Dede, the moderate victim?

Gag me with a Washington Post puff-piece:

Violet semicircles hung below her teary eyes as she recounted how Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and other conservative leaders excoriated her for less-than-orthodox positions on gay rights, abortion and organized labor. Her nose reddened as she recalled her abrupt exit from the special election to replace John M. McHugh, whom President Obama had appointed as secretary of the Army earlier in the year.
The conservative movement's third-party candidate, Doug Hoffman, expected her support but, she said, the newcomer accountant "had no integrity." Plus, the Democrats were so nice! They called. They sympathized. They made her feel good about tossing her support to Bill Owens, who -- with her help -- became the area's first Democratic representative in more than a century. . . .

Dede Scozzafava says Doug Hoffman lacks "integrity"? Make me laugh. As to her victim status, her salary as an assemblywoman is more than $100,000. Nice work victimhood if you can get it.

Atavism and xenophobia get a bad rap

OK, that's a joke at Andrew Sullivan's expense:

It can be hard to see developments like the civil rights movement for African-Americans, or the fight for women's or gay equality, as engines of economic growth. But they are; and they remain one of the West's core advantages, unless we too succumb to atavism and xenophobia.

Sully's moralistic posturing was prompted by Reihan Salam's article fretting over "the new racism that is taking shape in Asia."

Actually, I don't think it's new racism. It's just that Korea and China (the nations Salam cites) have until recently been sufficiently homogenous that ethnic discrimination wasn't a pronounced societal pattern.

You can't discriminate against minorities you don't have. I'm reminded of the story about the Japanese diplomat who visited Germany in the 1930s and expressed his admiration for the Nazi system, then lamented how unfortunate it was that Japan didn't have any Jews to scapegoat.

People tend to discriminate against whatever groups are available. I'm sure Alaskans have epithets for Eskimos that no one in the lower 48 ever heard of. Black inner-city residents do not hesitate to employ racial language against Asian merchants in their communities. And people who live in relatively homogenous communities often think of themselves as free from etnocentrism -- until the homogeneity is threatened by some sudden influx of outsiders (e.g., the Hmong in Wisconsin and Minnesota, Arabs in Michigan, Somalis in Maine).

Ace of Spades once did a brilliant parody about hating Scandinavians as "filthy Scandis" -- icebacks, snow-wops, toboggan monkeys, lutefish-gobblers, etc. Nobody (at least in America, that we know of) actually hates Scandinavians as a group, simply because historical circumstances haven't situated them as a distinct ethnic minority. Therefore, it's funny to laugh at the idea of anti-Scandi bigotry, whereas anti-Muslim bigotry . . . eh, not so much.

Fact: Prior to World War I, New York City had a thriving German-American community -- German restaurants, German social clubs, German-language newspapers, etc. But such was the intensity of sentiment aroused during the war that, over the course of just a couple of decades, this distinctive ethnic culture disappeared. The force of public odium prompted these German-Americans to assimilate very rapidly so that, by the time WWII broke out, there was no "German community" to speak of in New York.

Which brings us back to Sully's snooty remarks about "atavism and xenophobia." The biggest reason that America nowadays has as much ethnic friction as it does is that there are so many incentives against assimilation.

Forty or 50 years ago, the newly-landed immigrant encountered a mainstream American culture that was almost triumphantly self-assured, so that to become an American was certainly a step upward. Now, we're so busy celebrating "diversity" that it's more rewarding to stay outside the mainstream, to form your own particular identity-group, to play the victimhood card and demand recognition in terms of "civil rights."

And Sully is himself a classic example of this, as his pet cause is gay rights -- a self-imposed minority identity. Note how the gay-rights movement has popularized the pejorative "closet" to apply to gay people who don't advertise their sexual orientation to the world. This is very much akin to the claims of some black activists that middle-class black people are guilty of "acting white" or "abandoning the community."

Except for straight, white, Protestant males, the only path to authentic identity under the multicultural regime is to separate yourself from the mainstream and strike a pose of alienated grievance. You're only an authentic woman if you're a militant feminist, and you're only an authentic Latino if you're marching with MALDEF.

