The Dish

John Ziegler, who lives in Wasilla World, is a Savonarola of far right conservatism. A Palin true-believer, he cannot see resistance to this half-cracked vice-presidential candidate as anything but treason. And so even someone as hardcore as David Keene has to be tackled. Advantage: Keene. Meanwhile, even the base appears to be wilting a little. Rasmussen is a dubious polling shop, but they do poll the GOP base very thoroughly. The results reveal a Republican voting bloc not entirely as nutso as the activists.

Written about Kate Moss and Pete Dougherty – but Bristol and Levi are welcome to it:

This unofficial Doctor Who mash-up is pretty cool too.

A reader writes:

I have to push back a little on your analogy between the military's DADT and Hollywood's DADT. First of all, the ability to serve your country in uniform is much more basic and much closer to a 'right' than the ability to star in Hollywood movies. More importantly, a person's sexuality has nothing to do with their competence as a military person. But Hollywood stars are literally selling sex on screen. For 'movie stars' in particular (as opposed to character actors), sex appeal and sexuality are the most important asset that a candidate can have. Thus, it seems a little more logical that their sexuality has to be managed, etc.

This really gets at a larger point, which is that Hollywood's decisions are based on what people will watch, and if Jake Gyllenhall (or whoever) came out of the closet, middle America would not go see Prince of Persia (or whatever). Thus, being in or out of the closet materially effects a movie star's ability to do his/her job, as opposed to a military person. I don't mean this to be a full-throated defense of the film business. It's cutthroat, at times bigoted, and always frustrating. But it's not the same as the US military, and it's certainly not something Brad Pitt or Barbara Streisand has control over.

Another writes:

First of all, as a television executive and filmmaker, I hate it when anyone refers to "Hollywood" as if it's one company, or even a cohesive group – it is not. The only thing the separate pieces have in common is that they exist to make money. Which leads to…

Secondly, it is AUDIENCES (not executives) who can't buy a known-gay actor playing a hetero romantic lead. The only exception I can think of is Neil Patrick Harris, but he's a comedian and he isn't taking on rolls where he's engaged in a serious hetero relationship. If Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, etc. came out as gay, they'd never make it in a big-budget romantic film again. And it isn't just male audience members, either. Tell a young woman that Brendan Fraser is gay, and watch her shriek in denial.

As for gays in other parts of the industry, I've worked with a number of openly gay co-workers and bosses. That I could see, it hadn't hurt their careers one bit. Certainly there's nothing there even remotely resembling DADT.

Iran Unfiltered does most the job. It’s Mousavi’s first video interview since the Green Revolution started.

John McWhorter – not easily offended by racial issues – is offended by Seth MacFarlane's new cartoon spinoff:

The question is: would the Family Guy people create a show where a white supporting character – say, paraplegic Joe voiced superbly by Patrick Warburton —  moves to another town and settles in with retreads of the Family Guy characters? No – it’d be seen as folly to let that get beyond a conversation over beers. The reason it felt right to pull this with The Cleveland Show is because of a sense that blackness is so much a “thing,” so diverting in itself, that painting the Family Guy people brown makes artistic and commercial sense. And there was a time when it did – but it was a time we’re all happy to be past.

Frum answers Scott Adams' query:

Yes of course Limbaugh and Beck express the same views in private as in public. Consistent hypocrisy demands exorbitant levels of imagination, energy, and cynicism. Much less exhausting over time simply to bring your private views into alignment with what you are paid to say in public.

Let me put the thought experiment slightly differently however. Suppose an agent arrived in the offices of Limbaugh/Beck/Hannity/O’Reilly etc. with an offer. “I can guarantee you a deal that will pay you twice as much – bring you twice as much fame – and extend your career twice as long – if you’d say the exact opposite of what you are saying now.” Which of them would sign?

My nominations: O’Reilly accepts for sure. Beck likewise almost certainly says yes. Limbaugh would want to think it over, but would ultimately say no.  Mark Levin: certainly not. Sean Hannity would need the offer explained a few times. Ann Coulter – that one puzzles me – but probably no. Roger Ailes? Do you even need to ask?

I can't grapple with Coulter either. I assume it's an act. But it could be an act that has become so internalized it has become her. Poor, lost soul.

Mark Liberman coins a new term:

Overall, the promotion of interesting stories in preference to accurate ones is always in the immediate economic self-interest of the promoter. It's interesting stories, not accurate ones, that pump up ratings for Beck and Limbaugh.  But it's also interesting stories that bring readers to The Huffington Post and to Maureen Dowd's column, and

it's interesting stories that sell copies of Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics.  In this respect, Levitt and Dubner are exactly like Beck and Limbaugh.

