July 20, 2005 by s.z.

In Other News ... President Bush nominated Eddie Haskell to the Supreme Court, Karl Rove is still guilty of leaking the name of a covert CIA officer to the press for political reasons, and this blog has now had over 2 million hits.  At this time, we'd like to thank TBogg, for giving us a chance when no one else would; Atrios, for helping us to get a lot of those hits; Pandagon, for letting us guest-blog and thereby reach a wider audience and gain a part-time troll; Sadly, No!, for making us look respectable in comparison; JamesJeff GannonGuckert, for getting us mentioned on Countdown and in the WashPost (not favorably, but still...); and the Wingnuts, for giving us something to write about. But most of all, we'd like to thank YOU, the Wo'C reader, for being the kind of intelligent, knowledgeable, sophisticated, funny, discerning person who would read and comment here.  We won't mention any names since our second blogiversary is coming up next month and we want to save something for that occasion, but we will say that  Mr. Doghouse Riley seems to know a LOT about heroin, and so I encourage the DEA to read his blog regularly. 6:49:23 AM

Ultimate Wingnut Challenge: The Life-Style Team Although not as competive as the Canadians, as glamorous as the Media Stars, as crazy as the TownHall team, or as pathetic as the Korner Kids, our Life-Style Team are people too.  So, let's give them their time in the limelight, their chance to show what they can do, their match with Apollo Creed.  Or, we could just vote them all off now, and save some time.  1.  Anyway, first up is James Lileks.  You might remember him as the guy who wrote some pretty interesting and/or funny stuff -- and then 9/11 changed everything.   But you have to admit that he is prolific, as he churns out conservative columns for Newhouse News Service, Dave Berry-esque columns for the Minnesota paper, daily natterings about Gnat at his blog, and occasional hissy fits at a subsidiary of his blog, 'ScreeeeeeeeeedBlog.'  Plus, there are all those books, plus the new ones about bad mothers, old matchbook covers, and Spry shortening spokeswoman Aunt Jenny. (Confession: I would buy the Aunt Jenny one.  Or, conversely, if Lileks wants, I will write it for him, and he can take credit for it.  Also, if any publishers are interested, I think I could come up with a pretty nifty trade paperback about the lessons we can learn from True Romance magazines from the '50s.)  (Further confession:  I will probably buy the "bad mothers" book.) Anyway, here's a sample of Lilek's latest Bleat:  Gnat had classes all day – it’s summer, you know – so I worked and worked. Just so you know, and not that you care, but I always read the pieces out loud, while standing at the kitchen island, before I send them in. If I can’t make them sing when spoken there’s something missing. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that I care deeply about where you read your pieces aloud, Mr. Lileks. Posting, I fear, will be light for the remainder of the week; I have a 63 inch piece I have to write tomorrow. Thursday isn’t just a column night - it’s my wife’s Bunco thing, which means I head to Chuck E’s with Gnat. Since the party is at Jasperwood this time, that also means we have to stay away for a long while so my wife can have a few moments of fun. Mrs. Lileks need to have some time away from her husband and kid in order to survive her dreary existance is a recurring theme at The Bleat. Now, here's a snippet from the latest Newhouse column, "Once Again, Hollywood Stretches Credulity -- This Time With 'Sleeper Cell':: It's come to this: Hollywood confronts jihad and gives us "Tommy," a "Causasian, all-American rich kid who reinvents himself as a Muslim extremist." Those kids today with their wacky reinventing, skullcaps on sideways, wearing their bomb belts hanging down so you can see their drawers. Yes, most all-American kids with lots of money can't see a hot sports car parked in front of a restaurant without wishing it would totally explode and like, completely kill all the hot chicks inside. If that's the true face of the threat, start rounding up the junior Kennedys and building them a wing at Gitmo. Something with a field so they can play touch football. Of course, there couldn't actually be any real-life inspiration for the character. And now, to state the grindingly obvious: No, we don't need a series that shows Muslims as wide-eyed throat-slitters in headscarves and robes with green blood and vampire teeth. But to make the sleeper cell a multicultural affair not only strains credulity, it denigrates Islam. It suggests there is something intrinsic to the faith that attracts whackjobs from all walks of life. And it inverts truth, if such a thing matters.  What I think Lileks is trying to say is that all Muslims are black-haired, brown-skinned Arabs, and all terrorists are faithful Muslims -- and to claim otherwise is to insult Islam. Now, for a clip from his most-recent Backfence column: "This Fantastic Four isn't super."  