Because such a posture only makes sense in the context of oppression and victimhood, everybody walks around with their insensitivity-detectors set to "stun," prepared to blast anyone suspected of less-than-perfect tolerance. If it weren't for racism, sexism and homophobia, the identity-politics lobbies wouldn't have a fundraising raison d'etre, so they have a vested interest in magnifying every grievance.

This mau-mau attitude actually causes more problems than it solves. The activist types who acquire money and influence by exaggerating evidence of "oppression" don't really give a damn about the people they claim to represent. CAIR isn't about the average Muslim any more than the National Council of Churches is about the average Methodist or the AFL-CIO is about the average blue-collar worker. The identity-politics professionals are merely exploiting the collective groups they claim to represent.

So I say, give atavistic xenophobia a chance!

Monique vs. Meghan: It's still on

Meghan McCain says: "I myself straddle the line between political commentator and a member of the political universe."

Monique Stuart can't help responding: "And, as we all know, that's not all Meghan is famous for straddling."

Ruh-roh: Jew-baiting behind TWT uproar?

Hmmmmm. And hmmmmmm. OK, this is kind of hard to sort out, so we'll bullet-point it:

• Jonathan Slevin co-authors a novel that depicts U.S. foreign policy as "hamstrung and optionless because of Arab and Russian tyrants, oil, Middle East politics, American evangelicals, Israel, and AIPAC."
• Slevin reportedly handpicks Michael Scheuer to review the book for The Washington Times.
• Three senior executives of TWT are ousted, while Slevin is promoted to acting publisher.
• Executive editor John Solomon is reported to be "considering his options."

Quite a pickle here. Of course, I admit that the title of this post is misleading, since criticizing U.S. Middle East policy is not the same as "Jew-baiting." (But tell that to David Frum vis-a-vis "Unpatriotic Conservatives.") I was just looking for a shorthand label.

Having friends on both sides of the paleocon/neocon schism, I'm kind of an odd hawk-dove hybrid -- a Zionist paleo? -- and wish there were some sort of fusionist middle ground or, at least, that the two sides would stop anathematizing each other. Decades of this Manichean either/or game gets tiresome.

Anyway, when I posted about this "atavistic anarchy" earlier, I imagined that the reported turmoil at my former workplace was just a business matter. If, as these liberal bloggers suggest, it turns out to be a function of global geopolitics . . . well, wouldn't that be a kick in the head? Or maybe it's about ethics because of Slevin's hand-picking the reviewer, which violated company policy.

I'm betting there are many people in the Washington Times newsroom who are now fondly recalling the Wes Pruden era as the Good Old Days. As a news philosophy, "Get It First, Get It Right" had the virtue of simplicity.

Tom Maguire, upside Ezra Klein's head

"I resist the implicit notion that from a Federal perspective all your income are belong to us," Maguire says, after Ezra plays the class-warfare card on the Stupak Amendment. What bugs me more about Klein's post:

• Who appointed Ezra guardian of the interests of the poor? If I don't like Ross Douthat claiming to speak on behalf of the working class, why should I defer to Ezra Klein? (In his defense, at least Ezra went to state schools, even if they were UC-Santa Cruz and UCLA.)
• Since when is free abortion a "benefit" the lack of which constitutes deprivation? Isn't it condescending to suppose that poor women need government-funded abortion? Most abortion, after all, is just after-the-fact contraception. Does Ezra Klein suppose that poor women are incapable of following a contraceptive regimen as simple as "Keep Your Britches On"?

Really, unless you have some ideological investment in "sexual liberation" -- and fear that poverty might prevent some people from participating fully in the erotic carnival of pleasure -- what's up with this insistence about using taxpayer dollars to supply poor women with condoms, Norplant, abortions, etc.?

Excuse me for thinking the "soft bigotry of low expectations" might be implicated in such an attitude, although I do not mean to accuse Ezra of mala fides. I'm just sort of thinking out loud about the problems of "The Culture of Poverty," as discussed in the Moynihan Report. No time for an in-depth discourse on this controversial topic, but it seems to me that there is a self-fulfilling prophecy factor in this evident attitude among our policy elite that the poor are incapable of such basic virtues as chastity.

