You're Nothing to Me Now . . .

A couple of years ago, Rush Limbaugh failed in his attempt to become a part owner of the Saint Louis Rams. At the time, I wrote that, "I scarcely blame the NFL for not wanting to devote all of their public relations to defending and contextualizing the ravings of one of its part-owners on an almost daily basis. And that is what they would have to do if Limbaugh was involved."

After the most recent Limbaugh freakout, which has resulted in his show bleeding sponsors, I'm sure that the members of the NFL hierarchy are breathing a sigh of relief that they avoided the nightmare of allowing him into their exclusive club; even as Limbaugh's allies go to the mattresses to contain the damage wrought by the man quickly earning a reputation as the Fredo Corleone of the Right.

The Real Victims

Poor victimized rightwingers; "held to a standard of decorum which liberals aren't expected to abide" in Aaron Goldstein's words and it "hasn't been a good week" for them. Poor Dears.

Bob Dylan & the Band

Stuck in the Middle with You . . .

Makers v. Professors

One has to plow through acres of bullshit before getting to punchline in Today's Glenn Reynolds column in the Washington Examiner(via Memeorandum):

[A]fter a while, people who pay their bills on time start to feel like suckers. I think we’ve reached that point now:
* People who pay their mortgages - often at considerable personal sacrifice - see others who didn’t bother get special assistance.
* People who took jobs they didn’t particularly want just to pay the bills see others who didn’t getting extended unemployment benefits.
* People who took risks to build their businesses and succeeded see others, who failed, getting bailouts. It rankles at all levels.

And an important point of Sykes’ book is that moocher-culture isn’t limited to farmers or welfare queens. The moocher-vs-sucker divide isn’t between the rich and poor, but between those who support themselves and those nursing at the government teat. (emphasis added)

Only at the end does one discover that "Examiner Sunday Reflection contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a University of Tennessee School of Law professor, and founder and editor of Instapundit.com." Not only does Mr. Makers v. Takers nurse at the government teat, he does so in a singularly useless capacity—law professor.

Cancer Mall

Barbara Ehrenreich's excellent book, Bright-sided shined a light on the "infantilizing" pink-ribboned culture promoted by groups like the Komen foundation:

The first thing I discovered as I waded out into the relevant sites is that not everyone views the disease with horror and dread . . . There are between two and three million American women in various stages of breast cancer treatment, who, along with anxious relatives, make up a significant market for all things breast cancer related. Bears, for example: I identified four distinct lines, or species, of these creatures, including . . . the Nick and Nora Wish Upon a Star Bear, which was available . . . at the Komen Foundation Web site's "marketplace."

And bears are only the tip, so to speak, of the cornucopia of pink-ribbon-themed breast cancer products. . . "Awareness" beats secrecy and stigma, of course, but I couldn't help noticing that the existential space in which a friend had earnestly advised me to "confront [my] mortality" bore a striking resemblance to the mall.

Obama and his Enemies . . .

Rightwingers are the ultimate victims. Ted Olson(via Memeorandum), for example took to the Wall Street Journal today to whine on behalf of the Koch brothers, but his charges are exceedingly vague. He states:

Richard Nixon maintained an"enemies list" that singled out private citizens for investigation and abuse by agencies of government, including the Internal Revenue Service. When that was revealed, the press and public were outraged. That conduct will forever remain one of the indelible stains on Nixon's presidency and legacy

OK. So, has the Obama administration "singled out private citizens for investigation and abuse"? Olson is kind of sketchy. Giving utterly no specifics, Olson accuses the administration of "engag[ing] in derogatory speculative innuendo about the integrity of . . . tax returns." Obama is also guilty because his "surrogates and allies in the media" have "attacked" and "sullied" the reputation of the Kochs. Absent more specific charges of, you know, actual abuse; it seems as if the president stands accused of engaging in politics.

Reliable hack, Glenn Reynolds adds " I was talking to a CEO last year — an Obama supporter no less — who told me he was amazed at how openly Administration officials threatened to use media demonization if he didn’t play ball." So the administration will criticize those it disagrees with.

Molly Hemingway at Ricochet unwittingly (one is tempted to say "half-wittingly") explains why the comparison between the Nixon Enemies List and Obama's criticism of the Kochs is absurd: "Nixon's lists were secret. Obama is telegraphing his list in his very public rhetoric, the actions of the administration and the oversight of Congress." It was the secrecy of the first that made it so susceptible to abuse.

UPDATE: I should clarify the last line. Nixon's enemies list was secret because the purpose was abuse.

Blue Skies

The Liberal Media . . .

I find it odd that Glenn Reynolds is complaining (via Memeorandum) about the media's supposed failure to adequately vet candidate Obama in 2008 when a week ago he was denouncing one of Obama's harshest critics—Paul Krugman— and absurdly implying that Krugman had elevated Obama to a "messiah."

If he is going to complain about the media's coverage of Obama, Reynolds ought to at least acknowledge of the President's early liberal critics.

I used To Be Disgusted . . .

Via Memeorandum, I see that the latest faux controversy to emerge from right-wingers is this video of Michelle Obama supposedly dissing America. I defy anyone to interpret what the First Lady is saying in the video, especially since her mouth is obscured during part of the clip. According to James Robbins, in the Washington Times she is saying, "all this just for a flag."

Robbins has no real basis for his accusation other than in his reckoning it is what she "appears" to say. These clowns just keep becoming more jaw-droppingly ridiculous and cartoonishly stupid to the extent that I am left speechless.

I defer to Elvis Costello:

Now They're Stupid And Whiny

I didn't watch the White House Correspondent's Dinner, but I saw the fall out from the President's mild mockery of The Donald. Memeorandum has links from Jim Hoft who whined that "It took Obama about 10 seconds before he attacked Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday night. Of course, Donald Trump was sitting in the room and did not have an opportunity to respond."

Some Guy called the "Blogprof" sputtered that ". . .most people would agree that repeatedly punching someone in the face while your friends hold that person from responding is less than fair and amounts to bullying in the extreme."

This is what has these clowns whining:

“Donald Trump is here tonight . . .“Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately but no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like, ‘Did we fake the moon landing?’ ‘What really happened on Roswell?’ And ‘Where are Biggie and Tupac?’”

I'm continuously amazed at what thin-skinned babies most rightwingers are. If anything, Obama owes an apology to Dale Gribble and Fox Mulder for putting them in the same company as Trump.

