planet was jumping aboard AL GORE's green bandwagon, there’s a backlash already underway.

THE WHO's ROGER DALTRY has blasted the big Wembley gig Gore is organising to raise awareness of global warming.

The huge concert - which features performances from the likes of MADONNA and RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - is taking place at Wembley on July 7 and in other countries around the world.

But Roger, who played with U2 at Live Aid and Live8, reckons the whole thing is a waste of time.

Speaking exclusively to Bizarre, Roger said: "Bo***cks to that! The last thing the planet needs is a rock concert.

"I can't believe it. Let's burn even more fuel.

"We have problems with global warming, but the questions and the answers are so huge I don't know what a rock concert's ever going to do to help.

"Everybody on this planet at the moment, unless they are living in the deepest rainforest in Brazil, knows about climate change.”

The rocker, who used to sing about my g-generation, added: "My answer is to burn all the f***ing oil as quick as possible and then the politicians will have to find a solution.”

(Via Instapundit.)

This will never happen of course, but I'd love to see an interviewer ask the participants at Gore Aid to take a pledge involving their touring and personal lifestyles, similar to the one that Gore himself recently rejected:

An interesting event took place during soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore’s visit to Congress on Wednesday. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) asked the former Vice President to take a pledge that he would not use more energy in his personal residence than the average American, and Gore refused (video available here).

As reported at the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works website: "Senator Inhofe showed Gore a film frame from 'An Inconvenient Truth' where it asks viewers: 'Are you ready to change the way you live?'”

On the playground, one would call this “Put up or Shut up.” Do you think Gore put up? The press release deliciously continued:

“There are hundreds of thousands of people who adore you and would follow your example by reducing their energy usage if you did. Don’t give us the run-around on carbon offsets or the gimmicks the wealthy do,” Senator Inhofe told Gore.

“Are you willing to make a commitment here today by taking this pledge to consume no more energy for use in your residence than the average American household by one year from today?” Senator Inhofe asked.

Senator Inhofe then presented Vice President Gore with the following "Personal Energy Ethics Pledge:

As a believer:

that human-caused global warming is a moral, ethical, and spiritual issue affecting our survival;

that home energy use is a key component of overall energy use;

that reducing my fossil fuel-based home energy usage will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions; and

that leaders on moral issues should lead by example;

I pledge to consume no more energy for use in my residence than the average American household by March 21, 2008.

I wouldn't have as much of a problem with Live Earth if it really were The Last Rock Concert by those who participated in it. It takes an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously believe that the planet's ecosphere is soon to be doomed, but the solution is a blowout concert in two different football stadiums.

As Daltry told the The Sun, "I can't believe it. Let's burn even more fuel". Each concert will require massive transportation efforts involving jet planes and tractor-trailers, hundreds of thousands of watts of electricity to power the lighting and sound gear, and the deforestation required to print at least couple of hundred thousand souvenir programs (and many more no doubt, for sale afterwards). And heck, just think of all of the methane emissions coming from the stadiums' rest rooms, where, no matter how much the audience promises, the Sheryl Crow Rule is incredibly difficult to enforce.

But in the minds of its participants, a cause like Live Earth is worth it. But a generic, everyday, run of the mill concert shouldn't be. So go out with a bang, rock stars--and then, don't be hypocritical puritans; take the sort of pledge that even the Goracle won't.

Tim Russert takes a vow of silence.

Robert Conquest's Three Laws of Politics:

1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.

3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

#2 has been proven time and time and time again; Glenn Reynolds believes #3 best explains the Republican crack-up over immigration. On the other hand, Jim Geraghty writes:

Two words for anybody who thinks this immigration bill is a done deal, and there's no way enough opposition builds:

Harriet Miers.

And finally, your George Orwell meets Malcolm Muggeridge moment of the day: a reporter at a press conference on the immigration compromise yesterday actually asked about "law-abiding illegal workers".

Can you say cognitive dissonance? I knew that you could!

"Outgoing "View" co-host Rosie O’Donnell made racist and anti-Catholic slurs during her tenure on the show. On the May 18 edition, she can now add a sexist comment to her resume".

Certainly more than the New York Times does, at least.

(Via Instapundit. Besides, her post gives me an excuse to link to one of the great trash rock songs of the early days of MTV.)

Is the Immigration Bill DOA when it hits the House?

Update: As Hugh Hewitt writes, "N.Z. Bear has the picture worth 1,000 posts".

More: Mickey Kaus disagrees with Power Line's thesis: "Opponents of the GOP cave-in on immigration would be fools, I think, to rely on Nancy Pelosi's House to kill the legislation...Hugh Hewitt's instinct--to try to stall the bill now, in the Senate--seems sound".

Mickey Kaus has some words of encouragement for those feeling disenfranchised by the Senate's immigration bill yesterday.

The San Jose Mercury News reports:

Four days after suffering a stroke, Bo Diddley walked around the intensive-care unit at Creighton University Medical Center, and doctors were encouraged that the singer-songwriter-guitarist would be able to perform again, his manager said.

The 78-year-old Diddley told his audience that he wasn't feeling well during a show in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Saturday night. Diddley's manager, Margo Lewis, said she had the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer taken to the hospital by ambulance when he appeared disoriented at the Omaha airport on Sunday.

I saw Bo Diddley in Philadelphia (where this watch is still worth fifty dollars) in the mid-1980s, when he played in a small, funky bar during his endless touring. His namesake rhythm, the "Bo Diddley Beat", which is sort of “shave-and-a-haircut, two bits” played on an open-tuned electric guitar (typically one of Bo's funky box-shaped axes, the only thing remotely square about the man), is one of the great rock and roll rhythm patterns. It's been adapted by rockers following in Bo's wake as diverse as Buddy Holly (for "Not Fade Away") in the late 1950s, to the Pretenders during their original line-up's hip early days at the start of the 1980s. Their "Cuban Slide's" rhythm pattern is a near perfect example of Bo’s beat.

Here's hoping a swift, full recovery to the former boxer turned rock pioneer.

Perhaps responding to rival upstart 18 Doughty Street's recent "World Without America" video, Joseph Loconte notes a story that rarely--if ever, heretofore now--gets much play on the modern BBC:

Restrained praise is in order for the BBC’s Radio 4 series on anti-Americanism called “Death to America.” The brainchild of senior Washington correspondent Justin Webb, the three-part program examined the hatreds toward America that are bubbling over in France, Venezuela, Egypt and beyond. “A pattern was emerging and has never seriously been altered,” Webb said of his experience of anti-Americanism in Europe. “A pattern of willingness to condemn America for the tiniest indiscretion—or to magnify those indiscretions—while leaving the murderers, dictators, and thieves who run other nations oddly untouched.”

It was this realization, he said, that launched him into the series, which aired three consecutive weeks last month. Any regular consumer of the BBC, if he’s honest, must admit that Webb’s simple insight is rarely if ever heard across the BBC’s media colossus. It took guts for Webb to approach his superiors about the program concept, and a refreshing measure of fairness for the BBC’s top brass to sign off on it.

Note the language used to promote the show, however:

Its promotional plug, for example, promises to question “the common perception” of the United States as “an international bully” and a “modern day imperial power.” It’s still debatable how common that perception is outside of the elite dining halls of London, Paris, Geneva and Brussels. (The election of Nicolas Sarkozy as French President — unashamedly pro-American — contributes to that debate.)

More thoughts on the BBC can be found in former BBC journalist Robin Aitken's new book, which I profiled recently at TCS Daily.

When you have a long history of comparing global warming to the Holocaust, and those who disagree with you to "Digital Brown Shirts", then titling your next book this certainly seems more than a little like a dual-edged sword.

And for more inconvenient irony, it's worth flashing back to Ann Althouse's recent comments regarding the media that it was printed on, and its distribution method.

Richard Fernandez writes:

Sixty-four years ago today a handpicked squadron of RAF pilots, led by a dashing young war hero took off on a mission to flood out Hitler’s war machine by destroying the dams which supplied hydroelectric power to the Ruhr…

Read the rest.

