Month: October 2007

JPod, son of NPod, to edit Commentary. Bill, son of Irving, edits The Weekly Standard. Jonah, son of Lucianne, got to edit NRO. Thank God we left the country-club Republicans behind.

One reason anyway:

A reporter in Iowa asked Obama why he doesn’t wear the pin and Obama explained that, to him, wearing the pin had come to seem like a "substitute for true patriotism." Bravo, Senator. And then, in yet another shining example of why the media is part of the problem, ABC’s Claire Shipman said, "TMI, too much information — all he had to say was, ‘Don’t judge me by what I wear, move on.’ He played into the idea that he’s not ready for prime time."

What, schoolgirl? "Too much information?" What is she, 12? This is typical press hypocrisy — they say they want somebody who doesn’t give pat political answers, but when they get one, they call him a loser. They say they don’t like safe robots like Hillary, but they create conditions where only that species can survive. And they give cover to people like Sean Hannity, who reported on "no pin" gate and then had to call a doctor because his fake outrage hard-on lasted longer than 72 hours.

It’s a growing trend, as Manga meets the Gospels:

Combine the developing popularity of graphic novels with the growing market for Christian literature in general — and throw in the fact that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time — and you have a winning business model.

“If you went to Barnes and Noble, it used to be that there was one bay of graphic novels,” says Avery. “Now it’s huge. That’s what kids are buying, that’s what people are interested in. Zondervan specifically wanted to tap that market.”

It makes sense: Christians don’t want to do away with comics or books or music — they just want to make sure they’re created, and consumed, their way. (There are some real crazies who disagree with the concept of Christian rock entirely because pop music is evil, but they’re in the minority.)

These publishing houses are simply doing what megachurches, musicians, and Christian role models have done before: recreating popular culture in piety’s image. Rather than waste their time criticizing Harry Potter or railing against rock music, many believers are immersing themselves, and their children, in Christian alternatives.

A reader writes one of the best rationales for Clinton’s candidacy I’ve yet read:

If worst comes to worst, we might get a president like Hillary, who is that girl nobody really likes but everyone wants in their project group anyways because they know she is smart and will do all the work.

A blog-post that manages to incorporate the Armenian genocide and transgendered rights:

Gitlin is right; a banner of righteousness wrapped tightly around the head is a moral blindfold, and Ralph Nader and people who voted for him are not on any high ground for having given the world President W as the price of their purity. Barney Frank is right about protecting the gay rights barge from foundering on its first trip across the river under a cargo of every good cause.

Well, someone’s got to:

I’ve never seen Beck on TV, and I know one is not supposed to write “Glenn Beck’s show” without interposing the word “shitty” in the penultimate position, but I get the sense that if I had to watch one of these right wing bloviators, Beck might be the one that made it fitfully interesting.

I hope Hitch’s reported descent into "bomb-them-into-submission" mode is not a growing theme on the anti-Islamist front. But atheism combined with anti-Islamism can erase some important distinctions. The Reason Hirsi Ali interview is disconcerting in that context:

Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.

Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, "defeat Islam"?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, "This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore." There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Is she just an Amis-style liberal? Or a purveyor of misinformation? More discussion here. I hope the forces against Islamism don’t begin to degenerate into Steynian fear and loathing. I should add that I favor rescuing Islam, not crushing it. But then I’m not an atheist; I’m a secularist believer. Maybe that makes a difference in the end.

"PUR water wasn’t content with removing impurities from your water so they decided that they would put some back in…and then charge you for it!"

We look straight past happiness.

Braving a nightmare to get educated.