"How George W. Bush Evolved From the Uncoolest Person on the Planet to Bona Fide Hipster Icon."

A Vanity Fair article by Juli Weiner:

But if you are younger than 24, you might not have attended anti-Bush rallies in high school and in college. You might not have pinned “SHRUB” buttons to your tote bag, and might not even remember Bush as a war-lovin’, vowel-droppin’, faux-folksy, ostentatiously religious Connecticut cowboy. This is because Bush has, quietly and wholly, ingeniously refashioned himself into an Internet-friendly, cat-loving, ironic-hat-wearing painter-cum-Instagram savant. Lately, George W. Bush is a hipster icon, and the Internet, unofficial Fourth Estate of the youth of America, is totally buying it.

Rush Limbaugh was going on about it today.

By the way, folks, this Vanity Fair piece on Bush is really snarky. It's as snarky as anything else ever was about Bush. But the comments by readers to the Vanity Fair piece are really positive. I'll tell you, the media, it's under the radar right now, but the media is livid about this.... And they are frosted. They are livid.....

About that 6-year-old boy accused of "sexual harassment" for kissing his schoolmate's hand.

I heard Rush Limbaugh talking about this yesterday, and I see this morning that Glenn Reynolds — calling the boy "the littlest casualty in the war on men"  — is linking to James Taranto — who's blaming Obama (because of a requirement that schools protect students from sexual harassment).

I agree that someone that young should not be labeled with an offense that contains the word "sexual." (The school district, barraged with criticism, has relabeled his offense "misconduct.") And I would locate the issue of suspending him within the larger problem of the "zero tolerance" approach.

But I do think that the school is right to forbid kissing. The boy's mother, who naturally wants to defend her child, tells us that the children were "boyfriend and girlfriend" and that the girl "was fine with it." That may make the misbehavior less severe, but it does not take it out of the range of what a school should forbid.

By the boy's report, it happened "during class, yeah": "We were doing reading group and I leaned over and kissed her on the hand." That isn't acceptable in-class behavior! The school should forbid that. I don't understand saying it's fine for boys and girls who like each other to freely express that affection with hand kissing during class. How about a little support for the school teachers who expect discipline during their lessons? You're not allowed to whisper back and forth or pass notes either. This is basic classroom respect. Have we all forgotten?

50 years ago today, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley died.

One might imagine them encountering John F. Kennedy in the antechamber of the afterlife.

I've been planning for a while to write this as the first post today, but I'm pleased to see that there are many news stories this morning honoring the 3 men who shared a death date. You may have noticed who entered the world on the same day as you. (Perhaps I had a conversation with Rush Limbaugh in the antechamber to life.) But will you know who passes through the departure gate alongside you?

ADDED: In The Guardian: , the author Laura Miller writes:

Apart from the Narnia books, the work of Lewis's I most cherish, "An Experiment in Criticism," makes the almost postmodern – and at the very least radically humble – proposition that we might best judge the literary merit of a book not by how it is written, but by how it is read. If "we found even one reader to whom the cheap little book with its double columns and the lurid daub on its cover had been a lifelong delight, who had read and reread it, who would notice, and object, if a single word were changed, then, however little we could see in it ourselves and however it was despised by our friends and colleagues, we should not dare to put it beyond the pale." That is a faith I am happy to share.

And Nicholas Murray writes:

The FBI kept a fat file on [Aldous Huxley] but failed utterly to find anything damning (as his biographer I was sorely disappointed when it slid out of the jiffy bag). He was nevertheless refused US citizenship...

He has survived his detractors and remains an eloquent critical voice, warning against our tendency to "love our slavery" – Brave New World's dystopian idea of manipulation and conformity and our tendency to submit to soft power, so clearly vindicated by the extraordinary complacency with which the public seems to have greeted the Snowden revelations of illegitimate surveillance. A free democrat to the core of his being, at war through words with "the great impersonal forces now menacing freedom," he shows that heroism can exist away from the noisy battlefield.

AND: "Yes, 'Everybody’s happy nowadays.' We begin giving the children that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else's way." Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World (Kindle Locations 1167-1169).