For some thoughts on an Allied bombing raid on Nazi Germany to which history has been even less kind, click here.

Don't walk too close to Michael Moore, as he's in serious danger of smiting from above, after telling an interviewer, "Every fact in my films is true".

That would be news to liberals such as Christopher Hitchens, the late Pauline Kael, fellow leftwing documentarians, and half the Blogosphere, of course.

Update: Wow--He's not kidding, apparently....

"Ann Curry Pedals 'People-Powered Blender' to 'Save the Environment!'"

Presumably, her producer will soon be switching to people-powered generators for the 50,000 watts of studio lighting necessary to illuminate the set of the Today.

Glenn Reynolds has some thoughts on the immigration bill: "Whether or not this is a good bill -- which I'm not sure of one way or another -- it's likely to be political disaster for the GOP. Can you say 'death wish?'"

Dean Barnett lists one potential immediate casualty: "Today’s events put the non-viability of the McCain candidacy into stark relief. McCain has committed so many offenses to conservatives over the past six years that he can’t realistically hope to emerge from their shadow".

Update: Meanwhile, another congressional story may be flying under radar while the immigration bill dominates the news, at least in the Blogosphere: "Congress OKs $2.9 trillion budget plan".

More: Ed Morrissey has a contrarian take on the immigration bill:

As I wrote yesterday, this is about as good as we will get in this Congress. In fact, the Democrats probably had enough votes to pass something much more like a wide-open amnesty, given a few Republican votes in support of that and the relaxed attitude of the White House on immigration reform. The GOP did a pretty good job of holding the line and forcing the Democrats to include the border-first triggers, the reduction of the family interest, and the rest of what Kyl managed to retain.

It's not great, and it's not even very good. It's not bad, though, and given our lack of strength in Congress and the White House on this issue, it's a good deal that will strengthen our national security now rather than wait another two years to address it. To quote the Rolling Stones, you can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. This is one of those times.

I don't think that argument is going to mollify Hugh Hewitt, who's not a happy camper--to the say the least--on his radio show right now.

Charles Johnson has today's must-listen audio, in which John Bolton fights back against the incredibly biased questions of his BBC interviewer.

The objective, impartial BBC biased? Why, deucedly so, old sport! And it's great to hear someone call them out on it, and to hear the flustered response of one of their journalists, when his attempt to claim a self-lobotomized lack of a worldview is questioned by his interviewee.

Update: Rosie O'Donnell, your new network awaits! Rosie's comments today on The View as her tour of duty there winds up dovetail remarkably nicely with those of Bolton's interviewer.

Related: "Bush Chastises British Reporters For Treating Blair Like Dead Minister Walking".

"Your university may not honor your military service, but the United States of America does".

--President Bush in the White House East Room for an ROTC commissioning ceremony.

"This is what my 9th grade teacher told me government is all about and I finally got to experience it".

--Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on today's immigration agreement.

In The Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson explores the New Hollywood: R-rated smoking, X-rated trans-fats.

When you live with an obsession with diversity (as characterized by its modern definition of skin color, not ideas), you die by it as well.

Update: 1000 words no longer necessary.

Ed Morrissey wonders why Sandy Berger is so quick to toss his law license:

People spend three years of their lives in a pressure-cooker graduate program to get law degrees. They spend years honing their craft by playing gopher to accomplished attorneys and judges in order to garner the experience they need to earn a good living at practicing law. A few talented individuals earn partnerships in prestigious law firms, while others work hard in the political sphere to reach a point where they can write their own ticket at any firm fortunate enough to put their name on the letterhead.

So when someone who has achieved all of that just tosses away a lucrative asset like a law license, one has to ask why.

Read the rest.

Last year, Bret Stephens wrote in Opinion Journal, "How do you spot an anti-Semite? Ask about Israel".

In the New York Sun today, Ryan Sager writes, "For all those getting really excited about anti-war, libertarian Republican Ron Paul, it's worth noting that he's pretty racist and also an anti-Semite":

The Houston Chronicle story linked above contains quotes from a newsletter Mr. Paul put out in the 1980s and 1990s. It includes quotes referring to blacks as crime-prone and "fleet-footed."

Mr. Paul also wrote that "By far the most powerful lobby in Washington of the bad sort is the Israeli government" and that the goal of the Zionist movement is to stifle criticism.

Regarding Paul's infamous moment in Tuesday's debate, Jonah Goldberg adds:

If you actually listen to more authentic voices than bin Laden’s — both democratic activists and Islamist bad guys — you’ll find that one of the real reasons “they hate us” is that we support their corrupt rulers and dictators (in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere). Ron Paul’s vision of foreign policy would do nothing to dissuade that impression, because he wants to be “friends” with everybody, starting with those very same dictators. Such friendship would have led to Saddam having nukes in the 1990s and would, if implemented today, lead to Iran having them any minute now. More to the point, we were right to reverse Saddam’s aggression in 1991. We were wrong not to take out Saddam back then. And we were right to keep Saddam contained as much as we could. But not according to Paul.

Read the whole thing.

Ace of Spades links to a Denver Post article which reports:

The attorney for University of Colorado ethnic-studies professor Ward Churchill said Tuesday that the committee reviewing his academic misconduct case has recommended a one-year suspension rather than dismissal.

I don't know about you, but I'm about as shocked as Louis Renault discovering gambling in Rick's Cafe (and at least he attempted to feign a penumbra of an aura of mock surprise) by this development. Ace's guest blogger "Slublog" has some thoughts on how this development is likely to further lower academia's reputation in the coming years.

Allah writes:

From Drudge bombshell to news article to sinfully delicious talking points to retreat in the span of about three hours.

Might be a new record.

* As defined by Mickey Kaus.

Newsbusters reports:

Katie Couric, was not warning parents about sexual predators when she said "They're after your children and grandchildren." No, the “Evening News” anchor was talking about corporations “spending nearly $17 billion a year trying to sell their products to our kids.”

The one-sided May 14 segment blamed “far-reaching tentacles” of business for obesity and youth sexual activity, among other problems.

CBS Corporation, which has revenues estimated to be $14.536 billion, saw its share price close at 32.04 on the New York Stock Exchange today.

Related: "Dan Rather Makes Acting Debut". Umm, didn't he do that around 1959?

"Before CAIR and the Flying Imams…the Islamic Society of Boston had already pioneered the use of lawsuits to silence their critics and the media".

Update: More silencing discovered here--and no lawsuit needed to largely silence the MSM.

Mark Steyn takes on the blacklist! Or rather, the sentimentality that's built up over the last half century in Hollywood regarding it, which, much like believing that Richard Nixon (let alone the Gipper and George W. Bush) is the antichrist, requires that the blinders be placed as tight as possible over the eyes. Not to mention the brain:

Bernard Gordon died over the weekend. He was one of those Hollywood Communists of the Forties blacklisted in the Fifties, and it defined him till the end. A solid Hollywood screenwriter, Gordon adapted The Day Of The Triffids and was a reliable hand at war movies, among them The Battle Of The Bulge and, of all things, Hellcats Of The Navy, with Ronald Reagan's only film role with Nancy. Gordon's screenplay and the stars' performance aren't always in sync: even as Ron's explaining why he's so tortured with guilt he can never marry her, he and Nancy look like a placidly contented small-town couple heading for a night out at the local Rotary Club. In later years, the screenwriter led the protests against the very belated Oscar awarded to Elia Kazan in 1999. As Gordon wrote of Kazan in The Los Angeles Times, “He helped to support an oppressive regime that did incalculable damage to America and abroad.”

Interesting choice of word: "regime". And what about the regime you supported?

* * *

That’s what all those Hollywood and Broadway Communists did. They were the polite front of an ideology that led to mass murder, and they expected Kazan to honour their gentleman’s agreement. In those polite house parties Gregory Peck goes to [in Gentleman's Agreement], it’s rather boorish and tedious to become too exercised about anti-semitism. And likewise, at gatherings in the arts, it’s boorish and tedious to become too exercised about Communism – no matter how many faraway, foreign, unglamorous people it kills. Elia Kazan was on the right side of history. His enemies line up with the apologists for thugs and tyrants. Whose reputation would you bet on in the long run?