Returning more specifically to the matter at hand -- the $250 billion "subsidy" of tax-exemption for employer-provided health insurance that Klein targets -- the history of that policy goes back to FDR and WWII. It demonstrates how, once such policies are implemented, engrain themselves in the political system and develop constituencies, they become nearly impossible to repeal, even if the policies are arguably harmful. Employer-provided health-care as a middle-class entitlement certainly fits that description. And yet Klein is certainly not arguing against entitlements, is he?

Aleister rubs it in

"Allahpundit likes me," he says.

Don't worry. My feelings aren't hurt. Because I'm chopped liver, and chopped liver doesn't have feelings.

VIDEO: David Obey called out: 'So what?'

Sean Duffy is a Republican district attorney who is challenging Rep. David Obey in Wisconsin's 7th District. Here's a clever attack ad from Duffy:

Obey's been in Congress for 40 years and, like most long-term incumbents, is accustomed to winning by landslides. I'm looking at Duffy's biography and thinking to myself, "In a year like 2010, this kid may be able to give Obey a run for his money."

UPDATE: A little more poking around and I discover that Duffy has (a) set a fundraising record for his district, and (b) appeared on Hot Air's "The Ed Morrissey Show." Beating David Obey is a tall order, but 2010 looks to be a good year for the GOP and this Duffy kid just might pull it off.

UPDATE II: Linked at StixBlog. Thanks!

Hawkins vs. Friedersdorf

Conor Friedersdorf challenged John Hawkins to a debate. Hawkins:

The long and short of it is that conservatives should adhere to our principles, but make some changes to our agenda and our tactics and help lead this country into the future.

Read the rest of that. And now Friedersdorf:

My wish list includes a base that doesn’t mete out support according to how stringently a politician is criticized by the left; talk radio hosts who oppose misbegotten GOP initiatives with as much energy as they oppose Democratic measures; tolerance of dissent and engaging dissenters on the merits of their arguments, rather than heretic-hunting or accusations of disloyalty/bad-faith; a right-leaning media that engages in robust debates about the appropriate direction for the country, rather than thoughtless cheerleading or opposition bashing; and general intolerance of lies, misleading statements, and intellectual dishonesty, even when perpetrated by political or ideological allies.

And you can read the rest of that, too. This is just the first of three rounds. Friedersdorf begins his history in 2000 and seemingly blames The Right for everything any Republican politician has done in the intervening nine years.

Without getting too much into specifics, I think it can be argued that the GOP began veering off-course after the 1995-96 budget showdown. By FY 1998, the GOP was voting for budgets that were big-spending, pork-laden travesties of their own stated principles.

Clinton not only won the PR wars over the budget, but he also won the PR war over Lewinsky, with Clinton-friendly media convincing millions that the entire cause of the scandal was that Republicans were puritanical anti-sex Nazis. The born-again Bush sort of leaned into that curve, so that the public image of the GOP circa 2001 was shaped by uptight wienies of the David Kuo/Michael Gerson variety.

Were I granted any one wish, I'd wish that the GOP could get back to the kind of fun-loving, devil-may-care attitude it displayed circa 1989, when RNC chairman Lee Atwater duck-walked his guitar with a rockin' band at the inaugural celebration.

More "Animal House," less Dean Wormer.

Politico news flash: Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann don't count as 'women'

More twisted interpretation of NY23:

Conservatives say they pushed Dede Scozzafava out of the House race in New York's 23rd District a week ago because of her left-of-Republican social views -- and not because she is a woman.
But the growing schism between the Republican Party's ascendant right wing and its shrinking moderate core has clear gender undertones -- and Scozzafava's departure raises fresh questions about the GOP's ability to recruit, elect and even tolerate the sort of moderate women who used to be part of its ruling mainstream.
While Republicans scored a pair of impressive electoral victories in New Jersey and Virginia with solid support among female voters, the events of the last week offer harbingers of serious trouble ahead with the largest swing voter bloc in the country -- women. . . .