ALSO: Kindle Locations 2729-2737:

“But do you like being slaves?” the Savage was saying as they entered the Hospital. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with ardour and indignation. “Do you like being babies? Yes, babies. Mewling and puking,” he added, exasperated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save. The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes. “Yes, puking!” he fairly shouted. Grief and remorse, compassion and duty—all were forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of these less than human monsters. “Don’t you want to be free and men? Don’t you even understand what manhood and freedom are?” Rage was making him fluent; the words came easily, in a rush. “Don’t you?” he repeated, but got no answer to his question. “Very well then,” he went on grimly. “I’ll teach you; I’ll make you be free whether you want to or not.” And pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in hand-fills out into the area.

How is your carapace of thick stupidity today? Mine is chafing. I'm struggling not to concoct a joke out "little pill-boxes of soma tablets," Jackie's iconic pink hat, and my favorite Bob Dylan song. I need some rage to make me fluent.

About those "got insurance?" ads from Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and ProgressNow Colorado Education.

I thought these were a spoof at first, but they're not. I didn't think about what was going on until I was listening the podcast of Rush Limbaugh's Wednesday show, and then it dawned on me, not because I looked at it the way Rush did, but something about his take made me see the light.

So here's what Rush said:

These ads are promoting this irresponsible behavior and assuring you that you'll be okay if you engage in this irresponsible behavior if you get insurance.  The ads are designed to convince young people, Millennials, to go sign up for Obamacare....

Rush focuses on this:


He says:

That ad is promoting promiscuity.  That ad is associating promiscuity with Obamacare.  Obamacare will get you your birth control pill so you can get him and you can get her.  And you can get each other between the covers. You don't have to worry about anything because Obamacare's got you covered because you got insurance....

Describing some other ads:

The implication here is that Millennials can be bought by promising them free access to all of this irresponsible behavior -- irresponsible, unserious behavior.

That all they care about, the only thing young people care about -- and maybe this is true since they can't find work. That all they care about is drinking shots, guzzling out of kegs, partying, hooking up, drinking wine at the gym, taking risks, and being irresponsible in general.  But then they're assuming that these same irresponsible, sybaritic, hedonistic worthless, irresponsible kids are nevertheless responsible enough to seek out insurance at the Obamacare exchange. 

No, that's not what I see here at all. Of course, Rush is interested in going back to the Sandra Fluke incident. But my take on this is that what's needed to make the insurance market work is for a lot young, healthy people to sign up for these plans that cover things older/sicker people use. But young, healthy people are shocked at the idea of paying over $500 a month when they have few medical expenses and they've been counting on things remaining the same for a while — the old young-people-think-they're-invincible phenomenon. The ad campaign is the result of brainstorming: What are all the bad things that might happen to a young healthy person?

Most of the ads show imminent accidents. Like this:



The message isn't: Get insurance so you can do risky things. It's: You think you're young and carefree but you really do face risks that could be expensive. The unspoken reality is: We want you in the system because you're the kind of person who's likely to pay more in than you take out. Now, the birth control part is a bit different, because that's a routine expense, but come on. Birth control pills cost something like $20 a month, and your insurance will be $500+ a month. You're not going to get back what you pay in through getting birth control pills free. That's just a cheap come-on.

Young, healthy people are the marks in this game. And maybe these ads help them feel hip and cool, not like those old fogeys who will disapprove of these ads. Well, the oldies are the ones who need your money. Please don't notice!

"The Republican Party would not mind at all if the takeaway in Virginia was it was a Terry McAuliffe landslide against the Tea Party."

"I'm not exaggerating," says Rush Limbaugh.

Are Republicans following a "don't be mean" strategy, and — if so — is a good strategy?

Yesterday Rush Limbaugh was complaining about the Republicans in Congress not going after Kathleen Sebelius.

She was sent out there today to absorb every bit of damage... but I don't know that the Republicans did much damage.

It's like they're afraid to. It's like there's still a fear of going after Obama, or going after Sebelius, just from the consultant level of the party or whoever's running the Republican Party. There seems to be some instruction that's gone out from on high to back off. "Don't even get close to making it look like it's personal! Don't be mean!... don't be critical, 'cause this thing's imploding itself, and it'll go down"...