Read the whole thing.

Via Tim Blair, "Tree weds tree in Orissa village"; more green religion here.

Update: Heh.

James Lileks' first local beat story for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is now online.

Found via Virginia Postrel, check out Helvetica: The Motion Picture.

(Previous font blogging here; title explanation over at Blogcritics.)

James Lileks' trip to DisneyWorld continues apace:

Gnat – who’d ridden Space Mountain without a care – was slightly freaked out by the Haunted Mansion, and not without reason. It was stunning. Wonderfully creepy. We rode along, floating in the dark over a void the depths of which you could not sense, passing the desiccated corpses and cobweb-draped skeletons, observing a ballroom where everyone spun around in eternal pursuit, so focused on the dance they'd forgotten they were dead.

What an excellent metaphor for my life in newspapers.

Read the whole thing--it's a small Bleat, after all.

Add this countdown by the Worldwide Wrestling Foundation, I think, to all of these final countdowns, still either in progress or recently allowed to expire in silence by the Legacy Media. Curiously, they always seem eager to announce a new doomsday countdown, but rarely its termination with the planet looking none-too-worse for wear.

And gosh, I just can't understand why that always seems to happen.

Years ago, I remember hearing about an up-and-coming business consultant who would call his clients back on his cell phone--from the parking lot of his local airport, so that they would hear all the jet noise, and think he was incredibly in-demand, and about to parachute in to troubleshoot a business halfway across the globe.

TechCrunch has an even simpler idea to make your business sound like it's thriving, and you don't even need to leave your office, or rev up Laurie David's private plane.

(Via Pajamas HQ, where the joint's jumping enough, even without this CD.)

Over at TCS Daily, Jerry Bowyer explores "Apocalypse Not"--the doomsday-obsessed segment of financial forecasters and journalists who constantly predict that the stock market is just this close to near-total collapse.

As spotted by Steve Green, who wonders just what was in that Martini; his partner in Stoli catches an larger protest going unreported by the press--can't imagine why!

* As defined by the all-knowing Nick Schulz.

Mike Huckabee gets on the board: "We've had a Congress that has spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop".

Video here--hopefully we'll also see a clip of this moment.

Update: Here's the video of Rudy slamming Ron Paul, and his comment to Sean Hannity afterwards--"if you can't face reality, you can't lead".

More: I'm not quite 100 percent sure, but reading between the lines, and carefully parsing the subtext, it may be possible to discern a mild twinge--perhaps even a soupçon--of ever-so-slight disagreement with Paul from Ace of Spades.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey dubs Ron Paul "the Black Sox of Republican debaters":

Team Rudy should send a hundred roses to Ron Paul -- yellow roses, of course -- after the Congressman essentially tossed the debate to Giuliani. Rudy had a pretty good night going anyway, but when Paul as much as said that the terrorists had a point in killing 3,000 Americans, Rudy let fly with the righteous indigation that an entire nation was busily hurling at their television screens.

And at the end of his wrap-up, Glenn Reynolds spots the best post-debate line, courtesy of Dean Barnett.

Sister Toldjah has several additional video clips, and lots of commentary.

One More: David Frum spots another winner of tonight's debate.

There are a lot of moving parts under the surface of the brief clip above. Bob Krumm writes:

I don’t know what’s the best part of this video response to Michael Moore’s publicity stunt: the cigar, the appropriate disdain, the lecture, the humor, or the quickness of the response, but what I do know is that Fred Thompson is the first politician anywhere to understand how the speed of the internet can change politics.

This is something that should alarm Fred’s opponents–both Republican and Democrat. In certain military circles there’s this concept known as the “OODA Loop.” OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. The late Colonel John Boyd, a Korean War pilot, came up with the concept to try to explain why American pilots were so much better than their opponents in dogfights. He determined that through a combination of training, aerodynamics, and cockpit design, American pilots and their aircraft could more quickly observe a stimulus and respond. It allowed them to react and act again and again so quickly, that at some point, the American fliers were an entire decision cycle ahead of their opponents. It’s called “getting inside your opponent’s OODA loop.”

Somewhere I recall reading that one of the (many) things that sunk George Allen's reelection campaign after his "Macaca" gaffe was the in-fighting amongst his staff for the proper response of a potential presidential candidate (ahh, hubris) such as Allen to being hammered endlessly by the Washington Post. Similarly, I can't imagine Hillary knocking off a quickie YouTube clip such as Fred's without having to go through at least a dozen different handlers, advisors, and speech writers.

And note the timing of it:

By the way, Thompson’s response to Moore will have a much greater impact on the presidential campaign than anything said at this little shindig tonight. It’ll be seen by many more people too.

Plus a soundbite such as the above clip is infinitely more digestible than having to wade through 90 minutes or so of debate, particularly this early in the race.

As Mickey Kaus adds:

More important, I think: quite apart from its advantages as a campaign tool, the video is itself evidence of Thompson's actual presidential qualifications. You can't make a quickie spot like this unless a) you know what you think (or have a really fast pollster) b) you can react to new situations quickly, and c) you have some sense of theater. Those are all extremely important things for a president to have.

George Bush was reelected in part due to New Media, which discovered CBS's Ra^therGate scam and acted as a force multiplier to the Swift Boat Vets' ad budget. But I'm not sure how much the Bush team fully understood the dynamics of the Blogosphere. (Remember, prior to both parties' 2004 conventions and Ra^therGate itself, blogs were far from a household world--and note that a certain former CBS producer later said that she hadn't heard of any of the big players on the right until after the fact. Thanks again, Dan!)

It's too soon to fully gauge the impact, but we may just be witnessing the first Republican presidential candidate who actually knows what he's doing in the world of New Media.

Update: Welcome Bob Krumm readers; Krumm notes that Moore brought a knife to a gunfight: "While Michael Moore wrote a letter, it was Thompson who bested the 'film maker' on film"--even better: digital video, on the brand new Breitbart.TV.

More: "This stuff matters. And Thompson's damn good at it."

Clayton Cramer asks, "Remember in 1984, where Winston's job was to revise newspapers of the past to keep up with the ever changing present?"

This is very interesting. A couple years ago, during the Katrina disaster, I linked to a CNN report and quoted it:

Overnight, police snipers were stationed on the roof of their precinct, trying to protect it from gunmen roaming through the city, CNN's Chris Lawrence reported.

One New Orleans police sergeant compared the situation to Somalia and said officers were outnumbered and outgunned by gangs in trucks.

"It's a war zone, and they're not treating it like one," he said, referring to the federal government. ...

One of my readers ran into that posting of mine--and noticed that the CNN report at that link no longer said anything like that. It was much, much more upbeat. Nothing about the police snipers on the roof. Did I copy the wrong link? Did I have a brief attack of delusion, and make something up?

The earliest archived version on the Internet Wayback Machine of the article that Clayton is referring to is dated December 10th, 2005, three months after the story originally ran. If that date is correct (and I'm not familiar enough with the Wayback Machine's inner workings to know if retroactive airbrush touch-ups and other types of post-facto rejiggering are possible), it sounds like it may have been revised sometime in the fall of 2005, after news agencies first began to realize (largely thanks to bloggers, and those who were actually on the scene) that Katrina wasn't their finest hour of reporting after all.

(Although try telling Big Media that: as recently as last month, while Hugh Hewitt was discussing NBC's Weekly World News-style hyping of Virgina Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui, he noted, "Steve Capus...the president of NBC News, who I debated on Monday about the quality of Katrina coverage, which he called one of the media’s finest hours".)

Of course, all sorts of things can vanish down the Memory Hole at CNN and Big Journalism in general from time to time, particularly when an expeditious course correction is required.

MSNBC quotes White House parody Website on Jerry Falwell’s political influence. As the Professor writes, "Reality, parody -- who can tell? To be fair, I sometimes suffer the same confusion when watching Keith Olbermann".