Update: I give Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse some credit. They are both claim that Trump wins because Obama mentioned him at all. I think it's an absurd claim, Trump is on his way to being a punchline, if not already there; but their Trump wins narrative is preferable to the crocodile tears of Jim Hoft.

My Bucket's Got A Hole In It . . .

The Moviegoer

"Recommended"

In the New York Times.

Strangely Enough!

Strangely Enough!, by C.B Colby was my favorite book during the seventh grade until, strangely enough, it disappeared.

@TAC

I'll be one of the contributors to the new group blog from The American Conservative, @TAC

Ain't My America

It's not even out until next month but via Matthew Yglesias I found a review of Bill Kauffman's Ain't My America by Michael Tomasky in Democracy (annoying registration required). I haven't seen the book yet but the mostly positive review (it gigs Kauffman for being nice to America Firsters) makes the book sound familiar to Kauffman fans.

What would a better word be? Well, I don’t quite know, but Kauffman sure would. In fact, I imagine he’d produce a humdinger. Just a few pages into Ain’t My America, his biting history of conservative foreign policy, and all in the space of a little more than one printed page, he employs the words "coruscant," "nescience," temerarious," "adjuration," and, my personal favorite, "tribade." Goodness! As Casey Stengel said, you could look it up. I certainly had to.

Yep. That's our Bill. It's worth registering and reading.

Newsflash!

Intrepid (Liberal!) media critic Matthew Balan catches the network news broadcasts . . . broadcasting the news:

The "Big Three" networks’ evening newscasts, marking the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq on Wednesday evening, all chose to air news briefs on the anti-war protests across the United States. The news briefs all aired within the first ten minutes of each program.

Will their treachery never cease?

Rules of Blogging

The first rule of linking to an article is, or should be, read the whole thing even when the part you like is in the first paragraph. That would save "Number 9," Chris Horner (at 'Planet Gore') and Glenn Reynolds from looking so silly when linking to this article from NPR.

They all seem to have read the opening paragraph and saw an opportunity to stick a finger in Al Gore's eye. "Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them."

Gee, things are looking bad for Al and all those crackpot "scientists" until one reads a bit further in the article, like the beginning of the next paragraph which begins; "[t]his is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record."

Even further down it says:

Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot.

Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.

"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.

The article isn't about the existence of global warming, which is no longer an issue; but about the complexity of conducting research on such a large scale.

It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.

Read the whole thing, really.

Madman McCain

This (via Hewitt, who seems to agree) is a pretty good case for Obama or even Clinton over John McCain:

The success of Hamas and Hizbullah in the region is not only a danger for Israel, but also a threat to US national interests, US Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Tuesday in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post.

"If Hamas/Hizbullah succeeds here, they are going to succeed everywhere, not only in the Middle East, but everywhere. Israel isn't the only enemy," Arizona Sen. McCain said, in the only interview he is giving to the Israeli media during his visit here.

"They are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the US, Israel and the West believe and stand for. So America does have an interest in what happens here, far above and beyond our alliance with the State of Israel."

He thinks that Hamas is on the brink of world domination if the U.S. isn't deeply involved in the region.

McKibben Reader

I've been reading The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life. McKibben has become one of my favorite writers in the last year or so, in part for the things that he doesn't write about--I've yet to see him address the Reverend Wright "issue" and don't expect to. Instead, he has a column in the most recent issue of Orion on the importance of neighborliness. I reviewed his previous book Deep Economy last year.

One of the things I admire about McKibben, speaking as a part-time freelance writer, is the broad array of publications that he writers for; a trait he shares with Wendell Berry. He has written for the top tier of intellectual publications: The New York Review of Books, New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and Harper's. The book also features articles from Outside, Orion, Christian Century, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones and Yankee. His signiture issue has been global warming, and the book has several articles on the subject. One, a 1993 profile of James Hansen about the early days after he first testified about it before Congress, and other scientists weren't convinced yet is good. It contains the following quote from skeptic Richard Lindzen: "In ten years we'll know a lot more about it and it won't seem a big deal." Not exactly.

Who Cares?

How is it that media and political culture in this country manages to focus almost exclusively on trivial non-issues? The kerfuffle of the moment lay in the fact that the recently retired minister of Barack Obama's church appears to be a nut. This is about 1/50,000th as important as the devastating impact of corn subsidies on the U.S. economy, health and environment; a subject that never gets discussed.

When one considers the ongoing quagmire in Iraq and the looming depression, the quality of Obama's spiritual advisors seems even more trivial.

Rotations

The good news is that Daniel McCarthy is back at The American Conservative after time at ISI and the Ron Paul campaign. He has also been blogging up a storm recently

The not-so-good news is that Volunteer Voters is no more--A.C. Kleinheider is a blogging civilian again.

Update: most of the reaction to the demise of VV has been negative, but I did notice the contribution this guy at Tennessee Free: "I wasn’t fond of Kleinheider. He had the nerve to run a blog, Hard Right, which wasn’t. Soft in the tail, it was. Progressive, Kleinheider seems. Probably from hanging out with Sean Braisted overmuch… Kleinheider bashed Bush as much as William . . ." Can't have a conservative "bashing Bush" now, can we?

Permanent Things

An interesting discussion has been going on at Taki's Magazine and elsewhere, over the least interesting of all possible topics--whom to support for president. Justin Raimondo falls into the (relatively) pro-Obama camp and Richard Spencer is more anti.

If I had to pick between the three remaining I guess I would choose Obama because, well, he isn't Clinton or McCain. Since no remaining candidate is addressing any important issues and my vote doesn't matter, I don't waste much time worrying about it. Whenever I do; I stop what I'm doing, relax with a cold compress on my forehead, pour myself a stiff drink and repeat to myself, "permanent things . . . permanent things . . . permanent things . . ."

World Made By Hand

Two views of Kunstler's World Made by Hand by John Galvin in Orion and by Reihan Salam (via Rod Dreher) in the New York Sun. Dreher also links to book's website that features a trailer. An interesting promotional tool for a book that depicts the end of technological civilization.

Watching the Internets

I gave up watching Instapundit for several weeks, and for protection of my remaining sanity I think I'll reinstate that policy so as to avoid whines such as this: "REPORTS OF eco-terror in Washington. If somebody were burning down environmentalists' headquarters, this would get more attention."