We might call this the Pundit's Dilemma — a game, like the Prisoner's Dilemma, in which the player's best move always seems to be to take the low road, and in which the aggregate welfare of the community always seems fated to fall. And this isn't just a game for pundits. Scientists face similar choices every day, in deciding whether to over-sell their results, or for that matter to manufacture results for optimal appeal.

(Hat tip: Crooked Timber)

Shanghai, China, 5.54 pm

The quotes from the Carville-Greenberg focus groups that I posted last night prompted one reader to raid his copy of Hoftstadter's classic "The Paranoid Style In American Politics." Everything old is new again: 

"The Manichean conception of life as a struggle between absolute good and absolute evil and the idea of an irresistible Armageddon have been thinly secularized and transferred to the cold war. People who share this outlook have a disposition to interpret issues of secular politics as though they were solely moral and spiritual struggles." 

"Those who look at the world in this way see their fundamental battle as one to be conducted against other Americans at home, and they respond eagerly to the notion, so pervasive in the right wing, that the worst enemy of American liberties is to be found in Washington." 

"Most conservatives are mainly concerned with maintaining a tissue of institutions for whose stability and effectiveness they believe the country's business and political elites hold responsibility. Goldwater thinks of conservatism as a system of eternal and unchanging ideas and ideals, whose claims upon us must be constantly asserted and honored in full. The difference between conservatism as a set of doctrines whose validity is to be established by polemics, and conservatism as a set of rules whose validity is to be established by their usability in government, is not a difference of nuance, but of fundamental substance." 

"When [pseudo-conservatism] argues that we are governed largely by means of near-hypnotic manipulation (brainwashing), wholesale corruption, and betrayal, it is indulging in something more significant than the fantasies of indignant patriots: it is questioning the legitimacy of the political order itself. 

The two-party system as it has developed … hangs on the common recognition of loyal opposition: each side accepts the ultimate good intentions of the other. The opponent's judgment may be held to be consistently execrable, but the legitimacy of his intent is not … his Americanism is not questioned. One of the unspoken assumptions of presidential campaigns is that the leaders of both parties are patriots who, however serious their mistakes, must be accorded the right to govern. But an essential point in the pseudo-conservative world view is that our recent Presidents, being men of wholly evil intent, have conspired against the public good. This does more than discredit them: it calls into question the validity of the political system …" 

"Goldwater's zealots were moved more by the desire to dominate the party than to win the country, concerned more to express resentments and punish 'traitors,' to justify a set of values and assert grandiose, militant visions, than to solve actual problems of state." 

"The pseudo-conservative [is convinced that those] who place a greater stress on negotiation and accommodation are either engaged in treasonable conspiracy … or are guilty of well-nigh criminal failings in moral and intellectual fiber" 

"Pseudo-conservatives believe that] [t]he goal of our policies cannot be limited to peace, security, and the extension of our influence, but must go on to ultimate total victory, the idealogical and political extermination of the enemy." 

"[T]he far right has become a permanent force in the political order because the things upon which it feeds are also permanent: the chronic and ineluctable frustrations of our foreign policy, the opposition to the movement for racial equality, the discontents that come with affluence, the fevers of the culturally alienate who practice … 'the politics of cultural despair.' As a movement, ironically enough, the far right flourishes to a striking degree on what it has learned from the radicals. Their forces have … been bolshevised – staffed with small, quietly efficient cadres of zealots who on short notice can whip up a show of political strength greatly disproportionate to their numbers."

Plus ca change, non?

Over on Richard Dawkin's blog, Michael Shermer types an open letter to Bill Maher on vaccinations:

Vaccination is one of science’s greatest discoveries. It is with considerable irony, then, that as a full-throated opponent of the nonsense that calls itself Intelligent Design, your anti-vaccination stance makes you something of an anti-evolutionist. Since you have been so vocal in your defense of the theory of evolution, I implore you to be consistent in your support of the theory across all domains and to please reconsider your position on vaccinations. It was not unreasonable to be a vaccination skeptic in the 1880s, which the co-discovered of natural selection—Alfred Russel Wallace—was, but we’ve learned a lot over the past century. Evolution explains why vaccinations work. Please stop denying evolution in this special case. 

Maybe Bill should invite Michael Specter on some time soon.