Lileks runs out of Fantasic Four material early on, so answers a reader who asked why French motels don't supply their guests with washcloths. Well, because the French are CENTURIES ahead of us in these matters. The French invented the towel, in AD 94; previously, people had dried off from the semiannual bath by small dry bags of dirt, which rather defeated the purpose. The Romans dried off with the foreheads of feverish slaves. When the French invented the bath towel it changed everything. They used washcloths for many years, but banned them after the Revolution in favor of a triangular hand-towel called the Citizen's Face-Ablution Cloth Allotment. Being triangular, they were hard to fold; you just ended up with a thick wad that didn't stack well. Sixteen members of the National Towel Committee were guillotined to public acclaim, and ever since then the French have sneered at washcloths. In fact that's one of their pet names for Americans. Les woshcliths. Now wasn't that a delightfully amusing, and whimsically conservative interlude?  P.S.  French hotels don't routinely supply their guests with washcloths for the same reason that American hotels don't routinely supply their guests with toothbrushes: because they think they are personal items, and that everyone should have his or her own.  Next time, I hope to see Lileks write about how Americans sneer at toothbrushes. Anyway, that's probably more than you need to know about Lileks for voting purposes. 2.  So, let's move on to our next contestant, Kathleen Parker.  She offers us a column entitled Big Mama Hillary and Bad Boy John (it's typical in that it tries to seem fairminded and impartial, but the sneering shows through).  It's about how Miss Smarty Pants Hillary Clinton railed on a dirty video game, presumably just to make political points, while John McCain has lost points by appearing in a movie that shows breasts (per Kathleen, even though McCain's cameo was "innocuous," he has "handed a freebie to Democrats").  Thus has Clinton, in a lucky convergence of media moments, become Lucy to McCain's Charlie Brown. Exuding Miss Priss and oozing teacher's-pet smartness, she's managed to chip another chunk of the GOP's moral high ground, while one of her likeliest contenders for the 2008 presidential run is criticized for dubious judgment and questionable company. [...] [Hillary] has staked herself out as the grown-up, a mature leader, the adult parent who can be trusted to protect children. And, as Lucy did repeatedly for Charlie Brown, she is demonstrating that when boys will be boys, girls will take charge. Of course, Lucy was mean, bossy, treacherous, and crabby -- but I'm sure Kathleen didn't mean to attribute any of those qualities to Miss Priss Hillary. 3.  Dennis Prager brings us part MCMIXCII of his continuing series, "Why Judeo-Christian Values Should Be the Law of the Land."  Today's installment: Murderers must die: Judeo-Christian values: Part XVIII. Dennis starts by conceding that some Judeos and some Christians don't believe in the death penalty.  He then explains why their beliefs are wrong. When all murderers are allowed to keep their lives, murder is rendered less serious and human life is therefore cheapened. That is not only the Judeo-Christian biblical view. It is common sense. The punishment for a crime is what informs society how bad that crime is. A society that allows all murderers to live deems murder less awful than one that takes away the life of a murderer.  In order to show how much we value human life (because it's God-given) we must kill certain people.  That makes sense. There are those who argue that precisely because they so value human life, they oppose the taking of a murderer's life. They argue that you cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing. But that is the same as arguing that you can't teach that stealing is wrong by taking away a thief's money or that you can't teach that kidnapping is wrong by kidnapping (i.e., imprisoning) kidnappers. So, the reason the justice system makes thieves forfeit their ill-gotten gains is to teach them that our society values money? Finally, the Old Testament is preoccupied with justice. And allowing one who has unjustly deprived another person of life to keep his own is the ultimate injustice. There are many good reasons to be wary of taking the lives of murderers -- such as insufficient evidence, corrupted witnesses, distinguishing between premeditated murder and a crime of passion -- but love of life or a commitment to biblically based values are not among them. Actually, I'd say that the state taking the life of an innocent person would be the ultimate injustice.  So, until we're positive that all accused murderers are actually guilty, maybe we should just lock them up in prison, realizing that only God can mete out ultimate justice. (I think that last part is in the Bible too.) 4.  Our last contestant, Peggy Noonan, is on vacation (i.e., in detox again).  Therefore, let us enjoy a column from July 2002, A Time of Lore.  (Yes, that's both the title of the column AND a description of 2002.)  