How much more attenion does the story deserve? His link is to an ABC news story, and if memory serves, they had it on their program last night. And what do we have here but an article in the New York Times?

What would the Liberal Media have to do to satisfy Reynolds? Ignore the heated presidential primaries, the coming recession, and the seemingly endless chain of mass shootings; and give the E.L.F. fire wall-to-wall coverage? Angrily thrust a microphone in Barack Obama's face and demand he denounce environmental terrorism?

Good News

After an absence of about twenty years, Bill Kauffman has returned to the pages of Reason, interviewing Carl Oglesby.

Reality Based Rove

Daniel Larison discovers a statement so dishonest and delusional that it could only come from Fox News:

[Chris] WALLACE: If he's able to define Iraq in terms of where do you spend that $12 billion, on the battlefield over there or on infrastructure and social programs here, doesn't Obama win?

[Karl] ROVE: Well, Obama -- it's a good argument for Obama, but I'm wondering where it goes, because it really is a very neo-isolationist argument. It basically says, you know, "We should not be involved in the world because of the consequences to the budget here at home."

Well, we were not involved in the world before 9/11, and look what happened. Look at the cost to the American economy after a terrorist attack on the homeland. We lost a million jobs in 90 days after 9/11.

If we were to give up Iraq with the third largest oil reserves in the world to the control of an Al Qaida regime or to the control of Iran, don't you think $200 a barrel oil would have a cost to the American economy? (emphasis added)

Amazing, isn't it? We, who had been bombing Iraq, stationing troops in Saudi Arabia, sending billions in foreign aid around the world, dropping bombs on Serbia on behalf of the Kosovo Liberation Army; weren't involved in the world prior to 9/11. What planet do these people live on?

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

Glenn Reynolds should read the recent Doublethink article on Ronald Bailey's acceptance of reality on the issue of global warming. It might keep him from silliness such as when he writes ". . . the current cold spell is just weather, not climate. Sure, but will they remember that distinction in July? . . . ."

First, note that if you enlarge the screenshot below from the WBIR home page below, you will see that he wrote that on a warm 66 degree late Winter day in Knoxille. Note also that the forcasted high for Monday, March 3rd is a an even balmier 70 degrees.

Second, when you click the link on the word "July," you go to a post of his from April of last year with a link to Gateway Pundit sneering that it was cold for a global warming rallies in Albany, New York and other places. It makes sense that he didn't link to a post from July, since last Summer in Knoxville was misaberably hot and exceptionally dry from July until sometime in October. Reynolds also complained that he keeps having to deny that he is in fact a denier. But he gets that label because he almost exclusively mentions warming in the same context--his somewhat excessive concern that the media or whomever is unduly hyping global warming: "keep this in mind when they start claiming, as the press inevitably does, that unusually warm days are evidence for climate change."

It's astonishing that, while most people concerned about global warming care more about the potentially catastrophic effects on human civilization, for Reynolds the most import issue is the occasional overly alarmist news story, of which he gives no specific example.

World Without Salad Shooters

I just finished World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler. World is a post-apocalyptic, post-peak oil vision of a future without salad shooters. It begins a few years after the power has gone off and the cars have stopped running. Suffice it to say that things get kind of rough as all central authority collapses and people often find themselves at the mercy of thugs and warlords. On the other hand, something resembling a genuine community emerges in the remains of the small Upstate New York town where the novel is set. It occurred to me as I was reading that World would make a great movie--and if it had the good fortune to appear shortly after President McCain were to bomb Iran, sending gas to six or seven dollars a gallon--it would be a big hit.

Kunstler is either the world's greatest crackpot on the subject of peak oil, or a prophet that we should all heed. Either way, he is one of the few people worth reading (he has a weekly column and sometimes contributes to The American Conservative and Orion) these days. The New York Times should have hired him instead of that neocon hack. He is also worth seeing in person:

George Schuyler

First Principles, ISI's new web journal, just published my review of George S. Schuyler: Portrait of a Black Conservative, by Oscar Williams. Schuyler is largely forgotten today but he lived a fascinating life as an adventurer/journalist. Perhaps like American life in general, he was far more interesting in the years before World War II than in the years after.

WFB 1925-2008

One might say that the death of William F. Buckley marks the end of an era, but I believe that his era ended some time ago. Like Justin Raimondo, Buckley and National Review had an important influence on my youthful thinking. The influence didn't last and I doubt if I even qualify as a conservative (whatever that means) anymore; but I was once so enamored of Buckley's brand of Cold War Conservatism that I joined the Marine Corps. The only book of his that I still have is his Unmaking of a Mayor, pictured below.

Buckley was a rakish figure at with a command of the (spoken, at least) English language. He was by all accounts (particularly Joseph Sobran's) a gentleman and a good friend; qualities more important than whom one voted for in the last election.

That's Victory?

Glen Dean has a post at Tennessee Free stating that conservatism isn't dying but reigns triumphant:

It has been 27 years since Ronald Reagan was sworn in, and not only did Reagan transform fiscal policy, and foreign policy, but he transformed modern liberalism. We had eight years of a Democratic President after Reagan, but at no time did that President seek to raise taxes to pre-Reagan levels. Speaking of that President, he was the one that declared “the end of welfare as we know it”. At no time did President Clinton propose price controls or regulation to the extent of the Carter administration. Clinton was also a major advocate of free trade, as evidenced by his signing of NAFTA.

First, I should point out how unfair he is being to President Carter. It was the man from Plains, not Saint Reagan, who was responsible for most of the deregulation of a quarter century ago.

His point is that conservatism has actually "won" because of Democrats aren't planning to restore pre-Reagan levels of taxation, or something. If they have acheived victory, then why have rightwingers been so whiny for the last couple of years? Conservatism is in roughly the same position as liberalism was in forty years ago--it has some acheivements but has bumped up against reality. They are hampered by their feeble response to the failings of their foreign policy and the fact that much of their "free market" ideology has little public support and tax cuts don't even have much resonance anymore.

Dean's declaration of victory shows how much conservatives have scaled back their expectations in recent years. In 2002, the Republicans won a rare midterm victory for the party in power and regained the U.S. Senate. Their big domestic accomplishments were to create the Orwellian sounding Department of Homeland Security and pass an expansion of Medicare. I remember my younger days--when I was a standard issue rightwinger-- salivating at the roll back we could have accomplished with a Republican president and congress. It turns out that when it happens, government expands.

The Influence of Dreher . . .