But isn't that a good strategy for the GOP? Stand back and let Obamacare topple on its own. Don't give the Democrats the opportunity to blame Republicans or to distract people with their old go-to strategy: Portraying Republicans as mean.

Rush would prefer Republicans getting aggressive. Sebelius is "clearly the punching bag." "She's a sponge. She's supposed to soak it up and smile and take it." Riiight. Punching the 65-year-old lady is the way to go. Seems to me that if they sent her out there to be a "punching bag" (or sponge!) they were hoping Republicans would take hard enough shots to make her sympathetic. Which she so far is not.

Obviously, though, avoiding anything that anyone can ever call mean is a hopelessly ineffectual approach to a competition. Interestingly enough, it's something that has traditionally impeded females. And it's not even a good way to avoid meanness, this fear of being perceived as mean.

Years ago, my sons and I overheard a young girl yelling — over and over to someone who must have called her mean — "I don't want to be mean!" For years, in our house, we'd use that line "I don't want to be mean!" for various humorous purposes. Why are some people so shaken up, so manipulated by the horrible possibility that they might be mean?

So what should the congressional Republicans be doing? How to be effectual without fueling the other side's "Republicans are mean" game?

"How the Alger Hiss Case Explains the Tea Party."

By Cass Sunstein.

Most of those who have carefully studied the case, and who have explored evidence emerging long after the trial itself, have concluded that [Whittaker] Chambers was telling the truth and that Hiss did indeed perjure himself....

Chambers’ broader charge -- that liberalism was a species of socialism, “inching its ice cap over the nation” -- polarized the nation. His attack on the patriotism of the Ivy League elite reflected an important strand in American culture, and it helped to initiate suspicions that persist to this day.

Rush Limbaugh was just talking about Alger Hiss last month:

The Democrat Party and the left of the day loved Alger Hiss, and they hated Nixon for exposing him.  To this day, Nixon is hated for having exposed -- successfully exposed -- Alger Hiss as a communist spy working in the State Department.  He was at the high levels, and Nixon got him, and they hated Nixon for it....

What the Republicans need is "a real conservative with a great personality, and those people are hard to come by."

So said Bernard Goldberg, perhaps not intending to insult Republicans (as people with a personality problem). Context:

Nobody articulates conservatism as clearly and passionately as Rush Limbaugh. He'd be the first to acknowledge that he couldn't win a national election. The true blue real conservative Republicans need to understand is that, despite what they think, most Americans don't think the way they do. They'll never elect a Dennis Kucinich on the left, and I don't believe they're gonna elect a Ted Cruz on the right. The only reason Barack Obama, who's more liberal than all of them, got elected, wasn't because of his politics, but because he created a cult of personality, and that's what the Republicans need, a real conservative with a great personality, and those people are hard to come by.

That's a very high standard of great personality: the Barack Obama standard. A personality upon which you can build a cult of personality. But the point is: America wants moderates, and they only deviate when bamboozled by someone with an over-the-top great personality. Such folk are hard to find, and it's a good thing too.

That was quoted on Rush Limbaugh's radio show yesterday — unsurprisingly. (Rush loves to play clips that call out his name._ Rush takes Goldberg to be saying Republicans — including and especially Rush — have off-putting personalities. Rush believes himself to have a great personality, and he also thinks — one of his most often-stated beliefs — that Americans do want a true conservative.

The reason I couldn't win is that I've been demonized. My reputation has been demonized and assaulted for 25 years.  And even had I chosen on each occasion to respond to it and to try to defend it, it wouldn't have mattered, because I woulda still been a lone wolf.  The truth of the matter here is, it's not conservatism that can't win.  It is that conservatism has been so ogre-ized and so demonized by an alliance of the Democrat Party and the media.

9/11 is not like Washington's Birthday/Lincoln's Birthday.

You're not supposed to use them to promote your commercial enterprise.

A Wisconsin golf course — Tumbledown Trails — advertised a $9.11 special for 9/11. It was, understandably, not well received. It was, in fact, so poorly received that they're considering closing the place on 9/11 to protect employees from the unpleasant things people might say.