In this piece, Peggy says that even though we are living in an epoch, we still have icecream, A/C, and the dreamiest President ever. You are perhaps reading this at the beach, or after a day at the pool, or at home in your den near midnight as you sneak a bowl of Häagen-Dazs frozen yogurt with fresh strawberries. You are comfortable, well fed, well clothed; the air conditioner hums. Everything feels normal. Everything is! Which is why you haven't gotten your brain fully around the fact that we are living through abnormal times. We are living Days of Lore. Days of big history. We are living through an epoch scholars 50 years hence will ask about and study. (Yes, I think there will be scholars 50 years hence.) They will see us, you and me, as grizzled veterans of something big. Which is funny since we don't even see ourselves as soldiers. Mainly because most of us aren't.  (Sure, those of us with blogs and WSJ columns are soldiers, and are single-handedly winning the War On Terror by writing bad things about Muslims, Frenchies, and liberals, but the rest of you are just lazy slugs who have no right to talk to scholars 50 years hence.) The sitting president, our leader, was nine months into a new presidency when history's assault began. He is friendly, intelligent, funny, not deeply experienced in terms of his personal experience but deeply experienced in terms of watching up close the experiences of his father and of the president before his father. Translation: He learned everything he needed to know from watching Ronald Reagan movies. He was elected legally but with fewer votes than his opponent, a new-age whack job who, upon his loss, grew a beard and came to look like a portly Gilded Age banker. This man will have his rematch. I'm not sure if Peggy was predicting that Bush and new-age wack job Gilded Age Gore would run against each other in 2004, or if the portly Gilded Age banker would someday see a comeback. And there is the current president's predecessor, who seems more and more like Warren Harding, president as the Roaring '20s came to a screeching halt--handsome, gray-haired, wayward, blame-deflecting and, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth memorably said, "a slob." I don't remember Alice saying that, but then, I'm not as old as Peggy. A congressman who regularly fills the Capitol with his deranged banter and whose head looks like the last sanctuary of tree squirrels is expelled this week from the House, the second man to be so removed since the Civil War. The vote was 420-1, the holdout being the congressman famous for being assumed to have murdered his young lover. Wow, 2002 really was another country, in that I had to use Google to make sure that Peggy was talking about Gary Condit, since where we live (the FUTURE!) nobody assumes he murdered Chandra Levy.  But I can easily recall that Peggy is the Crazy Jesus Dolphin Lady, even though the dolphin column was from 2000.  It just goes to show. Anyway, while it might be irresponsible to speculate that any current columns by Peggy would be just as wingnutty as the ones from her golden age, it would be irresponsible to believe that Hazelton, while a fine facility for treating substance addiction, can cure deep-seated mental problems.  So, either penalize Peggy for using an old column, or don't.  Whatever. 5.  Outside Challenger: Carrie Lukas, the director of policy at the Independent Women's Forum, has challenged for the right to join the Life-Style Team.  To demonstrate her worthiness, she proffers an NRO column about how Washington interns are drunken sluts.  It's called Coffee, Copies, and Copulation (and I think she has a good shot at staying on wingnut island just based on that title). Once the life of a D.C. intern was no more intriguing to outsiders than a summer as a camp counselor or life guard. But this town's junior staffers now have earned notoriety. First, there was Monica, the rubenesque White House vixen who nearly brought down a president through her thong-snapping seduction. Chandra was the next intern to captivate the country. Her affair with a congressman was unearthed during the investigation into her murder, which remains unsolved. No, Peggy solved it: see above. Low-level Senate aid Jessica Cutler reinforced the sexually charged stereotype when her Internet blog detailing her sexual escapades became public. She lost her job, but leveraged her "fame" into a lucrative book deal So, even though Jessica wasn't an intern, she reinforced the stereotype of slutty interns by being an unmarried woman in Washington who had sex. Americans watching the media-hyped coverage of these scandals can be forgiven for thinking the Beltway an over-sexed cesspool, where powerful politicians prey on too-willing young women. Yes, the media has over-hyped these scandals, thus giving Mr. and Mrs. Non-Insider a false impression of D.C. as an "over-sexed cesspool."  Thank heavens the Independent Women's Forum commission a survey to find out the truth -- and it turns out that D.C. actually is an over-sexed cesspool.  