Sadly, No!

Funny stuff, via The Horse’s Mouth:

(Brent) Bozell and (Tim) Graham are on a tear right now to prove that a fifth column conspiracy of liberal media elites is trying to destroy the country from within by elevating Hillary to the White House. As I noted here yesterday, the duo have a new piece in National Review that tries to prove this by pointing to an old Margaret Carlson article in Time magazine in which she allegedly described Hillary gushingly as “an amalgam of Betty Crocker, Mother Teresa, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.”

As I wrote here yesterday, however, a look back at Carlson’s article shows that she actually didn’t describe Hillary this way at all. Rather, she mocked Hillary backers for presenting her this way. This didn’t stop these alleged media critics from chopping Carlson’s quote in this laughably dishonest way, however.

Doy, of course not. When called out on the facts, Graham responds in the customary manner, by dumping out the Legos:

Before we even address the entirety of the article, let’s just address the two paragraphs in question.

See, when I was a kid, my two younger brothers and I had a shitload of Legos. We accumulated tens of thousands of those pointy little suckers over the years, and we kept them in a plastic wastebasket about three feet tall. Whenever you planned to get some serious Lego-building underway, you’d wrap your arms around the wastebasket, pick it up and stagger sideways under its weight, hoist it up quickly, and then upend the container to dump out the Legos in a tremendously satisfying caroosh of tinkling plastic. Then you’d start rummaging through the heap to find the parts you wanted, invariably getting distracted by some other pieces you’d gotten as a stocking-stuffer and forgot about, and the next thing you know, three days have passed and the pile of Legos has become woven into the entire surface area of the shag carpet. Sadly, it always took nearly as long to clean up the Legos as it took to build your space station or medieval village or whatever.

I think of that initial giddy rush of dumping out the Legos whenever I see a wingnut unpack his argument.

ABOVE: The Media Research Center, founded in 1987 by a group of young, determined
conservatives headed by L. Brent Bozell III, aims to bring balance and responsibility to the news media.

Exactly 858 words later, after switching unpredictably between meticulously literal and sweepingly generous data analysis, Graham concludes:

If Greg Sargent thinks after all this that Margaret Carlson’s intent in this article was to mock Hillary and her friends, or that using one-sentence shorthand for this gooey article is out of context, then he should try reading everything Margaret wrote on Hillary for Time magazine in those early years. Perhaps he should read our whole “Whitewash” book. Or call Margaret up and ask her if she felt like Hillary was her feminist “mascot.” That’s what she said. That’s also in the book. “Mendacity” it is not.

Or perhaps Sargent should read everything that has ever been written by anybody, anywhere, at any time and in every language, including some that don’t even exist.

Maybe that would make him some sort of expert.

Oops the webmaster crapped my point:

Sometimes, I spend hours and hours assessing a particular right-wing blog entry, rigorously deconstructing it to create a hilarious yet brilliant analysis of the flawed propaganda of the conservative ideologue.

Other times I just drink half a bottle of Herradura and flit around the blogosphere until I find something to throw up on. This is one of those times. Let’s meet our bachelors!

BACHELOR #1?

Hi, I am Roger L. Simon! I believe that anyone who has a view of the war contrary to mine is a “miserable, self-serving bastard”! I wrote Scenes from a Mall, so believe me, I know from miserable self-serving bastards!

Wow, that’s pretty sexy. Nothing turns me on more than hearing about the kind of movies real, honest, hardworking middle Americans like from a guy who forced the country to endure the image of a ponytailed Woody Allen going down on Bette Midler.

BACHELOR #2?

Hi, I am John ‘The Derb’ Derbyshire! I do not like it when people talk about ‘having sex’.

Well, hey, John, if it makes you feel any better, no one likes it when you talk about having sex either! But you keep doing it. Please, please stop.

BACHELOR #3?

Hi, I am James Lileks! Aging, fuddy-duddy Minnesota humor columnists really get on my nerves, especially when they attack Nixon instead of hippies! Also, the world owes me a Wii.

That’s hot, Jimbo. There’s nothing more attractive than a wealthy white guy with a sense of entitlement.

BACHELOR #4?

Hi, I am Patrick Ruffini! If only there had been blogs when Bill Clinton was president, it would have brought his corrupt regime to its knees.

Wow, Paddy! What an imagination you have! Very appealing.

BACHELOR #5?

Hi, I am Mark ‘The Human’ Steyn! If environmentalists really care about preserving things, why aren’t they outraged at the declining numbers of a Canadian mainline Protestant church? That is totally more important than polluting the ocean or whatever.

Mark, that is one mightily incoherent statement. You’re making it so hard to decide! I tell you what. Winner is the first one to get ol’ Leonard a fresh bottle of tequila.