A sign seen on tonight's NBC News broadcast: "Crunchy Cons for Huck." I couldn't see if the sign holder was wearing birkenstocks, but I'm guessing the he was.

Sixty-Four Dollar Question

Steve Sailer has an article in the February, 11 issue of The American Conservative explaining the correlation between affordable housing and child rearing and support for the Republicans.

Now if he can only explain what it is about the 2.3 kids and the house in the 'burbs that makes seemingly rational people support aggressive war, environmental degredation, exempting the wealthy from taxation--financed with massive debt passed on to the aforementioned 2.3 offspring and leavened with occasional empty prattle about "family values" and "free markets."

Watch This Space

A new web publication from ISI, First Principles, is now online. Let me be among the first to offer my congratulations. It will be among my daily reading.

Book Notes

The March issue of Chronicles will have my review of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President by Stephen Hayes. That issue will be on newsstands and in mailboxes in about three weeks. I'll give you the first sentence and let you wait for the rest. "By now it should be clear to all but the most loyal Republicans that the government of the United States is controlled by madmen."

Next up is Print Is Dead: Books in our Digital Age by digital/new media fanatic Jeff Gomez. His argument can be boiled down to, "IPOD! IPOD! IPOD!" If Gomez represents the best that digital world has to offer, Gutenberg's invention should hang around for another 500 years or so.

Back to the Drawing Board . . .

Glen Dean is concerned about what might happen to the Republican party in the coming months. "A nomination of John McCain will destroy the Republican Party. The same can be said of a Huckabee nomination."

I think it's overly dramatic to talk about "destroy[ing]" the GOP, but they are trouble this year no matter who they nominate. Their problem is that the program of the party, known as "conservatism" has been put in to practice to the extent it can, and been found wanting. If they don't go back to the drawing board and find something different, they had better be prepared to for some time in the political wilderness.

New From ISI

I received a spring/summer catalog from ISI Books today. As always, they have plenty of interesting titles but the two that stood out to me are God, Man, & Hollywood: Politically Incorrect Cinema from the Birth of a Nation to the Passion of the Christ by Mark Royden Winchell and a reprint of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, by Justin Raimondo.

I've enjoyed Winchell's writing in Chronicles and other publications for years and look forward to his book. Raimondo's book has a new introduction by George W. Carey and critical essays by Scott Richert of Chronicles and David Gordon of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. It should make a good companion book to Bill Kauffman's Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism, which will be out this spring.

Crunchy Bombs

In the midst of a Washington Post article about the prospects for conservatives in 2008, Jonah Goldberg drops this little stink bomb:

Many of the younger conservative policy mavens and intellectuals have also become steadily less enamored of free markets and limited government. . . "Crunchy conservatism," the brainchild of Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher, is also a cri de coeur against mainstream conservatism. And both of these derive from the kind of thinking that led George W. Bush to insist in 2000 that he was a "different kind of Republican" because he was a "compassionate conservative" -- a political program that apparently measures compassion by how much money the government spends on education, marriage counseling and the like.

I not only read, but reviewed Crunchy Cons for Chronicles. It's been a while, but I can't remember anything about it that "derive[s] from the kind of thinking that led George W. Bush to insist in 2000 that he was a 'different kind of Republican.'" Fortunately, Jeremy Beer has published a perceptive review of Dreher's book in the University Bookman. He neglected to note any similarity to compassionate conservatism and instead writes that, "Dreher . . . seems to have discovered the half-forgotten canon of traditionalist thought (especially the work of Russell Kirk) and its contemporary expositors (especially Lukacs, Wendell Berry, and Alasdair MacIntyre)."

Beer also wisely puts the much abused term "free markets" in quotes. If one grants that conservative intellectuals actually favor such a policy, conservative politicians and probably 99% of Ameicans don't. I'm not even sure what it means anymore.

2007 in Review

Some of you may have noticed that I took a brief, two month, vaction from blogging. I just got bored and disgusted with saying the same things over and over again. I took the absence of cards, letters and emails to mean that my readers are too distraught to go on.

I mark my return to a (hopefully) more frequent schedule of blogging by recording my thoughts on the year past in several areas.

Books
I became a member of the National Book Critics Circle in 2007, and a couple of weeks ago I submitted my first nominations for its annual awards. Here are the nominations I made in the general nonfiction category:

1 Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, by Bill McKibben. I reviewed this for Metro Pulse a few months back.
2 Elites for Peace: The Senate and the Vietnam War, 1964-1968, by Gary Stone. I also reviewed this title in The American Conservative.
3 The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Mearsheimer and Walt. Move along, nothing to see here.
4Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, by David R. Montgomery. Here's a brief review from Bookforum.

Movies
I haven't seen enough movies this year to make a top ten or even a top five list. My friend Jesse Walker annully makes several ten best lists from a decade ago and going back in time (eg. this year he is doing, 1997, 1987, etc.). Instead, I will list a few notable films from previous years that I saw for the first time in 2007.

1 The Jazz Singer(1927). This classic first "talking picture" is actually mostly still silent.

2 42nd Street, Footlight Parade , Gold Diggers of 1933. This trio of Warner Brothers backstage musicals, all from 1933, have similar plots and cast, but the real star in both cases is the outlandish choreography of Busby Berkeley.

3 One, Two, Three (1961). An outstanding Billy Wilder comedy starring the the great James Cagney, who moves at about a hundred miles an Hour in the second half of the film.

4 Ghost World (2001). "I can't relate to 99 per cent of humanity."

Person of the Year

Rightwingers whined when Time magazine chose Vladimir Putin instead of their favored candidate, David Petraeus. I would pick either of Time's runner ups -- Al Gore and J.K. Rowling -- over Petraeus. But consider the merits of Ron Paul, who has raised a boat load of money in his quixotic presidential campaign and threatens to upset the apple cart in the Republican party. I wouldn't be surprised if he wins a couple of primaries and caucuses this year.

UPDATE: I almost forgot to mention the entertainment phenomenon of the year in 2007 -- the return of several former writers and cast members of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy form the Film Crew. Their premise is that an unseen Charlie's Angelsesque boss assigns bad movies for them to provide DVD commentaries. I've seen a couple that they have done and they are pretty good. Joel Hodgson and several others have started Cinematic Titanic. I have seen their product yet, but I have high hopes. I commented on the regional nature of MST3K here.