Considering war and death, we should object to Washington's Birthday/Lincoln's Birthday advertising. There is some criticism of that now and then, but not much, perhaps because they're from the somewhat distant past, perhaps because we commemorate them on their birthdays — or a day around their birthdays — and not on an anniversary of their suffering.

And then, there's just something about golf. That golf should be played when anything serious is happening!

I was just listening to the podcast of yesterday's Rush Limbaugh show, and he was going on about "Obama on Syria: Incoherent Incompetence -- or the Decline of America by Design?," riffing on a WSJ piece by Norman Podhoretz called "Obama's Successful Foreign Failure."

Podhoretz noted the puzzle of how "to characterize a president who declares war against what he calls a great evil demanding immediate extirpation and in the next breath announces that he will postpone taking action for at least 10 days -- and then goes off to play golf before embarking on a trip to another part of the world?"

Rush restates it, double stressing the role of golf: "Then he goes out and plays golf and plans another trip, then comes back, and then says, 'By the way, I'm not gonna do this unless Congress goes along with me,' and then goes and plays golf."

After a commercial break, Rush is back rereading Podhoretz, replete with "then goes off to play golf."

The same golf-is-disrespectful game was played against Bush, who allowed video like this to be captured...



... and of course it was used against him. He compensated for media hostility by giving up golf entirely, and even his giving up of golf was used against him.

Rush Limbaugh cites facts that raise the "the obvious question: How do elections happen the way they do?"

The facts:

CNN is down, the networks are down, while conservative books sell through the wazoo and end up number one on the New York Times list.

The most listened to radio talk shows are conservative.  The most watched cable news network is conservative. ... We own books; we own talk radio; we own cable news. 

His answer is:

We're nowhere in the pop culture.  We are nowhere in movies.  We're nowhere in television shows.  We are nowhere in music.  Nowhere!

On the fiction side of books, we're nowhere, in terms of what conservatism is, being cool and plot lines and that kind of thing.  We're not in the classroom, we're not in academia, we're not the professors and the presidents of universities.  We are not school superintendents.  Those are very crucial because they get people when they're young, young skulls full of mush. They get to make and form those brains and basically propagandize them and indoctrinate them however they wish.

It wasn't liberals who originated the idea that has most famously been phrased: "Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man." That was the methodology of traditional religion. Liberals — of both the right and left — should value the autonomy of the young. They should revere it. They should perform their sacred duty to develop and guide young mind. Yet they fight for the power to indoctrinate. Shame on all of them.

The central characters in good pop culture stories tend to be free and independent, so Rush's frustration that conservatives can't get hold of the "fiction side" of things is reason for hope. Left-wingers of the big government variety should have the same problem appropriating pop culture. Even if the various stars mouth left-wing propaganda, they can't imprint that agenda in the stories, which require strongly autonomous heroes and heroines.

"Why are Feminists Judging Miley Cyrus?"

Asks Rush Limbaugh.

I thought we didn't have the right to judge somebody else's morality, and I thought we didn't have a right to comment.... Why does this upset these "progressive" women?...

Feminists.  Women who proudly think of themselves as independent, don't need a man for any reason whatsoever, don't need a relationship for any reason whatsoever -- a sperm bank is all you need and a dog -- are the ones who are upset about it.  (Not a cat.  It's gotta be a dog.)  Miley Cyrus, do I think she's being...? (interruption) Oh, do the upset feminazis think she's being subservient to men by doing this?  It's [an] interesting question....

Because they're the ones who told us, "Little girls are gonna have sex. You can't stop it. So introduce them to Planned Parenthood, introduce them to condoms, introduce them to cigarettes afterwards on the nightstand, introduce 'em to rooms in your house instead of the backseat of the car."  Yeah.  Why are they upset about it?  It's an interesting question.

Speaking of questions... what's this Not a cat/It's gotta be a dog?

But back to the main question: Obviously, our culture is deeply confused about young people and sexuality. It's not just feminists.

UPDATE: Miley toys with the confusion.

"You know, it's hard to die. It takes a long time, and it's not easy to get killed."