Update: Welcome Insta-readers! If you'd like more in the same genre, you'll find a slightly more substantive media critique in the next post over.

Christopher Hitchens asks, "How did a nation move from cricket and fish-and-chips to burkas and shoe-bombers in a single generation?"

And is England's experience a foreshadowing of what's to come in America?

A Daily Dollop of "Seussanetics".

Betsy Newmark writes:

The amusing irony is that many in the media look down at Drudge as just trumpeting some real journalist's stories when they've all become Drudgified by being the conduits for other people's leaks.

I'd say that's been true long before this story.

Wow--this is just bizarre: Austin, Texas 7th grader "suspended because his hair is too short".

This sort of thing makes me feel so old: Why, sonny, I can remember the good ol' days back when schools were concerned about boys with long hair--long like Paul McCartney's, dagnamit!--not crew cuts.

(Via the always well-coiffed InstaPundit.)

Fire and brimstone isn't my thing (on either side of the aisle), but the religious leader passed away today at age 73.

Here's one of his more amusing moments (and the backlash to it was made somewhat ironic in light of this new puritanism from Hollywood), and here's a flashback to his final exit from polite society and the resulting birth of the Blogosphere's anti-idiotarian movement.

In 1993's "Myths of the Fifties", Hilton Kramer wrote:

[By the early-1970s] The Vietnam War was proving to be a disaster for the Times’s foreign coverage. The paper had to send in all those reporters in relays to cover the war. Many of them were young men who had little or no experience of the world. They knew nothing about politics and even less about war. There were exceptions, of course, but very few. Some had never before had a serious foreign assignment or seen any military combat. At one point the Times had even sent in a fashion reporter from its Paris bureau. Communism was an abstraction to them. They thought the real enemy in Vietnam was the USA. They weren’t Communists themselves, but they proved to be complete suckers for the anti-anti-Communist line that was now ascendant in the Western press. History for a lot of these guys began with the election of John F. Kennedy, and most of them thought Bobby Kennedy was a saint. In Vietnam, they had three ambitions: to get out alive, to win a Pulitzer, and to see America defeated.

Via Roger Kimball's "Dissent on David Halberstam" in the New Criterion's Armavirumque blog, which is equally well worth your time.

In an Age Of Abundance, the aesthetics of the New Puritanism are drafted.

"You get a big plate of eggs, bacon, potatoes and sausages, plus tiny Belgian waffles shaped like you-know-who. This is what it means to be an American: pouring syrup on Mickey’s head and eating him. It’s secular communion".

--Needless to say, James Lileks visits Walt Disney World, and returns to Bleat about it.

The redorkulated love child of John Denver and Bill Gates has a hit new song!

Jonah Goldberg writes that the old days of Marxist-tinted Radical Chic are sooooo 1960s and as passé as a Joni Mitchell 8-track. Unfortunately, Radical Chic is still around, but it now comes in an X-Treme new 21^st Century Schizoid Man flavor:

In the 1960s, every would-be revolutionary called himself a Marxist, usually without any serious regard to what Marx wrote, said or believed. The specifics of the ideology didn’t matter, because Marxism was the oogah-boogah word radicals used to scare the fat, lazy bourgeoisie. In 1969, Stuart Schram, a specialist on Chinese Communism, wrote that “never in the course of the past century has the name Marx been so widely invoked; never has this name served to justify so many ideas and actions totally foreign to the genius of Marx.”

Today, Marxism has lost its oomph. Yuppies drinking five-dollar lattes put Che Guevara t-shirts on their private-school toddlers.

And because nobody thinks Marxists are scary anymore, radicals consumed with hatred for the status quo — for America, for Western civilization or for the plain old dreariness of their boring lives — don’t bother calling themselves Marxists anymore. It’s not that they’re any more or less Marxist then they were before. It’s just that Marxism won’t get a rise out of your in-laws the way it used to.

But Islamic radicalism? Hooboy, that’s where the action is. Of course, not everybody follows the John Walker Lindh route and actually converts to Islam, just as not every Black Panther supporter became a bank robber. But who can deny that this post-colonial, anti-imperialism, indigenous-peoples-and-the-suburban-revolutionaries-who-love-them-unite! stuff is in many respects just a magnet for the same riffraff and rabble rouses of yesteryear?

Sure, there’s much to fear in Jihadism. But there’s also something deeply pathetic about it, too. And that’s worth pointing out.

The connection between the left and Islamic radicalism is explored further in this recent piece by Theodore Dalrymple. And as Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote a year after 9/11, that tragic day "revealed an emerging geopolitical reality: that the world's most important fault line is not between the rich and the poor, but between those who accept modernity and those who reject it."

Which also helps to explain the displacement amongst the left that Julia Gorin wrote of last year: for those who don't believe that either side of the War On Terror is worth their time, and yet still feel a hankering to fight modernity, there's a kinder, gentler war on progress now available.

John Hawkins presents "Five Of The Least Manly Action Films Of All-Time".

As Glenn Reynolds would say, "They told me that if George W. Bush were reelected, freedom of speech would be on the way out. And they were right".

Or are they?

Your chance for a front page blockbuster Sister Souljah moment is sitting right here in upstate New York. Just remember what Rudy did in the late 1980s to the bond traders at Drexel Burnham, or possibly even what Janet Reno did to the Branch Davidians at Waco a few years later, and your "most uncompromising wartime President in the history of the United States" pre-inaugural rep will be remarkably well burnished.

Ann Althouse writes:

I keep reading about how hybrid cars and compact fluorescent lightbulbs can reduce the production of greenhouse gases, but I have yet to see an article about the savings that could be achieved if we were to stop delivery of newspapers and magazines and do all of our news reading on line.

For example, The New Republic has a nice "Good Citizen's Guide to Reducing Global Warming" -- PDF -- but they never say you really ought to cancel your subscription to the physical magazine The New Republic and read on line. You should still pay them for full access on-line, and you should buy TimesSelect for the NYT, but isn't it shameful to have this whole stack of newsprint delivered every day?

Don't worry--newspapers and magazines will get right on those articles, just as soon as their entertainment sections pick up this story from the Hollywood wires.

In the "irony can be awfully ironic" department, the Washington Post decries anonymity on the Web--three decades after publishing The Holiest Of All Stories That Are Holy Within The Newspaper Industry, in which two Washington Post reporters became superstars by using an anonymous source to move the story along.

To build on something that one of Ed Morrissey's commenters noted, this should also mean the end of all "unnamed source" and "some say" newspaper articles. Transparency for all, right WaPo?

Professor Bainbridge writes, "Not that there's anything wrong with Southerners, per se, of course. But maybe it's time to let a Yankee city boy have a chance" at the White House:

In fact, as long as we're on the subject of useless Presidential criteria, here's some more things I'd like to see in the next President:

Knows which wine to match with the foie gras-stuffed quail being served at a state dinner

Won't wink at the Queen

Doesn't hunt, fish, or go with girls who do

Smokes cigars

Is sometimes accused of having a metrosexual streak

Only drinks beer with foods that would score at least 10,000 on the Scoville scale

Can credibly debate the relative claims of The Matrix, Star Wars, Bladerunner, and Star Trek II to be the greatest science fiction movie of all time

Can credibly debate the relative claims of The Who and Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band to be the world's greatest rock and roll band

Came from a state that didn't secede

Can recite at least one Monty Python skit from memory

Can credibly debate the relative claims of Blazing Saddles, The Producers, and Young Frankenstein to be Mel Brook's best movie, while explaining why Spaceballs is a candidate for the worst movie ever

Has never sat through an entire Woody Allen movie, an entire Nascar race, or an entire Dixie Chicks concert

Wouldn't camp out 5 days to get Garth Brooks tickets even if s/he was camping at the time

Went to Germany on vacation because s/he couldn't find a highway with high enough speed limits in the US

Prefers football to basketball to baseball to soccer

Doesn't play golf

Doesn't bowl

Has no kids to foist subsequent generations of politicians on us

Has a spouse with no political ambitions

Lives with at least one golden retriever

Why yes, that does describe someone remarkably like your humble narrator--and thank you for noticing. The primary exceptions being my retriever passed away a few years ago, I've seen more Woody Allen films than I care to admit these days, and I've never been to Germany. On the other hand, I have written extensively about its best-known modernist architect, and I've seen every episode of Hogan's Heroes.