Hot Air

Glenn Reynolds notes the slow hurricane season and makes one his patented witty asides: "But I thought that global warming was going to produce an ever-growing number of hurricanes like Katrina . . . ."

The problem is that the Ross Gelbspan column in the link doesn't say what Reynolds implies.

As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.

Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. (emphasis added)

Gelbspan is saying that warming will intensify storms, not make more of them. The irony is that most of the Southeast could use a hurricane. Whatever damage one might do on the coast, if a tropical depression were to dump heavy rains over Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee, it would be a blessing.

Al Wins, Michelle's Head Explodes!

Had the committee consulted me, I would have recommended Bill McKibben for any global warming related Nobel Peace Prize, but it's worth seeing Al Gore (and the IPCC) win just to be able witness the fallout. Sure Michelle Malkin's head explodes about 30 times a week, but it never seems to get old--at least not to her.

odds & Ends

Because American political coverage isn't vacuous enough, Pajamas Media has a roundup of links about the latest critical issue--Obama's "refusal" to wear an American flag pin. Where's the MSM on this critical issue?

This Victor Davis Hanson post has a list of "leftwing talking points" that Ahmadinejad talked about in New York recently. They include "Katrina, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, missing WMD, the 1953 Iranian coup." It's interesting that he cedes the issues of competent government and torture to the leftwing, but what caught my was the part about the 1953 coup. I haven't noticed leftwingers bringing it up but it is worthwhile to occasionally remind Americans that our history with that country didn't begin in 1979. It may be "leftwing" for an American to bring the subject up but wouldn't it qualify as patriotic, a more conservative impulse, for an Iranian to be upset about it? I've noted before the disdain conservatives have for the patriotism of foreigners.

While praising The New Republic's ridiculous review of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Jeffrey Herf states that "Goldberg is quite right that many people in the West are reluctant to attach the label of anti-Semitism to arguments." I've been under the impression in the last few years that the term has been thrown around so carelessly that it has lost meaning.

The Bacevich article in the latest TAC has received loads of attention and that's good, but there are other worthwhile pieces in the issue. That includes an essay (the second of two) that includes this gem of a quote: ". . . for so long . . . far too many Americans, possibly a majority, preferred comforting lies to unpleasant truths and acted as co-conspirators in their own deception." It also features a column by Fred Reed pointing out that foreigners, the jerks, insist on seeing things from their own point of view and get tired of American meddling and condescension. Really?

Worse. Worser. Worstest.

Via Dennis Dale, I learn that Keith Olbermann took notice of Andrew Bacevich's Sycophant Savior essay in the Oct. 8 American Conservative. Dale writes that "Olbermann evinced (or affected) an unlikely ignorance of the vast gulf between current Republican Party leadership and the American Conservatives' valiant insurgency, deliberately encouraging the misunderstanding that the magazine and such Republican boosters as Rush Limbaugh are intellectual and political kin. Similar to the neocon's creative categorization of Shi'ite Hezbollah along with Sunni Al Qaeda."

I'm guessing that Olbermann had no idea of the vast gulf separating TAC from the Republican and rightwing establishment, which is pretty sad considering that the publication was cofounded by his MSNBC coworker, Pat Buchanan. I remember PJB and Bill Press promoting the first issue on that channel five years ago.

Olbermann declaimed that "for some reason there does not seem to be a George Bush-led race among Republicans to blast either Limbaugh or 'The American Conservative' the way they so happily wrung hands over the MoveOn.org Petraeus advertisement." For anyone in the know--a comparison between Bacevich, a perceptive critic and author who is one of our finest thinkers on foreign policy; and Limbaugh, a boorish ignoramus--is laughable. Also, I can't imagine Olbermann resisting Bacevich's backstory--a Vietnam veteran who lost his son to the Iraq War--if he had known about it.

P.S. When I wrote the part about the discussion of TAC's first issue it occurred to me that the magazine is now five years old. Happy Birthday!

Democracy in America . . .

Can somebody give me evidence to show that Americans have any capacity left for self-government? While trolling through NRO's Corner today, I caught this post from Kathryn Lopez with the text of a pro-Limbaugh resolution that Lopez, of course, endorses:

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

OCTOBER 1, 2007

Mr. KINGSTON submitted the following resolution

RESOLUTION

Commending Rush Hudson Limbaugh III for his ongoing public support of American troops serving both here and abroad. Recognizing Mr. Limbaugh for his relentless efforts to build and maintain troop morale through worldwide radio broadcasts and personal visits to conflict regions . . .

This is a counter the anti-Limbaugh resolution endorsed by some Democrats, that in turn is a counter to the anti-Moveon.org resolution that the Congress passed recently. Do these people have nothing better to do than to make fools of themselves, and of America, on the world stage?

Every time I start to think that I've become to cynical about the state of American Democracy, I discover that the opposite is the case.

Phony Soldiers . . .

Media Matters (via Matthew Yglesias) has a clip of a spittle-flecked, hysterical, rage-filled rant of Rush Limbaugh against a Republican (and military veteran) caller who favors leaving Iraq. The clip closes with Limbaugh calling those in the military who oppose the war "phony soldiers."

As I've said before, the War Party has nothing left to offer. Imagine Limbaugh a year from now with a Giuliani/Santorum (farfetched, I know) badly trailing an Edwards/Webb (again, farfetched). His head will probably explode on the air.

UPDATE: In the comments, Glen Dean suggests that I've been snookered by Media Matters and that Limbaugh and his caller weren't calling all antiwar soldiers "phony." The point of my post rested upon Limbaugh's frothing lunacy more than as a comment on the "phony soldiers" controversy. But I went back and listened to the clip again, and tried to read his raving self defense tirade from Friday. While it is likely that he was making a reference to a fake soldier that ABC News had done a story on a few days ago, Limbaugh and his caller are so careless with their words that they convey the impression that they believe that the only real soldiers are those that support the war. I haven't heard or read much of Limbaugh for the last few years, but from what I have, he doesn't believe that it is possible to honorably oppose the Iraq War. For this reason, and others, I have to agree with Daniel Larison who commented that Limbaugh is "disgrace."

Saint Petraeus

In the forthcoming issue of The American Conservative, Andrew Bacevich delivers a thumpin' to Saint Petraeus. The crowd at Movon.org should read it and discover that substance is preferable to clever rhymes:

David Petraeus is a political general. Yet in presenting his recent assessment of the Iraq War and in describing the "way forward," Petraeus demonstrated that he is a political general of the worst kind—one who indulges in the politics of accommodation that is Washington’s bread and butter but has thereby deferred a far more urgent political imperative, namely, bringing our military policies into harmony with our political purposes.