Why is it that only pro-choice liberals count as "women"? It's as if Phyllis Schlafly, Bay Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingrham and Michelle Malkin were un-persons.

Bad craziness at The Washington Times

Back in the day, the motto was always, "When in doubt, blame McCain," but I had nothing to do with the latest onset of atavistic anarchy:

The Washington Times has announced major changes at the paper this morning, with three top executives gone in the process.
Those removed Monday morning include Thomas P. McDevitt (president and publisher), Keith Cooperrider (chief financial officer), and Dong Moon Joo (chairman).
Jonathan Slevin, previously vice president, has been named acting president and publisher . . .
News of the executive shake-up follows rumors swirling around the Times Sunday night that there could be a major change on the editorial side, perhaps including executive editor John Solomon. However, Solomon was not mentioned in the release about changes to the business side. (Solomon has not responded to multiple calls and emails for comment).
There's also been speculation that changes at the Times could be associated with last month's handover of power in the Unification Church, the paper's owner. The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who turns 90 in January, handed over power to his three sons . . .

And there's more:

Following Monday's news that top executives of the Washington Times have been removed, senior editors will be briefed at 10 a.m. this morning by members of the paper's Board.
Managing editor David Jones notified staff in a memo obtained by POLITICO.
Jones is second-in-command to executive editor John Solomon, who has been rumored to be leaving the paper, according to staffers . . .

Those of us who got out when the getting was good were the object of much badmouthing at the time. I still occasionally run across claims that I was fired, instead of resigning shortly after Solomon was hired from the Post. As a colleague said to me at the time, "If I wanted to work for a Postie, I would have applied at the f---ing Post."

One of the basic misconceptions that outsiders (and some insiders) had about The Times was that every problem at the paper was a function of the paper's conservative-alternative perspective: "It's those wacky right-wingers! Blame them!" But the newsroom operation was excellent. The real problems were always on the business side -- advertising, circulation and promotion.

So when the new management began by decapitating the newsroom -- Wes Pruden retired and Fran Coombs ousted -- it was certain that there would eventually be further bloodletting. Now it's come, and we wait to see what happens next.

UPDATE: Management spews mumbo-jumbo in press release:

The Washington Times LLC today announced that it is continuing on its path toward a sustainable multimedia news enterprise involving leadership expertise from within The Washington Times and directed by its Board of Directors and its parent company, News World Communications LLC.
Today's industry conditions and the general economic downturn necessitate this team-based assessment, planning, and subsequent implementation of a plan to enable The Times to become a sustainable multimedia company in today’s challenging news industry environment. . . .
[New publisher Jonathan Slevin]: "Our assessment team looks forward to emerging with a market-based plan that supports the sustainability of The Washington Times and advances the Times' role as an important source of news and opinion for readers who value a diversity of information and analysis."

Whatever that means -- probably not much, really. You could boil it down to, "Revenue sucks, so we're ditching some guys with big salaries."

The larger problem is that new giveaway tabloids -- the Examiner and Politico -- are cutting into the two paid-circulation daily broadsheets in D.C., while a plethora of Web-based outfits make it more and more difficult for newspapers to break exclusive news. Hell's bells, you can get scooped by Twitter and Facebook nowadays!

Tea Party Express: Orlando, here I come!

The Tea Party Express bus tour will end Thursday in Orlando, Fla., and my friend Barbara Espinosa -- "Grandma Is an Angry Mob" -- has invited me to attend the event. Barbara writes at her American Freedom blog:

I was a volunteer for the Tea Party Patriots and Freedom Watch at the 9-12 march in Washington D.C. also have attended Townhalls and Tea Party Rallies across Arizona protesting Government Run Healthcare, Cap and Trade, Higher Taxes, Out of Control Spending, taking over Banks, Car Industry, TARP, Stimulus.......I will be attending this GRAND FINALE and encourage all that can do so DESCEND on ORLANDO. . . . Be a part of history in taking back our government.