A Rush Limbaugh pronouncement, made the other day, that's stuck with me. I like it out of context, but here's the context:

People in this country have been so bombarded with "This is gonna kill you and that's gonna make you sick," or "this genetic trait's gonna kill you" or whatever, the people of this country have been so bombarded with the fact that they're gonna die tomorrow that they think the only way to stay alive is to have health insurance.

This has been one of the biggest scams that's ever been perpetrated on the people of this country.  I am not kidding you.  I honestly believe this.  Now, I know some of you are shouting, "Hey, Rush, don't downplay this.  Health is a big thing."  I know it is, but, you know, it's hard to die.  It takes a long time, and it's not easy to get killed.  When it happens, those are rare criminal examples, but they're not the result of lifestyle choices.  There's no insurance policy -- go talk to this poor kid in Duncan, Oklahoma.  There's not one insurance plan he could have had that would have kept him alive because the culture killed him.  And the same thing with Shorty.

It's hard to die... but the culture killed him.

Not much is getting said about the Chelsea/Bradley Manning transgender announcement.

I'm thinking it must be disappointing to some people that mean/stupid things haven't been said. Or did I miss something? There's nothing about Manning at all currently trending on Memeorandum. A search for "Chelsea Manning" at rushlimbaugh.comcomes up empty. The Blaze only quotes the Washington Post on the difficulty of reporting about someone who's acted in the past under one name and gender and now asks to be referred to differently.

I can't find anyone saying anything that gives pro-transgender advocates an opportunity to pounce. Where did all this restraint come from?

Here's James Joyner at Outside the Beltway handling the issue with great sensitivity a day after an almost agonizingly reticent discussion of the topic with Joshua Foust on Bloggingheads:



I don't think I've ever heard more hemming and hawing on Bloggingheads (and that's saying a lot).

ADDED: I do see this piece in NRO by Kevin D. Williamson, "Bradley Manning Is Not a Woman," which comes across as serious and not mean-spirited. Key passage:

We have created a rhetoric of “gender identity” that is disconnected from biological sexual fact, and we have done so largely in the service of enabling the sexual mutilation of physically healthy men and women (significantly more men) by medical authorities who should be barred by professional convention if not by conscience from the removal of healthy organs (and limbs, more on that later), an act that by any reasonable standard ought to be considered mutilation rather than therapy. This is not to discount the feelings of people who suffer from gender-identity disorders — to the contrary, those feelings must be taken into account in determining courses of treatment for people who have severe personality disorders.

That's very focused on surgical intervention, which requires the participation of doctors. Speaking of things that can be disconnected, you could disconnect that surgery from more speech- and expression-based things about names, pronouns, dress, and behavior. Why can't those things be treated more like other matters of conscience, like religion, where we leave people to their own notions?

"The last month, if you read Politico or anything that linked to Politico or CNN or ABC or anywhere else, you were reading that it was over for me."

"That I was bad news for broadcast stations. They could not sell advertising and all of this was because of me and the controversy I engender and therefore I wasn't gonna be gone overnight, but three to four years, and that's it. Fini, totala completa, out of there, gone. Once and for all the left would be rid of me. "

Said Rush Limbaugh on his show today — audio here —announcing the renewal of his contract with Cumulus Media.

But the media believed everything that was being said because they wanted to. And the image, I guess, that was created was that my heyday was gone, it was over with, and if you listen to me now, you better like it while you can, because you're not gonna be able to at the end of the year, 'cause I'm gonna be gone.

People believe what they want to believe. And... that's a precept not unrelated to the popularity of Rush's radio show.

"It may be just me, but the Drive-Bys are not talking about the amnesty bill vote from yesterday very much."

Said Rush Limbaugh today. (Drive-Bys = mainstream media.)

I think they don't want to report what's in this bill. They don't want people concerned with Alec Baldwin's latest rant to know what's in this. They don't want people occupied, focused on Paula Deen to know what's in this. They don't want people who can't believe the star witness at the Zimmerman case....

The latest is that it was reported by some British newspaper that Alec Baldwin's wife was tweeting smoothie recipes at the funeral for James Gandolfini.... Paula Deen said the N-word 30 years ago, and has probably cried 15 buckets of tears about it all week long...