Further down, Bacevich elaborates on of the most shameful aspects of Bush's war, and the Saint's role in it:

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to sustained bipartisan applause, President Bush committed the United States to an open-ended global war on terror. Having made that fundamental decision, the president and Congress sent American soldiers off to fight that war while urging the American people to distract themselves with other pursuits. . .

The result, six years later, is a massive and growing gap between the resources required to sustain that global war, in Iraq and elsewhere, and the resources actually available to do so. President Bush, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff serving as enablers, has papered over that gap by sending soldiers back for a third or fourth combat tour and, most recently, by extending the length of those tours. In a country with a population that exceeds 300 million, one-half of one percent of our fellow citizens bear the burden of this global war. . .

The president has made no serious effort to mobilize the wherewithal that his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan require. The Congress, liberal Democrats voting aye, has made itself complicit in this shameful policy by obligingly appropriating whatever sums of money the president has requested, all, of course, in the name of "supporting the troops."

Petraeus has now given this charade a further lease on life. In effect, he is allowing the president and the Congress to continue dodging the main issue, which comes down to this: if the civilian leadership wants to wage a global war on terror and if that war entails pacifying Iraq, then let’s get serious about providing what’s needed to complete the mission—starting with lots more soldiers. Rather than curtailing the ostensibly successful surge, Petraeus should broaden and deepen it. That means sending more troops to Iraq, not bringing them home. And that probably implies doubling or tripling the size of the United States Army on a crash basis.

If the civilian leadership is unwilling to provide what’s needed, then all of the talk about waging a global war on terror—talk heard not only from the president but from most of those jockeying to replace him—amounts to so much hot air. Critics who think the concept of the global war on terror is fundamentally flawed will see this as a positive development. Once we recognize the global war on terror for the fraudulent enterprise that it has become, then we can get serious about designing a strategy to address the threat that we actually face, which is not terrorism but violent Islamic radicalism. The antidote to Islamic radicalism, if there is one, won’t involve invading and occupying places like Iraq.

This defines Petraeus’s failure. Instead of obliging the president and the Congress to confront this fundamental contradiction—are we or are we not at war?—he chose instead to let them off the hook.
. . .

Politically, it qualifies as a brilliant maneuver. The general’s relationships with official Washington remain intact. Yet he has broken faith with the soldiers he commands and the Army to which he has devoted his life. He has failed his country. History will not judge him kindly.

Infantile Nation

Pat Buchanan has a good column on the Ahmadinejad hysteria of the last few days:

It would be an obscenity, we are told, if Ahmadinejad were allowed to place a wreath at Ground Zero. This is a public relations stunt that should never be permitted.

That the Iranian president has PR in mind is undoubtedly true. Much of what national leaders do is symbolic. But that wreath-laying would have said something else, as well.

It would have said that, to Iran, these Americans were victims who deserve to be honored and mourned and, by extension, the men who killed them were murderers. Bin Laden celebrates 9-11. So do all America-haters. By laying a wreath at Ground Zero, the president of Iran would be saying that in the war between al-Qaida and the United States, he and his country side with the United States.

How would we have been hurt by letting him send this message?

For what it's worth, I have no objection to allowing him to place a wreath (though I hadn't previously considered PJB's angle), but I wouldn't have invited Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia because he has little of value to say. But the level of hysteria coming from rightwingers is amazing. Remember how only a few days ago the issue was the Moveon.org ad. From what I see of Townhall, National Review, Pajamas and other such sites, the range of emotion varies from rage to hysteria to completely bonkers; and these people have the nerve to label their opponents as "Unhinged" and "deranged!"

This can only get worse. This crowd must continually change the subject to keep from having to defend the disastrous policies (particularly: "Hey, let's invade____!") that they have urged upon America.

UPDATE: Can this be the subject for the next round of outrage? Katie Couric had the audacity to state a couple of banal and obvious truths about the Iraq War: " Speaking at the National Press Club Tuesday evening, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric stated, 'Everyone in this room would agree that people in this country were misled in terms of the rationale of this war,' adding that it is 'pretty much accepted' that the war in Iraq was a mistake." How dare she say that?!?!

The Way it Always Begins . . .

I've read about half of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, and believe me the critics are right. It has nothing but page after page of bilious Jew-hatred. Sure, the antisemitism is subtle, as when Mearsheimer and Walt say that they "believe the history of the Jewish people and the norm of national self-determination provide ample justification for a Jewish state."

Michael Gerson and Ronald Bailey are correct in noting that "these academics may not follow their claims all the way to anti-Semitism. But this is the way it begins. This is the way it always begins."

Perhaps I'm a bit excitable, but the other night I heard raucous crowds and saw lights in the evening and grew worried that a Mearsheimer/Walt inspired pogrom was occurring. Fortunately, news reports later confirmed that it was a UT football game. But what about the next time? What about the next time?

I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink . . .

Stephen Green took note of my criticism and responded. I'll just add that there is no possible way for me to convince him that the a government (even one that supports terrorists) doesn't face exactly the same set of incentives, challenges and problems as a band of cave dwelling terrorists; so I won't bother to try.

Concerning al Qaeda and 9/11, he makes a good points about them not having been able to hit the U.S. since that day and about us having killed lots of terrorists. I don't pretend to understand their thinking so I can't say if they were delusional enough to believe that they could get away with flying planes into skyscrapers on a regular basis.

But they achieved mass murder and induced the United States into what appears to be two failed occupations--a track record hardly compatible with the term "disaster."

What separates Green and myself, I'm guessing, is our diverging views of the Iraq War. If you think that Iraq was wisely conceived competently fought, then the notion that 9/11 was a disaster for al Qaeda makes much more sense.

Now I think I'll have a drink.

Booze Blogging

Perhaps Stephen Green should stop killing brain cells with booze. He argues against a statement by Jimmy Carter (about the unlikelyness of an Iranian missile attack on Israel) by stating:

But let's do remind him that it was just six years ago when al Qaeda launched four missiles, of the passenger jet variety, straight into the financial and military hearts of the United States. It might be helpful if Carter would remember that Afghanistan, from whence the 9/11 attackers came, is even further from New York than Israel is from Iran. And let's also remind Mr. Carter that that mission was specifically suicidal in nature. Maybe also Jimmy needs a refresher that the 9/11 attacks haven't worked out so well for al Qaeda. Finally, give the ex-President a moment to ask himself if he really thinks Ahmadinejad is any more sane than Osama bin Laden.