OK, so it's a 14-hour drive to Orlando -- 1,800 miles round-trip. At 20 cents per mile, that's $360. I'm hoping to make the trip down in two days, leaving tomorrow (Tuesday) and stopping Tuesday evening in Savannah. Ali Akbar lives there, and the 2010 congressional race in GA12 (a seat held by Blue Dog Democrat Rep. John Barrow) is something I'm interested in reporting about.

Given the extraordinary generosity of readers who funded the NY23 coverage, I hate to rattle the tip jar too hard for this expedition -- you gotta admit, Orlando in November is a pretty cool assignment -- but contributions to the Shoe Leather Fund would nonetheless be helpful in persuading Mrs. Other McCain that this isn't just a holiday.

Because Paul Krugman cares so much about the Republican Party

Once again, we behold the spectacle of a liberal pretending to be concerned for the health of the GOP:

Furthermore, the loss of both Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in a party accustomed to top-down management. At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority: Republican voters ignored his call to support a relatively moderate, electable candidate in New York’s special Congressional election.
Real power in the party rests, instead, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who at this point is more a media figure than a conventional politician). Because these people aren’t interested in actually governing, they feed the base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it. So all the old restraints are gone. . . .

Krugman throws in the requisite reference to Richard Hofstadter's "Paranoid Style," a derivation of Theodor Adorno's "Authoritarian Personality" -- leftist psychobabble that was risibly false when Bill Buckley debunked it in Up From Liberalism a half-century ago.

The Adorno/Hofstadter/Krugman thesis amounts to an assertion that anyone who opposes liberal policies or criticizes liberal politicians must be insane. This pre-emptive conclusion then justifies a search for evidence -- Krugman cites a sign at last Thursday's Capitol rally -- from which proceeds the argument that what Republicans need to do is to become more like Democrats.

Krugman's description of Dede Scozzafava as "a relatively moderate, electable candidate" is either a lie or a delusion, and either way amounts to a liberal Democrat seeking to dictate who qualifies as an "acceptable" Republican candidate.

Nevertheless, Krugman manages accidentally to bump into an important fact when he says that the GOP had become "accustomed to top-down management" during the Bush administration. The weakening of the party's grassroots support -- clearly in evidence during the 2006 and 2008 election cycles -- was the natural result of the Rove/Mehlman attempt to control the party from Washington.

If all the important decisions are made at GOP headquarters, why should the grassroots get involved in the process? This is what inspired the Not One Red Cent movement. The National Republican Senatorial Committee's decision to anoint Charlie Crist in the Florida primary was the typical "top-down management" move, orchestrated by the same sort of party insiders who picked Scozzafava in NY23. Such insider manipulations are undemocratic and harmful to the vitality of the Republican Party.

Naturally, Krugman sees the conservative grassroots uprising as a dangerous, scary phenomenon -- "the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter" -- as if there was no cause for concern in the Democratic Party having been taken over by the disciples of Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Any authentic grassroots movement will inevitably involve expressions of populist sentiment that shock elitists. The less-than-ideal phrasing of a few protest signs or the occasional wacky utterance of a talk-radio host, however, does not mean that populists are dangerous or demented. Just because the grievances of the citizenry are sometimes expressed in uncouth terms does not make those grievances any less legitimate. And conservative grievances are no less legitimate than liberal grievances.

'Day By Day' goes totally nude?

Chris Muir probably figured that these kids today wouldn't pay attention to an Alexis de Tocqueville reference without the cartoon hottie getting naked.

So yesterday, the redhead was reading her Kindle in the bathtub, and today she's prancing around in the altogether.

Tomorrow? . . . I dunno. But if past is prologue, we could be on the verge of discovering whether Samantha is a natural redhead. On the other hand, maybe she's got one of those Brazilian wax jobs, which would prevent a conclusive determination.

UPDATE: Don Surber dubs Day By Day "evil"? It's as if Don is actually trying to discourage future redhead cartoon nudity.

UPDATE II: Thanks for the commenter's correction: Don actually rated the naked cartoon "Good."

