March 16, 2004 by s.z.

Woo Hoo!  I'm A Quoted Critic! Yes, at Hollywood Interrupted.com, a section called THE REVIEWS, notes that: Some SALON.COM blog: 'World O'Crap Bookclub Selection: Oscar Edition' And my ringing endorsement appears along side those of such major media sources as The Wall Street Journal and the NY Post.  Of course, I've never read the book, and I said less than flattering things about it and the people who wrote blurbs for it, but that's what makes being a critic so rewarding -- getting your comments taken out of context and used in ads. If any other authors want the prestige that comes with having your book featured as a World O'Crap Bookclub selection, just let me know.  I can be bought. 9:03:52 AM

It's Wacky "Malign the Left" Day at WO'C! We'll start with Dennis Campbell, "a liberal ex-journalist living in New Mexico," who writes a regular column at Alan Keyes' web site for wingnuts, "Remew America."  This week's is calledThe bratty behavior of the inhabitants of the left.  Dennis starts by claiming that: A couple of recent items in the news prove ... the inhabitants of the left are just, well, self-centered, rude, disruptive and dominated by their emotions." In other words, like your typical 2-year-old. Dennis's first example is a piece by Alan Dershowitz, who writes about exiting Boston's Faneuil Hall after having given a speech, and being "accosted by a group of screaming, angry young men and women carrying virulently anti-Israel signs."   Dershowitz's sin? He is pro-Israel, and thus a target of the rage of the left, which is saturated in anti-Semitism. Unlike the right, which loves everybody. Dennis says of Dershowitz's acount: He rightly describes them as reminiscent of "young Nazis in the 1930s in Hitler's Germany" and as "a bunch of self-righteous thugs shouting ugly and bigoted epithets." Finally, someone from the left admitting what conservatives have known for so long: It is these virulently hateful leftists who are Nazi-like, not conservatives. Yup, this one incident proves that it's the LEFTISTS who are the Nazis, not the Jew-loving, tolerant right.  And the leftists are also two-year-olds -- and as we all know, two-year-old Nazis are the worst kind. Anyway, Dennis's second item It comes from a story by Los Angeles Times writer David Shaw about rude people in restaurants. How do I know they are liberals? Because they are from West Hollywood and Santa Monica, where conservatives are as scarce as hair on Michael Jordan's head. Plus, the restaurants in West Hollywood and Santa Monica don't admit tourists, or anyone from out of town, and they require patrons to pass a liberal purity test before they show them to a table.  So, anything bad that happens in these eateries HAS to have been committed by liberals. And what happens once these rude liberals are admitted inside the dining establishments?  Horrible things.  Awful, shameful, bratty things.  Yes, the liberals steal stuff.  Salt and pepper shakers, wine coasters, flashlights, vases, etc.  So, you see, it is more than just your paycheck liberals are after! Ha ha! Good one, Dennis!  But why should Dennis care if liberals steal junk from no-doubt liberal restaurants in liberal towns? It seems like he should just wash his hands of the whole things, like a mother whose bratty kid is complaining that his equally bratty brother is making faces at him.  Self-centered, disruptive, abusive, angry, rude, eager to take what is yours, emotional — yes, indeed, those on the left are very much like your best friend's brat who raises hell every time you visit, as you force a smile and bite your tongue out of politeness. But this does raise a very pertinent question: Do we want the family brat in control of the family? Everyone should consider that miserable prospect before entering the voting booth. See, if some obnoxious pro-Palestine students scared Alan Dershowitz, and if some people in California stole stuff from restaurants, this proves that John Kerry is unfit to be President.  Say, that's the most compelling case for voting for Bush that I've heard so far this year.  And if you just extend Dennis's metaphor a bit, you can say that since liberals act like two-year olds, they aren't qualified to vote, and therefore should be disenfranchised.  Then Bush would win for sure!  I hope the Bush folks snap up Dennis to help with their faltering campaign, because he's got some new and original ideas that just might work for them.  My next wacky left bashing comes from FrontPage Magazine, David Horowitz's site for intellectual wingnuts.  It's called The Face of Treason, and it's by Lowell Ponte, who hosts a right-wing radio show (naturally).  Lowell's column is about the Susan Lindauer case.  He writes some of the same things you've heard before (the liberal press is trying to keep it from you, but Lindauer worked for DEMOCRATS!).  However, Lowell spicens things up with some fun new paranoid twists, like that there are "unanswered questions" about whether Lindauer passed information gained from her congressional jobs to Iraqi intelligence, and whether this information enabled Saddam to locate and assassinate Iraqi dissidents.  (I believe there are also unanswered questions about whether Lindauer is the real killer in the O.J. Simpson case; unanswered because I just asked them, and nobody has said that she isn't.) Oh, and Lindauer lived in liberal Takoma Park, Maryland -- proof right there that she's a traitor, since all freedom-loving people in the D.C. area choose to live in suburban Virginia. And all those signs that Lindauer is suffering from mental illness?  Well, since you'd have to be crazy to be a leftist, then they prove that she's a leftist, and therefore guilty of treason. By the employers she has had, the company she kept and the community in which she chose to live, it seems irrefutable that Susan Lindauer is a far Leftist. But is she a nut whose potential treason is out of character for the Left?  It is fair to say that most Leftists are either insane or opportunistic. What sane or ethical person would embrace the socialist philosophy of Stalin and Hitler and Pol Pot? Yet that is precisely what the Left is – the belief by some that humankind can be perfected through dictatorship, slavery, and the genocide of undesirable peoples or ideas or values. Yes, the American left is made up of Stalinists, Nazis, and the Khmer Rouge.  Everybody knows that. Lowell gives us a lecture on Communism (which was BAD), and then explains why it's exactly what the Democratic Party believes in now: Class warfare continues because some would rather steal than work for what they get. In their shortsightedness, they would rather get even than get ahead. [snip] In America one of our two largest political parties is built entirely on this irrational, self-destructive philosophy. And envy is so strong an emotion that its voters seldom notice that they never get more than chickenfeed from the wealth government confiscates. It is enough for these conned fools to believe that the rich have lost their wealth – when in fact a new, less deserving class of the politically enriched has merely fattened on the stolen loot. Lowell tells more about Lindauer's background, then writes: Twisting ever more leftward, Susan Lindauer would soon move from being a liberal media ally of Leftist Democratic politicians to being a member of their staffs. And from serving these socialists, it probably to her seemed a short step to serving the Ba’athist socialist regime of Saddam Hussein, whose hatred for America sounded so much like what she was accustomed to hearing from liberal reporters, Leftist lawmakers, and her anti-war neighbors and fellow-travelers in Takoma Park. You know, this sounds like the defense's argument in a bad "Law & Order" episode: "Sure, while working for Illinois congresswoman Carol Moseley-Braun in 1996, my client could have gained secret information about Iraqi dissidents which she might have passed, six-years later, to Saddam Hussein; and he could have had those exiles murdered, possibly.  I mean, the prosecution hasn't proven even one of these things, but they could have happened, which is why we're here in court today. "But if any of this happened, it was Liberal Syndrome that made the defendant do it!  Every day at work she saw Carol killing security guards for not saluting her properly, sending men to rape rooms, and developing an atomic weapon program in the break room, so my client naturally got confused and thought that Saddam was just another Democratic congressman she was supposed to run errands for.  And this could have happened to any liberal.  Can we single out my client for punishment, when right at this moment, millions of Hitler-loving, Pol Pot following, Marxist/Stalinist Democrats are committing espionage and murdering thousands of innocent Jews, peasants, and intellectuals?  I think not." Lindauer, after decades of feeding deeper and deeper at the trough of Leftist anti-American hatred, became willing to betray the United States to protect a socialist monster, Saddam Hussein, whose mass graves covered 300,000 tortured bodies and whose aim was to acquire weapons capable of killing tens of millions. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Saddam Hussein was a socialist (because all bad guys are), and therefore a Democrat, and so my client, who had worked for FOUR Democratic members of congress in the past, was so conditioned that she had no choice but to obey his bidding, and commit treason by writing a letter to Andrew Card.  I rest my case."   7:57:48 AM

The Legendary National Review Bermuda Triangle Cruise Just added to the roster of speakers: Perle will be joining such conservative luminaries as Rich Lowry, Bill Bennett, and William F. Buckley, Jr.  In my telling of the tale, everyone on board picks up one of those GI tract infections that so are common on cruises, and dies.  But obviously heaven won't admit them, and Satan doesn't want them either (since the last thing that hell needs is more hot air), so the ship is doomed to sail the seas forever, having to listen to Buckley droning on and on without ever getting to a point, and Bennett lecturing everyone about virtue, morality, and loose slots. And whenever a storm brews in the islands, if you look into the eye of the storm, you will be able to see the ship and it's hellish passenger - The Lying Neocon.  Don't look too carefully, for the legend claims that whoever sights the cursed Perle will die a terrible death, or will at least want to wage war on somebody. 4:06:09 AM