"National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls."

"That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too."

ADDED: Just because they can doesn't mean they do. You only have to trust thousands of analysts. Janet Napolitano says:

"I think people have gotten the idea that there’s an Orwellian state out there that somehow we’re operating in. That’s far from the case"....

"[T]here are lots of protections built into the system,” Ms. Napolitano said, pointing to a privacy office embedded in her own department that is “constantly reviewing our policies and procedures.” She further stressed the court review system.

“No one should believe that we are simply going willy-nilly and using any kind of data that we can gather,” she said...

So it's not simply going willy-nilly and using any kind of data and it's far from Orwellian. That is, it's something less than the ultimate extreme. That's not reassuring at all. Even if I take Napolitano at her word: She's not saying much. It's just not utter and complete abuse.

And what are the protections? There's a "privacy office." You know, in "1984," if there were something called the "Privacy Office," its job would be to invade our privacy.  (Recall "The Ministry of Truth.")

Who could possibly feel protected by Napolitano's own privacy office "constantly reviewing our policies and procedures"? That sounds — even as she puts it — like it's about seeing what they can get away with. She brings up judicial review, but we know that those courts have no power/inclination to stop anything the government says it needs to do.

ADDED: They can see you naked. 

"Ladies and gentlemen..., you seem to accept as okay that the government, intelligence agencies, would be collecting all of this data on Americans."

"And what makes you mad is that this little twerp has come along and exposed how it's done. Do any of you care why this is being done? It matters to me who is doing it. I've accepted that it's being done just like a lot of you have. But... who is doing it... why are they doing it?  Are any of you interested in that aspect of this?  Well, of course they say national security, and then when they say national security, 'Oh, oh, okay, okay, fine, fine.'  And then you forget about it. Well, you don't forget about it, you just assume. I think everybody's walking around at some level of consciousness, thinking that if somebody wants to find out about them, they can.  In addition to that, everybody, if you go to these social networks, Facebook, Twitter, everybody, or a lot of people are volunteering every bit of information about themselves without having to be spied on.  Putting a lot of trust in everybody, putting a lot of trust in their fellow citizens, in their friends, in government...."

That's Rush Limbaugh, thinking out loud — which the previous post about the WaPo-Pew poll and the interplay of partisanship and ideology made me think of. It's a fascinating monologue, with Rush saying he's "in a holding pattern just to wait and see, because, as you know, I do everything I can to avoid the conventional wisdom of the day, to follow the crowd." I'm sure his antagonists have no idea he's so measured and thoughtful. It's practically Obamaesque. Or do you think Obama merely poses as thoughtful? The extent to which Obama and Rush pretend to be working through the issues is a mystery we're never going to solve.

Anyway, I recommend the Rush monologue, which has him interacting with "Mr. Snerdley," whom we never hear, so we never know what input he's actually getting from his producer/engineer James Golden. Rush tells us "Snerdley's livid at" Edward Snowden, that Snerdley's talking about trying Snowden for "treason" for "giving away... secrets." The implied participation of Snerdley, whose thinking, we're told "may represent the thinking of a lot of you," enhances the dialogic quality of the monologue.

ADDED: I say "enhances the dialogic quality" because Rush's thinking out loud from his "holding pattern" already involves him going back and forth taking different viewpoints. I notice and appreciate this because it feels similar to what I do as a law professor to show students what's going on in a case. But as a law professor, I'm not trying to get to my own answer. Developing the issue and the various arguments and opinions is the end in itself. Sometimes a student will ask me what I think, and I like to say that's irrelevant, but if I have an opinion — if — I'll admit it just to give them more power to try to extract any bias I might have injected into the discussion.

I said it first: Chris Christie may run for President in 2016 as a Democrat.

Here's my post from June 3rd:

I assume Christie wants to run for President in 2016. If so, he can't reinforce the suspicion that he's really a Democrat (unless he wants to do that Lincoln Chafee thing and become a Democrat).

Here's Rush Limbaugh on his show today:

I will not be surprised... I'm not predicting it officially here, but I will not be surprised, if when 2016 rolls around and Governor Christie is seeking the presidency, I won't surprised if he seeks the Democrat Party nomination...