However, I would like to categorically state that I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party as your next president.

And I'm glad we cleared that up!

Appropriately, Allah himself (hyperlinks be upon him) has all the details of the "Taliban Zarqawi” who was killed by coalition forces in southern Afghanistan.

Update: "Taliban chief's death a big U.S. victory" AP reports, astonishingly enough.

As Newsbusters asks, "How often do you see MSM sources giving direct links to websites outside their own site?"

How many times have you seen a story mentioning a website, maybe even including the name of the website somewhere within the story, yet the story won't give the full address? Also, how many times do you see a web posting that actually includes a hypertext link to any website outside any paper's site? Not very often. But today the Washington Post has given John Edward's anti-war website a big boost by not only writing a story about it, but creating a direct link to it at the end of their story.

I wonder how many conservative or pro-war websites they have helped advertise in the past with a direct link?

Now, before it seems that I am decrying a paper linking to any other site, I have to say I am not against the concept. But there has been a practice by most newspaper websites of never linking to a source outside the paper's (except for paid advertisers) and they almost never create a link to a site that is in the news, causing their readers to make their own efforts to seek out the website in discussion.

It's the exception that illustrates the rule.

Orrin Judd explores where honor lies in the future of journalism. Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey sounds like he agrees with my assessment of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's possibly limited future:

When nationally-known columnist and blogger James Lileks revealed that the Star Tribune had axed his column and assigned him to local news, we wondered what the Strib could be thinking. After all, the new management has a failing newspaper on its hands, and instead of using one of its most valuable assets to improve their situation, they buried Lileks in an assignment which makes no use of his national standing.

At the time, we thought that the Strib might be pushing Lileks out because of his connections to the conservative blogosphere. Now, though, it looks much more like a case of complete managerial incompetence, because the new editors have most of the Strib's reporters playing musical chairs:

* * *

The wholesale reassignment sounds as foolish as one can get. It sounds like someone read a book that talked about how good cross-training can be for an organization, but that overlooks the fact that the paper has to get the news published. The best people to cover stories for the paper are people who have built expertise in the topics involved. The Strib will not improve by eliminating beats like Outdoors -- in a state where people love outdoor activities -- or by transferring them to less-knowledgeable but cheaper reporters.

We are seeing the last throes of a major metropolitan newspaper. This plan will almost guarantee that the quality of news reporting will follow the same trajectory as its editorial writing.

Elsewhere, Glenn Reynolds explores media "battlespace preparation" by the left for the 2008 elections, in order to ensure what Shannon Love of the Chicago Boyz calls "A Parliament of Clocks".

"If she does the tongue thing, I will scream like a little girl".

Just in time for Mother's Day, Kyle Smith reviews this year's Jane Fonda comeback vehicle, Georgia Rule in the New York Post. Smith notes, "You may expect a three-generational chick flick, but what you get is a child-rape comedy:"

City mouse goes country, and we initially seem to be in the land of pokey formula comedy that defines director Garry Marshall ("Pretty Woman," "Runaway Bride"). Marshall tries to pander to the heartland with musty gags like, "You didn't say, 'Simon says,' Simon," and the grandmother's insistence on sticking a bar of soap in everyone's mouth when they blaspheme.

Urban audiences will be thoroughly bored by the time the movie gets to work alienating the rural crowd: Out of nowhere, Rachel reveals that for years she was systematically raped by her stepfather (a supersized Cary Elwes, whose agent must have told him he was auditioning to play Shrek). The movie dances around the word rape - instead it employs the curious euphemism, "My stepfather started having sex with me when I was 12," while making it clear the sex was voluntary only on the part of the man.

Rachel's mother comes back to Idaho so that her distress can be played for laughs - she picks through kitchen knives saying, "Do you have anything this size that's serrated?" Also, Rachel is such a prankster that she might be lying about the rape thing. Because that would also be hilarious.

When the movie tries to be wicked, it is merely smutty. Rachel tries to corrupt the local teen Mormon cowboy, telling him, "You don't have to brush your feet after riding me," then flirting him up by literally spreading her legs and inviting him to take a look. When he admits to being a virgin, she shocks him with a surprise Lewinsky. Every mom in the theater will be casting a panicky eye at the exits, wondering if her own daughter is such a slut.

The Lohan character is too obnoxious to care about, but even as her alarming behavior indicates severe personality damage, Marshall continues to play for laughs. "Harlan, I gave you a b - - w j - b. It wasn't even a date!" she exclaims, in one of many scenes that mistake the degrading for the empowering.

Equally humiliating antics are in store for Huffman, whose character turns out to be a boozer who both yells "Wooo!" and falls down in the same scene. Later she will (somehow) be stripped topless on her mother's front lawn in full view of the neighbors while scrambling for a drink.

I didn't laugh once at the dismal jokes - Rachel is "easy to find. Just listen for a scream," says her mother in the opening minutes, a remarkably tasteless line for a movie that will turn on a question of rape. I expected merely to be bored, not repulsed. Somebody stick a bar of soap in Garry Marshall's mouth.

With any luck, the 69-year old Fonda's recent what-was-she-thinking flashback to her Klute days nearly 40 years ago with Stephen Colbert (who seemed repulsed enough by Fonda's antics that he momentarily broke character in his performance art knockoff of Bill O'Reilly) should thoroughly depress the film's box office.

Meanwhile, Libertas reviews the other film opening this weekend, 28 Weeks Later, and wonders if critics are actually watching the movie that's on the screen. Or are they seeing it through BDS-tinted glasses?

So inconvenient, it will never be asked:

Dorkafork suggests that the Politico or whatever leftwing outfit or reporter handling the next Democratic debate ask for a "show of hands" as to which candidates have an "open mind" about 9/11 being an American government conspiracy.

Rob Port wants to see that, too.

So do I--but as Ace notes, Wedge Issues only cut one way in the Legacy Media:

So much of media bias isn't what's reported, or what's asked. So much of it is what's deliberately not reported, and what's deliberately not asked.

It's sort of like the news they kept to themselves; related thoughts here.

Growing up with the Fort Dix terrorists.

Barack Obama's V8 Hemi-powered Chrysler 300C is quite a nice ride, but it gets far less than the 45 miles per gallon that Japanese cars average.

It would fit pretty nicely into this fleet, though.

It isn't even Saturday on the West Coast yet, but thanks to the difference in time zones, the Anchoress already has tomorrow's links today!

Even Tim Blair can be silenced for dissenting against the Blue Green Meanies of the Vast Murdochian Conspiracy!

This just in from the conservative left:

Clintonian liberals at Slate suddenly discover family values.

Hollywood updates Hays Office-era puritanism for the 21st century.

University student censored for a radically transgressive thoughtcrime.

University student newspaper punished for a radically transgressive thoughtcrime.

Radical university professor segrated for his own thoughtcrimes

Suggestive artwork censored in John Ashcroft's, Alberto Gonzales' Barack Obama's America.

But I thought dissent was the highest form of patriotism?

It's safe to say that this is merely an isolated incident at CNN International, rather than a peek into a deeply dysfunctional BDS-obsessed anti-American television network. Because fortunately, a Freudian slip such as this has never happened before at any of the CNN networks.

Despite all that CBS has done for them over the years, crafting special reports with nuanced language such as this, and tracking down incredibly rare documents from the pioneering Microsoft Word beta testers at the 1972 Texas Air National Guard, how does their audience treat them these days? Check out this quote from CBS News executive Linda Mason:

I'm just surprised at how, almost 30 years after I worked on the "Evening News" as the first woman producer, that Katie is having such a tough time being accepted by the public, which seems to prefer the news from white guys, and now that Charlie's doing so well, from older white guys. I guess they want the reassurance of a Walter Cronkite.