Ignore for a moment, that he confuses the motivations of a terrorist organization with those of a government. Can one really argue that the "9/11 attacks haven't worked out so well for al Qaeda?" What would be the basis for that? Sure, they lost their caves in Afghanistan, but bin Laden managed to find refuge in Pakistan. On the plus side for bin Laden, the attacks killed thousands of infidels and induced the United States into two wars. I assume that bin Laden thanks Allah every day for the invasion of Iraq, which has drawn the U.S. military into a quagmire and discredited America around the world.

Actors Are Cattle

Glenn Reynolds has a post up quoting James Caan saying, "nobody should give a shit about an actor's opinion on politics." I fully agree with Caan and I wish that Reynolds did as well. The only time I ever hear about what Sean Penn or Rosie O'Donnell has to say about politics is when I read about it at a rightwing blog like Instapundit, or Pajamas, or Townhall. A good recent example is an "Ask Dr. Helen (the 'Instawife') column at Pajamas about a Sally Field outburst at an awards show. Maybe Reynolds and his allies will take Caan's advice.

Connect the Dots . . .

John Hindraker can't understand why "why voters haven't seemed to be repelled by the Dems' wacky left wing" represented by Moveon.org.

So I'll help him out. No normal person cares about Moveon's "betray us" ad or about any of the other things that rightwingers are frothing about these days. I have seen no evidence that the public is shifting towards supporting the war or are showing any great faith in Saint Petraeus.

UPDATE Paul Krugman on Saint Petraeus:

To a remarkable extent, punditry has taken a pass on whether Gen. Petraeus’s picture of the situation in Iraq is accurate. Instead, it was all about the theatrics – about how impressive he looked, how well or poorly his Congressional inquisitors performed. And the judgment you got if you were watching most of the talking heads was that it was a big win for the administration – especially because the famous MoveOn ad was supposed to have created a scandal, and a problem for the Democrats.

. . .

But here’s the thing: new polls by CBS and Gallup show that the Petraeus testimony had basically no effect on public opinion: Americans continue to hate the war, and want out. The whole story about how the hearing had changed everything was a pure figment of the inside-the-Beltway imagination.

What I found striking about the whole thing was the contempt the pundit consensus showed for the public – it was, more or less, “Oh, people just can’t resist a man in uniform.” But it turns out that they can; it’s the punditocracy that can’t.

Ledeen Among the Rednecks

Andrew Sullivan correctly pegs the poseur Michael Ledeen:

Flyover Country [Michael Ledeen]

Barbara and I went to Indianapolis for a Toby Keith concert, where we partied with something like 25,000 happy rednecks, most of them young, most of them wearing boots and cowboy hats (and cheering Keith's great song "I Should Have Been a Cowboy"). It's a great show, and he's a wonderful performer, not least because of his deeply moving patriotic songs like "American Soldier," "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue," and " The Taliban," etc.

It's great to get out of the Washington culture of narcissism and spend some time with the rednecks, a.k.a. real Americans . . .

Which, after a week of disgusting anti-Americanism in Washington, nicely summed up our feelings.

You ought to try it. Does wonders for the spirit.

What a stupid jerk. The only things missing are references to chawin' terbacky and goin' to a NASCAR race. If a lefty were to write about "happy rednecks" in flyover country in such a condescending fashion, he would be eaten alive by the usual rightwing suspects.

The Lobby

I purchased a copy of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by Walt and Mearsheimer, largely out of spite after reading (as much as I could stand) a review in the cretinous "Pajamas Media" by Lee Smith, who argues:

The key difference between most anti-Semitic tracts of the pre-Holocaust period and The Israel Lobby is Israel itself; after all, Zionism, arises under the same auspices as the Protocols – the international system of state sovereignty. Theodor Herzl believed that once the Jews had a state of their own and the Jews could take their place among nations, the Jewish problem would go away and Jews would become like everyone else. However, as The Israel Lobby shows, the irrational obsession with Israel as the root of all problems in the Middle East and US policy there, the willful misrepresentation of Israeli policies, and holding the Jewish state to standards in war and peace that not even the United States cares to observe, never mind, say, the Islamic Republic of Iran – Herzl on this count at least was wrong. A Jewish state has done nothing to curtail anti-Semitism.

I won't get around to reading the book right away, but I await the reviews that most likely appear in The American Conservatve, The New York Review of Books and perhaps a few other publications that will be illuminating rather than hysterical.

Newsbusted

This has to be the lamest thing ever . . .

Duncan Against the War Party

Metro Pulse--Knoxville's weekly paper--has an article about Jimmy Duncan; and how he keeps winning in a conservative district while continuing to cast high profile votes against the Bush administration on the war in Iraq and related issues:

This bit of political analysis can be put to the real-world test at Barnes' Barber Shop in the heart of Knoxville's Burlington neighborhood. It's one of only two of the dozen businesses that remain open along the south side of Martin Luther King Drive in its 3900 block. The rest are shuttered and dismal. But the Barnes' shop is a working, wondrous anachronism. It boasts four old-time barber chairs, real wood paneling, lots of mirrors, photos and clippings on the walls, semi-cathouse wallpaper, ceramic tile floors and real people, the kind only Burlington Boys lay claim to. It's where Duncan had his first haircut, almost 60 years ago, and most of his haircuts since.

The Iraq War issue hasn't come up in his barber shop visits says Roy Berrier, who's been with the shop for 47 years and who has cut Duncan's hair countless times.

"We never did discuss it, but he knew how I felt," Berrier says. "I could have told him, 'I'm on your side. We've got no business over there. We're not going to win nothing,' but I didn't have to. He knew that."

How odd that my fellow Knoxville Blogger who links to about 50 million things a day--Glenn Reyolds--hasn't linked to this yet.

Making Sense of the American Right . . .