The New Yorker's George Packer takes aim at Andrew Breitbart.

Some of this is interesting, but watch out for distortion:

It was fun! Telling the truth was fun, having the American people behind him was fun, fucking with the heads of nervous journalists and helping the mainstream media commit suicide was fun. Breitbart went on Real Time With Bill Maher and stood up for himself and Rush to the politically correct hometown mob of an audience, and it was an incredibly committed moment in his life. He found himself the leader of a loose band of patriotic malcontents, and right in front of him was the same opportunity that the Founding Fathers had had—to fight a revolution against the complex.

And if he happened to get an Agriculture Department official named Shirley Sherrod fired by releasing a deceptively edited video that seemed to show her making anti-white comments when in fact she was doing just the opposite—fuck it, did the other side play fair? Anyway, Old Media’s rules about truth and objectivity were dead. What mattered was getting maximum bang from a story, changing the narrative. That was why Breitbart was winning, with ample help from his media enemies, and why he must have been at least semi-sober during his college classes on moral relativism.

Just the opposite? Packer answers the question he attributes to Breitbart: did the other side play fair? Obviously not. Packer's side is playing and is playing unfairly.

ADDED: George Packer has been unfair to me (discussed here and here).

AND: Professor Jacobson details what's so wrong about Packer's "deceptively edited video."

Via Instapundit, who says: "Sorry comrade, but what you’re offering is mere bourgeois truth, concerned with tedious facts. The higher truth is 'revolutionary truth,' which is any narrative that advances the revolution."

How not to show respect for the stay-at-home spouse.

On "Meet the Press" today, David Gregory questioned various commentators about a report from the Pew Research Center that said that in 2011 women were the sole or primary breadwinners in 40.4% of American families. (It was 10.8% in 1960.) There were some strange statements from "Republican strategist" Ana Navarro:

There has been an evolution in the American family.  You know-- and I think what we have to be as a society is accepting of what couples decide to do for themselves.  There are some people who want to lean in, there are some people who want to lean back and be on a rocking chair drinking a mint julep.  Whatever works for every couple is what we should respect…

So right off, Navarro is portraying the home-based partner as lazy! The old image was lying on the sofa eating bonbons. She's got the sofa replaced by a rocking chair and an alcoholic beverage in place of the box of chocolates. Gregory breaks in with a wisecrack — "Enough about your Sunday afternoon" — and this prompts Navarro — the Republican — to double down on her idea that the stay-at-home spouse is a sponge:

When I say in my house that I want to be a kept woman, the answer I get back is well, I want to be a kept man.  So, you know, that’s not working-- it’s not working in my house.  

Kept woman! This isn't as bad as Rush Limbaugh's notorious equation of free birth control and prostitution. It's actually kind of worse. Limbaugh intended to malign the demand for free birth control. He meant to say that the general public shouldn't have to pay for a particular person's sexual activities. He found a notoriously crude way to say I don't want to pay for you to have sex (i.e., if someone pays you to have sex, you're a prostitute). But aside from the crudeness, the opinion that the group shouldn't pay for the individual to have sex isn't offensive. It's just economics and ideology.

Navarro claimed "Whatever works for every couple is what we should respect," but she said — twice, quite clearly — that the stay-at-home partner isn't contributing. The first image was of someone loafing and drinking alcohol during the day. The second image was of a "kept woman" — that is, a woman who doesn't take care of the house and the children or do anything helpful other than to provide sex! If that "works for" you, that that's something that deserves respect — she asserts — but it wouldn't work at her house, and if she were to suggest that for herself, her husband would say that's what he wants. Obviously, the idea is that the nonbreadwinner spouse is goofing off. So where's the respect? At most, she says, if some other couple finds that this "works," then we should accept that they make their own decisions. Navarro goes on to say:

But I think, you know-- I think, we-- women that work need to be not judgmental of women who don’t.  

But your judgment leaked out all over the place!

I think men who are mister moms need to be accepted by those who are the alpha male breadwinners.  So, I think it’s got to be whatever works-- different folks…

Mr. Mom... alpha male... the disrespect is plain, even as you keep insisting you are tolerant.