I had no idea that a woman delivering the news would be a handicap. And I'm afraid that Katie's paying a price for being the first woman. [Lynne Russell must be rolling her eyes at this--Ed.] But I think it's a great trail that she's blazing, and I think if the broadcast continues to be as good as it has been, if we continue to break news, if we continue to tell interesting stories, people will start to watch. It takes time, I think. But I was surprised that there was an obvious connection between a woman giving the news, and the audience wanting to watch it.

Ed Morrissey writes: "Got that, America? Its not Katie's fault, and it's not that CBS stinks at putting together a compelling news show. We're all a bunch of misogynistic bigots"--thus making Katie, with her multimillion dollar annual salary, "America's Sweetest Victim", as Ed dubs her, adding:

Of course, the career of this gentleman might address the race card that Mason blithely tosses to protect her network's incompetence. Bernard Shaw spent twenty years at CNN, taking the news network from a blip to the point where it eclipsed news organizations like CBS. During that time, plenty of women had handled anchor desk duties at other times of their 24-hour news programming, and it didn't seem to slow down CNN's progress one whit.

In truth, Couric has had to pay for CBS' poor editorial sense over the past several years. The nadir came in September 2004, when CBS allowed Mary Mapes and Dan Rather to first air a hit piece on George Bush during the presidential campaign based on laughably false documents, and then defending them while their story fell apart. Their integrity smashed, CBS limped along for the next two years while Rather continued to repel viewers and Bob Schieffer could not entice them back.

When they hired Couric, CBS obviously hoped to score some points by making her gender relevant. Les Moonves compared Couric to Jackie Robinson, which initiated gag reflexes around the nation. When she took over the news, CBS softened it to make it fit their new anchor -- and in a way patronizing her and their audience, which responded in an utterly predictable manner. They started watching other news programs for the better production and journalistic values.

CBS now wants to blame its audience for the network's failures. Edward R Murrow must be rolling in his grave.

In the past, it was possible for television news to bury a disaster like Ra^therGate, by making them sort of Orwellian unevents by refusing to refer back to them (sort of like their conscious decision to bury the radical chic backgrounds of their pet politicians). That's a lot harder to do in the age of the Internet, where information regarding Dan Rather's reign of error at CBS is merely a click away, and thousands of bloggers are all too eager to respond in kind when the event that he oversaw occurs, or when an executive such as Mason wants to trash her audience.

Update: Greg Pollowitz observes Katie-the-uber-blogger in action.

Reason number 1,325,637 why no satirist can improve on real life for its pure absurdity.

When newspapermen such as James Lileks suggest that their papers should go intensely local, let me safely say that this is not what they have in mind:

— The job posting was a head-scratcher: “We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA.”

A reporter half a world away covering local street-light contracts and sewer repairs? A reporter who has never gotten closer to Pasadena than the telecast of the Rose Bowl parade?

Outsourcing first claimed manufacturing jobs, then hit services such as technical support, airline reservations and tax preparation. Now comes the next frontier: local journalism.

James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the two-year-old Web site pasadenanow.com, acknowledged it sounds strange to have journalists in India cover news in this wealthy city just outside Los Angeles.

But he said it can be done from afar now that weekly Pasadena City Council meetings can be watched over the Internet. And he said the idea makes business sense because of India’s lower labor costs.

“I think it could be a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications,” said the 51-year-old Pasadena native. “Whether you’re at a desk in Pasadena or a desk in Mumbai, you’re still just a phone call or e-mail away from the interview.”

Yes--and having just completed two articles for TCS Daily on the British media, I'm reminded of the immortal words of The Music Man: You gotta know the territory. I was only a phone call or email from the people I interviewed for the article, but on one level, these were intensely difficult pieces to write, because I don't know the ins and outs of British politics especially well. And the reverse is certainly true as well: not many British journalists know the feel of the US as well as an American who's spent a lifetime steeped in the culture instinctively does, which makes unintentionally ironic pieces such as this all too common.

Yesterday, when I had a computer crash, I contacted a tech support rep with Symantic who happened to be in an Indian call center (which he volunteered when he was trying to make small talk). He was absolutely incredible at fixing my computer remotely, but I wouldn't want to ask him to cover a San Jose planning board or sewer comission meeting--anymore than I could cover similar functions in Tamil Nadu by phone and email.

If this is how newspapers think they're going to cut costs, they're doomed--or perhaps, doomed faster than we've originally thought.

And the MSM doesn't report it, is it news? John Hinderaker writes that 2,700 active duty servicemen have signed the Appeal for Courage, which states, "As an American currently serving my nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to fully support our mission in Iraq and halt any calls for retreat". But of course, that's not newsworthy to the MSM's mindset. John writes:

This is almost like a laboratory experiment, isn't it? A handful of veterans (including three out of something like 7,000 retired generals) oppose the war: News. Thousands of active duty personnel urge Congress to support the war effort: Not news. That pretty well sums up the journalistic standard that has been applied to the conflict in Iraq.

As for the journalistic double-standard in the race for the White House, it's summed up remarkably well in this interchange, which candidate it's addressed to...and those who will be exempted from answering such salacious questions.

(Romney missed a slam-dunk opportunity--which works remarkably well for politicians in both parties--to tell his interviewer to get stuffed, incidentally.)

AP reports "Peruvians Drink Frog Smoothies to Gain Potency".

People For The Ethical Treatment Of Muppets could not be reached for comment.

(Via the Alice Cooper in 2008 campaigners at Skilletfan.)

Dovetailing on my response earlier this morning to Mark Tapscott, Glenn Reynolds asks, "Is there any role for the FCC in the 21st century?":

No.

Oops, that's not going to get me to my assigned 500 words, or even close. And it's not quite true anyway. There's a role for the FCC, in terms of setting technical standards and assigning spectrum—though that could probably be undertaken just as well by private bodies and auctions—but that's about all.

But there's not much of a role for the FCC in doing what the FCC mostly does: Policing who is allowed to use the airwaves, and trying to regulate the content of broadcasts. In the 21st Century, the twin arguments for an FCC role, limited broadcast spectrum and public ownership of the airwaves, have become obsolete. Broadcast spectrum isn't limited—most towns have room for more TV and radio broadcasters than they can economically support anyway. (Your real information-industry monopolist in most towns is the local newspaper, which the FCC won't touch.) And the public "ownership" of the airwaves—why? The public didn't discover them. Neither did the government.

Happily, the FCC's role is getting smaller, as more and more "broadcast" material reaches people through other channels: cable TV, satellite radio, the Internet, etc. Unhappily, the FCC—like any business in a declining market—has shown some signs of wanting to expand its regulatory authority to these new channels of communications so that, presumably, if Janet Jackson's nipple is exposed anywhere, anytime, the FCC can punish someone.

It's no accident, I think, that the most vibrant and fast-growing communications media are in the areas that are the least regulated. Bureaucratic mission creep may explain why the FCC wants to bring these new areas under its dominion, but a more sensible policy would cut back on the FCC's current authority.

Arguably, the FCC had a role when broadcast media were scarce, and businesses had to prove that they were serving "the Public Good" to maintain access to the airwaves. Fortunately, access to content--and access to the methods of generating it--has never been more abundant.

Roger Kimball asks, "How do you spell 'fatuous political grandstanding by over-privileged elites'?" When it's a hunger strike at Harvard.

As Kimball writes, "let's hope it is long and thorough".

Mark Tapscott has some kind words about my piece in Tech Central Station yesterday on 18 Doughty Street:

As if it's not bad enough that executives and shareholders at ABC, CBS and NBC have to deal with continuing decline in their audience numbers, Tech Central Station goes and publishes a glowing piece on the old broadcast model's executioner.

Tapscott writes:

It's much the same set of factors that are driving traditional newspapers to move from dead-tree-only products to internet-based news and related content products and services. The internet-based news entity can dispense with the printing press, the circulation department, the costly staffs that man both, as well as lots of other traditional positions throughout the organization.