Paul Gottfried has a thing or two to learn about self-promotion. On and on he goes at Taki's Top Drawer about his new book with nary a link to the publishers webpage or Amazon, or even mention of the title:

Unless I’m mistaken, the liberal-neocon establishment will black out my new book, on the conservative movement, with the same dogged malice it brought to bear against my previous five works, including a tome published in a prestigious series by Princeton. It is therefore important that I advertise my book on this website—and not only to help boost my sales. Unless my book receives public attention, the future, publicized histories of the postwar conservative movement may be exclusively those of Heritage, AEI and other neoconservative disseminators of opinion. My book differs from the histories of such foundations and it does so by providing information of a kind that these sources will not likely provide. . But, to repeat my point, my work will not get read unless you buy and discuss it.

So allow me. It is Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right, published by Palgrave Macmillan and it sounds interesting. It has been several years since I read Gottfried's The Conservative Movement and a lot has changed since then. The new book should prove to be good reading.

Elites . . .

The September 10 issue of The American Conservative is out with my review of Elites for Peace: The Senate and the Vietnam War, 1964-1968 from the University of Tennessee Press. Here is a brief excerpt:

Vietnam wasn't America's only unpopular war in the 20th century, but it was the one that nearly tore the country apart when it inspired massive street protests in the late 1960s. In Elites For Peace, Gary Stone turns attention away from campus protesters and rioters and focuses instead on opposition coming from the corridors of power. At the center of Stone's narrative is Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, a man of contrasts. He was a signer of the segregationist "Southern Manifesto" who became a darling of the liberal intelligentsia. He started his career as an advocate of executive power, but became a harsh critic of the war policy of two presidents.

The rest of the issue looks good and features an appreciation of Lawrence of Arabia at 45 by Steve Sailer, a column by Daniel Larison on Barack Obama's Bushian foreign policy and an article by Michael Brendan Dougherty on the campaign of the Man from Hope, Mike Huckabee.

Raving Reynolds . . .

I suppose I should stop reading Instapundit in order to save my sanity, but what the heck is Glenn Reyonolds talking about when he writes?; "KOUCHNER IN BAGHDAD: France's Foreign Minister visits Iraq and observes: 'Now we have to face the reality, including the American view.' Think how much better things would be if the previous French administration had taken that view."

A plausible interpretation of what Reynolds is saying here is that he believes that it is France's fault that the Iraq war has been such a disaster. The more plausible one is that He is desparately grasping at straws and no longer knows or even cares what he is raving about.

I Have Nothing To Add

Hugh Hewitt:

The reality is that politicians demand that the troops be withdrawn from Iraq because that withdrawal will inflict a political defeat on the Administration. If the Army and marines are obliged to retreat, Democrats reason, there will be no way for the GOP to portray the invasion of Iraq as a sound decision.

Me: Speechless.

Ain't My America

Here's something to whet the appetite of Bill Kauffman fans: a description of his forthcoming Ain't My America, from the Henry Holt catalog:

As Bill Kauffman makes clear, true conservatives have always resisted the imperial and military impulse: it drains the treasury, curtails domestic liberties, breaks down families, and vulgarizes culture. From the Federalists who opposed the War of 1812, to the striving of Robert Taft (known as "Mr. Republican") to keep the United States out of Korea, to the latter-day libertarian critics of the Iraq war, there has historically been nothing freakish, cowardly, or even unusual about antiwar activists on the political right. And while these critics of U.S. military crusades have been vilified by the party of George W. Bush, their conservative vision of a peaceful, decentralized, and noninterventionist America gives us a glimpse of the country we could have had--and might yet attain.

Now we only have to sit back and wait for the glowing reviews from Victor Davis Hanson in National Review and perhaps, Fred Barnes in the Weakly Standard. It is being published by the American Empire Project, who should take a lesson from ISI Books and host a group blog along the lines of Reactionary Radicals.

The only catch is that we must wait until next April to get the book.

Pointless . . .

Don Surber illustrates the pitfalls of gotcha! blogging:

Much ado has been made about Fred Thompson, 64, and his "Trophy Wife," Jeri, 40. The 24-year age difference scandalized the feminists so that they have taken the vapors.

Few of them complained about the 37-year age difference in Bill Clinton, then 59, and Monica Lewinsky, 22, when they had their affair.

He's really got those feminists on the run, although he gives us no evidence that they are particularly upset about Mrs. Thompson. But Surber, apparently unaware that Google and other search engines put a mountain of data at his fingertips, has one other problem--Bill Clinton was born in August of 1946 and Monica Lewinsky was born in July of 1973; for an age difference of a bit less than 27 years. It's a large enough gap to prove his point; but since the rest of his post discusses, among other things, how the age gaps between presidents and their wives and lovers have drawn attention for two hundred years, his point is rather . . . pointless.

The Land of the Smokies

Knoxville's Metro Pulse has published my review of The Land of the Smokies, from the University Press of Mississippi.

Print Lives!

This has to be the dumbest thing I've seen on the web in the last few days, and I regularly check the Corner. Jeff Gomez, who is apparently some sort of digital/techno fanatic makes the bizarre argument that if some authors are dead, then perhaps books should be as well:

This brings up an interesting point: if consumers don’t seem to care that an author is dead, which proves that they only want the content -- the characters, the stories, the experience -- then they also won’t care how that content is delivered. After all, if they don’t mind the missing presence of the actual Robert Ludlum (a living, breathing person) then they certainly won’t miss the presence of the book itself (an inanimate object). In addition, a physical book has the potential to stand in between a reader and the content they desire. This is especially true in Ludlum’s case since his books are sometimes really large, and not nearly as portable as an electronic device. For instance, the other day on the train I saw a guy gingerly reading text on his iPhone, sitting next to a girl trying valiantly to keep the new doorstop-sized Harry Potter book balanced on her knee.

My first reaction is shock and disbelief that an author who is involved in marketing for Farrar, Straus Giroux along with the other publishers affiliated with VHPS, only just discovered that people continue to read authors after they are dead -- Flannery O'Connor?, Walker Percy? . . . Shakespeare? But beyond that, the status of the author as dead or alive has nothing to do with the optimal medium for reading his or her book.

His observation of someone struggling to balance Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows compared to another's ease of reading on his cell phone strikes me as dubious. I tried a little experiment and found I could easily balance the Potter book on my knee. I also tried Remembered Past by John Lukacs, another large book, and found it easy to balance as well. My cell phone is light and small but its screen only displays about sixteen words at a time. That would require a great deal of scrolling to read a fat book or even the type of essay printed in Harper's or The New Yorker. When people only read cell phones, they won't be reading books anymore. No sane person, especially one who is an author, longs for that day.