How could I forget this amazing classic from Vernon Robinson:

No offense to Santorum and Tancredo, but this ad is the best of the batch. Can’t wait to see what the GOP has cookin’ once the political silly season really starts!

There’s some great irony to this (my emphasis):

A new American Research Group poll finds that 55 percent of voters believe President Bush has “abused his powers” in a manner that rises “to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution,” yet just 34 percent believe he should actually be impeached. Fifty-two percent say that Vice President Cheney has similarly abused his powers, with 43 percent supporting impeachment.

43 percent of the American people support impeaching vice preznit Cheney. And heck, all this time I thought this was somethin’ that cuh-waaaaaaaaaazy Dennis Kucinich wanted to do. I think we need to start reevaluating our definitions of “extremism,” peeps. Kucinich, for all his flakiness, just isn’t in the same league as the Bush administration. For some reason, our elite press corps has failed to grasp this absurdly basic fact.

This post is very serious! Very serious indeed, for I am a serious blogger whose author-i-TIE you must respect. But more than that, you must respect my special cause, my job, my single special interest, my idee fixe. “That’s my job/that’s what I do,” twanged the minstrel yokel. Well, my job is the most important. EVAR. Acknowledge, bitchez! Anything less is worse than wrong; it’s unserious!

[Bradrocket adds: HTML, don’t be too worried about Charles Pierce’s disagreement. He surely does kick royal amounts of behind (and he has an even bigger Brady man-crush than I do), but you’re very much in the right on this. Of all the colors in the current wingnut rainbow (which consists of leisure-suit green, Deuce-Coupe yellow, and the orange of the ’70s Astros uniforms) Paul is by far the least offensive. A Preznit Rudy is basically the worst nightmare scenario. Preznit Mitt would be bad, but he’s enough of an opportunist that I don’t think he means all the crazy crap he says (and yes, it’s sad that I now consider crass opportunism to be a check-mark in a GOP candidate’s favor). OK, I’ll shaddup now and let you get back to work…]

The Times quotes Norman Mailer putting it far less retardedly — actually, Mailer here is wonderfully, lovably candid (a pleasing break from his default position of lovable obnoxiousness) — one of those advertisements for himself that actually went over well:

“I think the novel is on the way out,” he said. “I also believe, because it’s natural to take one’s own occupation more seriously than others, that the world may be the less for that.”

This hits on all cylinders: He’s right that the diminished importance of the novel is a cultural loss; he’s right to say he takes that fact more seriously than others; he’s right to say it’s natural that a writer does so.

My point is: Would that some political bloggers acknowledged their own — myopia is far too strong a word; how about natural (pace Mailer) or unnatural (and you can figure out which is which and who is whom) — over-investment in x issue, and that the recognition inspired a new sense of caution.

Above: The archetypical monomaniac:
On any given subject, only considers its
connection to a pale cetacean.

Read the rest of this entry »

This Tancredo ad is the funniest I’ve seen yet in still-young ’08 presidential campaign:

Playing that cheesy explosion sound at the end while flashing the caption “Tancredo… before it’s too late” gave me, like, 20 straight seconds of ensuing laughter.

I still think Santorum’s ads from the ’06 midterm campaign are marginally funnier, though:

To Understand the Left, Read this Issue of Rolling Stone

ABOVE: Some hippies shout curse words at a billboard

• To understand the Left, read this issue of Rolling Stone.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

The bulk of this week’s column is given over to quoting various entertainers’ use of swear words:

In response to this, I will receive e-mails cursing me and noting that Vice President Dick Cheney once whispered a curse at Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy — on the floor of the Senate, no less. These e-mailers — and, to be honest, some religious conservatives as well — do not see any difference between cursing in public and using an expletive in a whisper. Many people have lost the ability to judge actions in context or to acknowledge gradations of sin. Is whispering the f-word when one assumes that no one else hears you say it really no different from using that word in a published interview or on a television show?

Indeed, for the vice president is the only Republican who’s ever been known to curse — and even then he swore so quietly that it’s debatable whether the word escaped his lips, or if it instead collapsed meekly and perished in his mouth, where not even God could hear its dying cries.

Frankly, I’m disappointed that Prager passed up the opportunity to slander our secular religion by twisting Twain’s famous quote on profanity providing a relief denied even to prayer. Feel free to riff on that, Dennis, and perhaps next year we’ll qualify for Best Comity Blog!

Ok, so it’s me this time, instead of Brad with his Patriots and Red Sox and so forth.