Similarly, the internet-based entertainment and news network has no need of broadcast towers and associated equipment, nor the expensive lobbying staff in Washington to keep the FCC from getting troublesome.

In short, the economic model is fundamentally changed and the price of entry is dramatically lowered. And when the price of providing a service or product drops, the number of providers of that service or product increases, as does the spectrum of consumer choice. Competition is the consumer's best friend. Government-sanctioned monopolies granted to myopic big businesses are the consumers' biggest enemy.

Competition also makes it more difficult for peddlers of ideological bias to disguise it as legitimate news. In short, 18 Doughty Street and the technologies that make it possible is among the best developments in years for advocates of informed public policy discussion.

I disagree with only one element of that--whereas Mark writes, "Competition also makes it more difficult for peddlers of ideological bias to disguise it as legitimate news", I'd argue that increased competition allows consumers to get their news with a worldview that matches their own. That doesn't mean the end of liberal bias, as, I believe, Mark is inferring. In fact, as the favorite "COD-piece" of the Strib's Jim Boyd told Hugh Hewitt yesterday:

Jonah Goldberg: I think there is a certain irony here. I have argued for a long time that I think a lot of newspapers need to move in the European direction, where they just are honest about their biases, because one of the things that drives normal readers nuts is when these newspapers pretend to be objective when they’re not.

HH: Right.

JG: And at least in the British press, the press says hey look, this is our perspective, this is where we’re coming from. The irony here is that I think a liberal paper could actually do well if it were honest about it. But because a lot of these papers, they’re dishonest about it, and they pretend in this sort of arrogance that they’re speaking from the voice of God about how the world really is, it drives a lot of people nuts, and that’s what I sense is part of the problem with them.

As I think I wrote in the Doughty Street piece, because (partially due to governmental regulation) airwaves were originally so scarce on both sides of the pond, radio, and then television, had to maintain a veneer of objectivity simply to get a license to get on the air.

The Doughty Street model proves that the Internet can recreate all of the broadcasting that traditional local television station does--everything else (the content of the shows, where and how they're videotaped) is a matter of scale. And thus any group can build the Internet-equivalent of a TV station that fits their worldview perfectly. So that could very well be the Internet video equivalent of Town Hall--and the Internet video equivalent of Air America.

A spot-on observation by the New York Times (and couldn't the Gray Lady use a little Clairol #5?), your one stop source for all of your Blogosphere news. In fact, with the whichy thickets of my chest hair having reached Austin Powers-proportions, I’m just back from having it waxed down to Hasselhoffian smoothness. And you'd be amazed at who else I saw at the salon!

More thoughts (and less facial cream jokes) regarding "The Sheer Stupidity of Newspapers These Days", from Michael Malone.

As for some thoughts on the future of New Media, just click.

Roger L. Simon has seen Martyn Burke’s Islam vs. Islamism (produced with Frank Gaffney and Alex Alexiev) and over at Pajamas HQ, has a review of the documentary, along with a tantalizing YouTube snippet of the otherwise embargoed work:

PBS, clearly, does not like what this movie says. And I suspect it likes it less because the film is well made (the reverse of what the network originally claimed).

PBS’ views seem particularly troglodytic today in light of recent events at Fort Dix. But that is the least of it. What is far more important to our country is that our Public Broadcasting network, an organization supported by taxpayer money, is practicing the most obvious censorship. PBS is operating here in the manner of similar institutions in the former Soviet Union and in modern day Iran – financing artists and then withholding distribution of their work when it is not deemed ideologically “correct”. It’s a form of though-control and it’s unconscionable.

Read the rest, and check out the accompanying clip.

Hugh Hewitt has contact info for PBS, if you'd like to request them to air the film your tax dollars helped to fund.

Jeff Jarvis writes:

In the new millennium, we are seeing not only the rise of environmentalism but also of environmental correctness. Like political correctness, we’re bound to see this new green gospel — well worthy in its origins — being taken too far by both zealots and corrupters. The advocates of this good cause had better beware or they will see it hijacked.

Great meme--which may get quite a workout in the coming years.

Mitt Romney spoke to an audience at Virginia Beach today:

"It seems that Europe leads Americans in this way of thinking," Romney told the crowd of more than 5,000. "In France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."

Pon Farr--It's not just for Vulcans any more! (Insert obligatory ironic riff from The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy, here.)

After noting that Romney is apparently mistaking a plot point from one of Orson Scott Card's science fiction novels with that shared consensual hunch that we like to call--and note the jaunty lack of postmodern quotation marks around the word--reality, Ace makes a great point:

Of course, while the right-leaning blogs point out such strange delusions of our candidates, you can bet damnsure neither Anna Marie Cox nor any other lefty in the media will make mention of John Edwards' far more calculated and vicious embrace of alt-history fantasy.

Rob Port adds:

At the GOP primary debate the Presidential candidates were asked tough questions about their beliefs with regard to evolution. With big-name Democrats like Edwards and Kerry apparently taking these “truthers” seriously, maybe some enterprising reporters should go around asking the Democrat Presidential candidates about their feelings with regard to 9/11 conspiracy theories.

If--miracle of miracle--that actually happens, and it's late enough in the campaign season, will the reporter who finally has the nerve to ask that question be compared to the Swift Vets by his fellow journalists in the MSM?

Related: Im in ur commentz, debunken ur mechincs!

Meanwhile, in NRO's Corner, Mark Steyn writes:

British schools would rather not teach the Holocaust because too many of their Muslim pupils think it didn't happen. How long will it before American teachers complain that it's difficult to teach 9/11 in class because a small minority of pupils insist on clinging to the discredited and divisive fantasy that it was an attack by foreign terrorists?

Since Senator Edwards is happy to look into whether WTC7 was an inside job, I wonder if he could also investigate whether Bush-Cheney-Rove-Rumsfeld also pulled off Bali, Beslan, Istanbul, Madrid and the London Tube bombings. And where are they hiding the cost of this planet-wide "war on terror" fakery? In the Katrina appropriations?

Elsewhere, Michael Medved notes the cognitive dissonance that intertwines two of the left's favorite memes:

If Bush “knew in advance” about the attacks, for instance, then why did he look so confused and hapless on September 11th? Surely, if they knew the terrorist strikes were coming, his political advisors might have suggested a more Presidential or martial setting for the moment the planes struck the buildings than sitting on an undersized chair and reading “My Pet Goat” to an elementary school classroom in Florida.

Such logical questions may not trouble partisan Democrats in their obsessive rage, but they ought to concern Americans in the middle who haven’t surrendered themselves to nightmarish fantasies.

What happens to the tone and substance of American politics if one of our two great parties not only disagrees with the opposition leaders, but believes they’re guilty of participating in mass murder of innocents Americans?

As Steyn wrote, "If ever there was a perfect time for a Sister Souljah moment, this was it", but then maybe that's why it's called what it is—Candidate Bill Clinton’s rebuttal to Sister Souljah’s hysterics during the ’92 campaign seems to be the one and only time such a thing has occurred on the left in recent memory.

Jim Boyd, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune's deputy editorial director, is taking a buyout and leaving the paper after 27 years. But he's going out with quite a bang:

Avista Capital Partners, the Star Tribune's new owner, seems driven by financial goals and not ideology, so [Boyd] expects a minimum of meddling -- unlike with the paper's previous owner. McClatchy didn't approve of the Star Tribune's outspoken editorials, [Boyd] said, mainly because they "hated any kind of nail sticking up" and felt the editorials were harming the company financially. So they instituted what editorial page staffers jokingly call the "codpiece" — the "conservative of the day."

"They ordained that we would have a conservative of the day. I’ve got to tell you, you run out of good ones real quick," he said. "You’ve got Steve Chapman, whom I really like, who’s a libertarian and a good guy. So you didn’t mind running him, but you kind of held your nose when you ran Mona Charon or Debra Saunders. I mean, good grief. Jonah Goldberg? Finally, we were able to get rid of that bugger. That’s my point: Avista is much less of a micromanaging outfit than McClatchy was."