The Independent Women's Forum commissioned a poll to gauge the real-life experiences of Capitol Hill interns. The findings suggest that most interns come to Washington focused on advancing their careers, but that Congress is indeed a sexually charged environment. As one might expect, three quarters of the 200 interns surveyed reported flirting among interns. But half had also seen it between interns and staff, and more disturbing, nearly one in ten had witnessed flirting between an intern and an elected official. Hey, I once witnessed flirting between Ronald Reagan and Peggy Noonan, if you define flirting as  "to show superficial or casual interest or liking: 'flirted with the idea'"  But even if you use "flirt" to mean "behave amorously without serious intent," I don't know if it's a big deal that 20 interns said they'd seen fliriting between an intern and an elected official, since we all know that elected officials will flirt with anyone they think might vote for them. One percent claimed to be aware of an intern's having an intimate relationship with an elected official — a small percentage, granted, but it is still problematic if such affairs take place at all. Well, before we get too concerned, we should remember that these two interns might be reporting gossip, or could just just yanking the chain of the IWF. Sleeping with a congressman or senator may be the province of the daring few, but plenty of interns are getting physical during their D.C. summers. Nearly half (44 percent) admitted to having "hooked up" — defined as a casual physical encounter including anything from kissing to intercourse — since arriving in Washington. That's almost twice as many interns as when this question was asked in a 2003 survey. Wow, almost 100 interns could have casually kissed while in D.C.?  I'm shocked, SHOCKED! Alcohol goes hand in hand with the hook-up culture, with more than eight in ten interns responding that alcohol is "always" (30 percent) or "sometimes" (54 percent) present at social functions. Beer sometimes being present at social functions goes hand in hand with casual kissing.   Studies have proven it. Why should anyone care that drinking and hooking up are a part of the typical Capitol intern experience — chalk it up to harmless fun and life experience, right? Unfortunately, research shows that many young women experience serious regret after engaging in such encounters. While two thirds said they were open to a serious relationship and would consider marriage if they met their perfect mate today, they overwhelmingly recognize that hooking up is unlikely to lead to a meaningful relationship. Moreover, the hook-up culture has largely displaced the traditional dating practices that would give young men and women the opportunity to build the meaningful, lasting relationships that they say they want. Therefore, we should prohibit young women from serving as interns, because working in Washington could lead to anything from kissing to sexual encounters, and thereby prevent them from getting married while in college, like they should.  (Young men can still be interns because drinking and hooking up are just part of the typical intern experience for them.) Few pay serious attention to youth culture on Capitol Hill except when some politician is caught with his pants down. We need to have a running dialogue about the drawbacks of existing traditions and practices so that a healthier culture can develop. After all, Washington's newly arrived interns may be making copies today, but one day soon they will be running the country. We need to send VBen Shapiro to Capitol Hill to chaperone.  Also, we should make him give  lectures on Why Sex is Bad, and make them mandatory for elected officials.  Maybe that will stop them from flirting with young people. And now it's time to vote.  Who do you think should get kicked off the Life-Style Team (and Wingnut Island) : James Lileks, Kathleen Parker, Dennis Prager, Peggy Noonan, or Carrie Lukas?  (Remember, you can pick TWO of them.  And also remember that we can't send the losers to Canada this time.)  5:19:52 AM

Ultimate Wingnut Challenge: Meet Your Canadian Team The people (some of them even Canadian) have spoken, and it looks like there is no room for amateurs in the high-stakes world of Canadian Wingnuttry.  Yes, Adam Yoshida and Judi McLeod will be leaving us -- but it was a close batttle, and David Frum only beat Adam by one vote.  (I think that should be David's new motto: "Only Slightly More Wingnutty Than Adam Yoshida.") Of course, if Adam hadn't received bad advice from the ghost of Richard Nixon about not turning to the dark side, things could have been different.  (And that makes me believe that it wasn't actually Richard Nison who spoke to Adam, but actually a liberal former President  -- probably Jimmy Carter -- pretending to be Tricky Dick.  Won't Adam feel betrayed with he figures this out?)  In the interests of psychological research, I went back to Adam's blog and tried to figure out where he started to lose it.  I think the date was June 3, 2005.  