I thought nobody was posting anything, so I was all like, “Blargh! Somebody must post on this Monday, and I never thought that I’d see such a thing, but here’s a Futureheads epigone band”:

Above: Teh Wombats – ‘Lets Dance To Joy Division’ (3:21)

So okay. Subtracting teh Franz Ferdinand careful-retro factor (always a consideration these days, with people cunningly mining Crispy Ambulance singles, etc., at third remove), it’s this sound that they’re after, isn’t it?

Above: Teh Futureheads – ‘Meantime’ (2:51)

I regret being a bad person, and (but) will be back shortly. Also, I suspect that ‘teh’ might be getting a bit tired, apropos this ominous thread at Teh Malkin.

Update: A bad and regretful person is reminded, via email, that a lot of people weren’t following this stuff until Franz Ferdinand caught it. Some echt-context here:

Above: XTC – ‘Are You Receiving Me?’ (2:56), 1978

Above: XTC – ‘Making Plans For Nigel’ (4:05), #17 UK charts, 1979

Seeing as we don’t seem to be making any real progress on this whole “why torture is bad” issue, or on the “why waterboarding is torture” issue, either, I thought I might try approaching the topic from a slightly different angle.

I’m going to invite you to come along with me on a little thought experiment, if you will. Imagine for a moment that I have robbed a bank. Why? Who knows – we all know that lefties have no morals, after all, and one thing I can tell you about gay abortions is that they ain’t cheap.

Now, there’s no real question that I robbed the bank, because by a fortuitous set of circumstances, my felony ends up broadcast live on the Jumbotron at the Superbowl (The existence of Jumbotrons at Superbowls is purely speculation on my part, as I’ve never actually seen a Superbowl. If they don’t really exist, please just indulge me for the sake of the thought experiment).

Here’s the deal: even though approximately 78 trillion people have just seen me rob the bank, it is still necessary for me to be tried for the crime of bank-robbing. This is part of what is meant by the concept “rule of law”: when people do bad things, we have a procedure in place to deal with that badness, and that procedure is supposed to keep us from resorting to things like vengeance or street justice. “Rule of law”, in this case, is part and parcel of another really nifty concept we like to call “civilization”.

In order for this to be an actual court trial and not merely a kangaroo court, the outcome of the trial cannot be known ahead of time. It must be possible that the prosecution could actually lose the case, despite the fact that the aforementioned 78 trillion people saw me rob the bank. This idea we share as part of our cultural currency about the rule of law puts limits on the actions of the state in attempting to prosecute me, and if the state breaks these rules, then there’s a good possibility that I could avoid conviction – even though, once again, 78 trillion people know that I robbed the bank.

Now here’s the crux of the matter: despite the apparent open and shut nature of this case, the prosecutor decides at trial to introduce the charge that I did knowingly and with willful disregard for the sensitivities of Jews, Muslims, and vegetarians everywhere, did eat a ham sandwich while robbing the bank. For the purposes of this thought experiment, you have absolutely no idea why the prosecutor does this. The judge, for unknown reasons, lets this charge stand, and my defense attorney, for unknown reasons, does nothing about it.

If I am convicted, it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s so much as seen a couple of episodes of Matlock that I’m going to appeal my conviction. Appeals are always based on procedural, not substantive issues. This is another example of our cultural commitment to the rule of law: even if there is no disputing of the facts involved, as a society we have decided that we won’t let a person be sent to jail if their conviction is obtained in a fashion we consider to be inappropriate. Out of the gajillion reasons or so that I could appeal my conviction, surely one of the most prominent is that I received inadequate counsel. Our legal system is designed to be adversarial: defense and prosecution are both supposed to fight tooth and nail against each other to establish the merits of their respective cases. This is yet another example of our historical commitment to justice trumping our desire for vengeance. Eating a ham sandwich isn’t a crime, and if my attorney failed to object to this charge being levied against me, then my attorney displayed obvious incompetence, which means that pretty much by definition my defense was inadequate. And if my defense was inadequate, my conviction gets tossed out.

So, here we go, then:

If you honestly do not think that waterboarding is torture – and I’m looking at you, Matt Margolis – then have the intellectual honesty necessary to argue that men like Yukio Asano ought to have their convictions overturned and their wartime records posthumously cleared.

It’s time, big boys. Put up or shut up. Have the courage of your convictions, or shut the hell up and go home. If waterboarding is not torture, then Yukio Asano received an inadequate defense at his trial for war crimes, and his family deserves to have his name cleared. If you’re not prepared to say that, then you don’t really believe the nonsense you write about waterboarding not being torture. Or, you don’t really believe in abiding by the rule of law when it’s inconvenient for you. So, which is it?

This isn’t particularly funny, and I apologize for that. My sense of humor seems to have taken a leave of absence lately. It probably has something to do with the spectacle created by so many of our elected representatives making excuses for torture lately. It’s surprising just how unfunny that is.