As Minneapolis resident Ed Morrissey notes:

If Boyd has to hold his nose to read excellent, well-known columnists like Mona Charon, Debra Saunders, and Jonah Goldberg, then it explains why the Strib has been tanking for the last several years. The dearth of challenges to the house positions -- really, Boyd's positions -- made it clear that the Strib under his direction would never allow dissent to creep into the opinion pages. McClatchy forced him to add other voices for a semblance of balance, in essence telling Boyd to grow a pair. The fact that he calls these fine columnists "codpieces" only highlights what a horse's rectum he is.

Boyd essentially proves once again that he has no real courage. In a tussle with my friends at Power Line, in which he used his position at the Strib to falsely call them liars, he was forced Boyd to allow Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker an opportunity to rebut him on the Strib's opinion page. When he made essentially the same allegations in response, we repeatedly invited Boyd to appear on the Northern Alliance Radio show to debate the issue with either Scott or John on the air. We also extended him an invitation to appear with us live at the Minnesota State Fair to debate any of us. Not only did he not accept the challenge, he never had the guts to respond to us.

Later in the interview, Boyd talks about how he wants to see the Strib turned into a community-owned non-profit. Some would say that Boyd accounts for the current de facto non-profit status of the Strib, and his departure may actually improve the paper's performance. Had he really wanted to make the paper decline in value to the point where it could become community owned, Boyd should have remained on board to chase out the remaining subscribers of the worst major metropolitan newspaper in America.

Instead though, that high-paying gig as an Adobe Acrobat instructor awaits.

More news of fresh disaster here and here.

"160Mbps downloads move closer for US cable customers"--that's something that Internet2 has been working on since the mid-1990s. See my article about them from a few years ago at Tech Central Station.

On Hugh Hewitt's radio show recently, James Lileks mentioned that when he wants commentary regarding the Middle East, he doesn't bother with the wire services, he checks out The Three Michaels: Michael Yon, Michael "Faster, Please" Ledeen...and Michael Totten, who's this week's guest on Pajamas' Blog Week In Review podcast, featuring Austin Bay, and produced by yours truly.

Ilya Somin of The Volokh Conspiracy sees several libertarian themes intertwined in Mario Puzo's original novel of The Godfather.

(Via Betsy Newmark.)

And as the sign says, "No Bathing In The Restroom", either.

At NRO's Media Blog, Tom Gross examines the just slightly biased photo caption of a Palestinian boy wrestling with a bucking donkey*, and wonders if the Associated Press has a case of "Stockholm Syndrome" in the West Bank.

Why not? Most other news agencies there certainly do.

Related: At what point do Palestinian terrorists become "extremists" in the eyes of the press? Apparently, not until they kidnap a fellow journalist.

Read More »

Patrick Lasswell has some thoughts on the suicide truck bomb that "ripped through the Interior Ministry in the relatively peaceful Kurdish city of Irbil on Wednesday, killing 14 people and wounding dozens", according to AP.

Jules Crittenden links to Don Surber's post comparing Barack "I'm Tired!" Obama to Lili Von Shtupp, noting that "There is little in politics that cannot viewed through Blazing Saddles goggles. So who’s Mongo?”

Don responds with his 2008 cast list. I can only add that based on his inspired Brooksian choices, Surber's mind is clearly aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention.

(Meanwhile, Alex Beam compares Obama to the co-stars of more recent productions.)

Glenn Reynolds writes:

Which will be the first newspaper to fold? Some are suggesting that it will be the Minneapolis Star Tribune, based on its "boneheaded" decision to kill James Lileks' column.

Killing Lileks' column won't kill the Strib by itself, of course, but it does suggest the kind of inept management that I've been talking about in previous postings here. Lileks is a guy who's built a national reputation—he's the only Strib columnist with one, really—but it's also telling that Lileks' fame comes mostly from his own independent Web work and not from his newspaper column. Instead of finding ways to capitalize on that, and bring the pageviews he's attracted to his own site into the paper's, they're pushing him out. He'll do fine, as he was probably underpaid at the Star Tribune anyway, but this suggests that the management there is substantially overpaid.

The L.A. Times could easily make this list as well. It's safe to say that both papers' subscription departments are busy drafting sales copy right about now that very much resembles the missives put out to subscribers--and especially former subscribers--of IowaHawk's fictitious "Quint State Claxon-Ledger".

In the meantime, another legacy technology from the "mass media" days of the mid-20the century is feeling the pinch as well. (Fortunately, they've got their trusty bows and arrows to fall back on.)

Hey, you got television on my Website! Hey, you got Web content on my television!

At TCS Daily, I explain how the Tory British Web/Video convergence has managed to put all of the New Media pieces together, making them the model for future multimedia Websites.

While the intricacies of British politics may be somewhat off-putting to the average American viewer tuning in for the first time from across the pond, the convergence of media is very much the message here. Expect somebody smart in the US (on one side of the aisle or the other) to emulate 18 Doughty Street's combination of long-form C-Span-style video programming and "traditional" Web articles and blogging in the not-too-distant future.

Over at CE Pro, the trade publication for custom home theater installers, I have an article on 64-bit computing. The video above explains the concept in terms of audio, but the same concepts apply to video production as well. Think Hot Air, 18 Doughty Street, or the next multimedia site is going to take advantage of the near unlimited RAM that 64-bit computing promises in the coming years to help shape their content?

Me too. Which is why this number is only going to shrink--and the resultant hysterical reactions from Old Media will only increase in concurrent response.

I would just like to say that Ronald Paul is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I have ever known in my entire life.

The ever-flattening modern information sphere has helped to diminish the sense of boundaries between elites and everyday people. In an increasingly populist word, average folks are freer than ever to get their voices heard, and more-and-more, elites are responding, one-on-one, right back at them.

Of course, some in positions of authority choose rather novel methods to express their opinions to their audiences, though.

(H/T: OJ)

"Re my conservative bona fides: compared to the rest of my profession, well, Hello, I Must Be Goering".

--James Lileks

Kathryn Jean Lopez reminds the media of previous terrorist incidents in New Jersey prior to today's news out of Fort Dix:

"Jihad Has Come to New Jersey"

So went the 4:00 P.M. news announcement on WMAL in D.C.

Considering United Flight 93 took off from Newark airport on the morning of September 11, 2001, it wouldn't exactly be a first.

In addition to the NJ origins of this incident, which we mentioned earlier today, there are New Jersey ties to this one as well.

Update: Speaking of down the memory hole, this isn't too surprising, either: "HuffPosters Dismiss Jersey Terror Bust".

When in doubt, displace!

AP reports, "Donovan McNabb had the same reaction most fans had when the Philadelphia Eagles selected quarterback Kevin Kolb with their first pick in last month's NFL draft":

"It was shocking," McNabb said Tuesday in an interview on WIP-AM radio.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the draft on April 28-29, McNabb downplayed the perception he's upset the Eagles selected his eventual successor.

The five-time Pro Bowl quarterback also said his rehab is going well following surgery for a torn knee ligament and he expects to play in the preseason.

"When you draft somebody at the position you're in, of course you have questions of 'What does that mean?"' McNabb said. "The most important thing for me is to make sure I'm healthy and 100 percent and get back out there competing and do the right thing on the field."

McNabb met with coach Andy Reid soon after the draft, but wouldn't reveal details of their conversation.

Fortunately, Jonathan Last has the exclusive--and rather salty--transcript...

While this is cold comfort for the people who work there, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's downsizing, particularly since, hopefully, this fellow will be documenting it, affords a unique opportunity to observe the reshaping of a mid-sized newspaper to meet 21st century demands. And if that doesn't work, its "Eardrum-Shattering Death Rattles", as Dean Barnett writes:

The print media has been endurably clueless regarding the advent of the new media. Business schools of the future will someday devote endless symposia to studying how an entire industry could be so hidebound, paralyzed, arrogant and clueless.

Don’t get me wrong – even if capitalistic geniuses led the old media, they’d still be up the creek. The