On Deep Throat It took me a few days to get together my thoughts about the revelation of Deep Throat. My first reaction was anger – but then it struck me that it was rather uncharitable (and probably unnecessary) to wish a swift death upon a senile 91 year-old man. My second reaction was indifference – it’s all so long ago, well before I was even born. My third reaction was to return to my first – whatever this man is today does not change what he was and what he did. Whoever W. Mark Felt is today, I hate him for what he did and I wish him, and his family which hails him as a hero for what he did, nothing but the worst. Yes, it starts out promising, what with wishing death on a senile 91-year-old man (and his family), but ... actually it just gets better, going on to blame Mark Felt for the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, the fall of Cambodia, the Iranian Revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the rise of "Islamism," and 9/11.  Oh, and the impeachment of Bill Clinton. And since Felt is guility of the death of millions, Adam can't find it in his heart to forgive Felt. For all I’m concerned, he deserved to go to the gallows for what he did. But while Adam is still plenty hate-filled and wingnutty as of June 3, he doesn't post again (except for a short item about Bush's approval ratings going up an astounding 1% ) until June 29 --and that's when he told us some things.  Yes, that's when he told us how he didn't want to drop dead at his desk at the age of forty-five because he doesn't like what gets posted on Democratic Underground, and how Richard Nixon said that your enemies only win if you hate them back.  So, it's clear that all the thinking about Watergate caused Adam to try communing with the spirit of Richad Nixon, which caused him to give up posting, and that resulted in him being bumped from Wingnut Island.  Kids, like your mother (or maybe it was my mother) always told you, playing with Ouija boards opens the way from message from Satan.  So, be warned. Judi's loss is also easy to explain: she's just not high-profile enough.  I suggest she hire Rachel Marsden (who headed a public relations business before she joined the National Post), so that Rachel can do for Judi's reputation what she did for her own.  I hope it works, because it's a shame that wingnuttery like Judi's isn't better known.  For instance, take a look at this column from July 9, 2005: "Same-time-as-attack underground bombing exercise in London a chilling coincidence?" In it, Judi claims, based on a post at PrisonPlanet.com, which was reportedly based on a BBC Radio 5 interview, that a consulting agency was conducting a training exercise "that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th." And since, per Judi, NORAD was "conducting drills of flying hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon at 8:30 in the morning, September 11, 2001," this can't be a coincidence! No, it must all be part of a plot by the Mafia (using computer software to control NORAD and that consulting agency) to kill lots of people, and thereby make money on the stock market. Chillingly coincidental, the same 9/11 "war games" conducted during the actual tragedy on the morning of September 11, 2001, echo London underground "bombing exercises" which took place at the same time as the real attack, according to Alex Jones’ Prison Planet.com. What are the odds of both human tragedies having coincidental "drills" going on at the exact same time real life was taking so many human lives in two terrorist attacks? [...] And the NORAD and Visor Consultants drills are not the only factors linking the 9/11 and London terrorist attacks. The British experience is the same play on the market as what happed on 9/11. Advance knowledge of these events could be making someone rich. U.S. treasuries go up. The Pound goes down. The Euro goes up as do gold and the Swiss Franc. Who is the biggest trader in U.S. treasuries? Cantor Fitzgerald, owner of eSpeed, whose New York offices were on the 101st-105th floors of One World Trade Center. And as Judi informs us in that column we looked at on Monday, " 9/11 and the mob," six executives from Cantor Fitzgerald were arrested this year for illegal gambling.  And we all know who controls illegal gambling.  "It is even possible that this is not mob related?", Judi asks.  Now that you know about al Qaeda joining forces with the Mafia and it's Number Four heroin (the present choice of American and European drug users with discriminating taste) to launch a nuclear attack on several U.S. cities this summer, I'll leave you to answer Judi's question on your own. Anyway, here's our Canadian Team, plus the number of negative votes they received: Captain Rachel Marsden (9) Lt. Mark Steyn (10) Private David Frum (13) Yes, Rachel is in charge of this team, meaning that Mark and David must obey her commands. And they damned well better never try to break up with her, if they know what's good for them! And David had better improve his performance, because like I mentioned previously, he's only one vote more wingnutty than Adam Yoshida, who hasn't posted for two weeks, probably because he dropped dead at his computer. 2:02:11 AM