Allen West: 'It is what it is'

The retired Army lieutenant colonel on Fort Hood:

We have become so politically correct that our media is more concerned about the stress of the shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan. The misplaced benevolence intending to portray him as a victim is despicable. The fact that there are some who have now created an entire new classification called "pre-virtual vicarious Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)" is unconscionable.
This is not a "man caused disaster". It is what it is, an Islamic jihadist attack. . . .
What we see are recalcitrant leaders who are refusing to confront the issue, Islamic terrorist infiltration into America, and possibly further into our Armed Services. Instead we have a multiculturalism and diversity syndrome on steroids.
Major Hasan should have never been transferred to Ft Hood, matter of fact he should have been Chaptered from the Army. His previous statements, poor evaluation reports, and the fact that the FBI had him under investigation for jihadist website posting should have been proof positive. . . .

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, there's also this:

The official said investigators were looking into Hasan's association with the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., in early 2001, about the same time that a radical Islamist prayer leader and two of the Sept. 11 hijackers were there. . . .
Authorities were focusing aggressively on whether Hasan more recently had been following the fiery online sermons and blog postings of that imam, Anwar al Awlaki, the official said.
Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, left the United States in 2002 and is believed to be in Yemen. He is actively supporting the Islamist jihad, or holy war against the West, through his website.
Early this morning, after Awlaki's name was publicly linked to Hasan's, a posting on Awlaki's site was titled "Nidal Hassan Did the Right Thing."

Jihad? What jihad? Nothing to see here. Move along.

UPDATE: ABC News reports:

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.

But don't start "jumping to conclusions" or anything.

Ed Driscoll praised by Andrew Sullivan

Prompting Ed to ensure that this never happens again:

Andrew sure knows how ruin someone on the right -- my reputation amongst my fellow Neocon Rightwing Death Beasts is forever tarnished, as Sullivan utters those dreaded words, "Ed Driscoll has a good point."

Don't worry, Ed, we Death Beasts are far too busy "opposing the working poor having a chance to buy health insurance" to pay any attention to Sully.

UPDATE: Time for another episode of Dr. Andrew Sullivan, M.D., OB-GYN, Republican Uterus Expert.

Paralysis by analysis

One of the distinguishing traits of the political intellectual is an excessive caution, a desire never to be "caught out" by expressing a gut-hunch reaction that might be proven wrong or that might expose one to criticism. When one aims at a career as an intellectual, this ambition places a premium on striving to be correct in all one's judgments, and to express those judgments in a properly measured tone.

Intellectuals are just as capable of error as anyone else but are adept at couching their arguments in the appropriate form, with such requisite qualifiers as "perhaps" and "may" and "might," so as to avoid staking out any controversial point too starkly. All of this I say by way of introducing Vanderbilt University senior Katherine Miller, who pensively ponders whether we are being unfair about the Fort Hood massacre:

How important is it that Nidal Malik Hasan is Muslim?
[Vanderbilt colleague] Mike [Warren] and I got into it a little bit . . . on the topic of labeling Hasan a Muslim terrorist. The latter noun requires motive, but since it was and is still unclear, we both agree terrorist is a dangerous description at this point in the case.
The term taken on the whole, Muslim terrorist, also evokes and prompted speculation about Muslim extremist terror cells and al-Qaeda. This is also problematic.
But back to the word Muslim: How critical is it?
Well, it depends on the motive for the shooting. A hypothetical: If Hasan were Jewish or Christian, would the religion have been notable? Well, no, unless he were a radical Zionist or a fundamentalist Christian. Even these distinctions, however, still hinge on some related or external motive (Iran, abortion, whatever). . . .

Yadda, yadda, yadda. Does the quest for Final Wisdom really have to be so exhaustive? Hasan was a Muslim, who had defended suicide bombing and did not want to be deployed to Afghanistan in a war against fellow Muslims. He is reported to have shouted "Allahu Akbar!" during his rampage. And then there's this business about cutting the throats of infidels.

However much weight we give to other motivating factors, it doesn't seem a long-shot gamble to say that Hasan's religion was a major factor in his crime which, by its very nature, constituted an act of terrorism.

This does not mean that every Muslim shares Hasan's murderous rage. Obviously, most do not, or else such events would be commonplace. Given the more general problem of Islamic terror, however, the hunt for some other explanation here is one of those quests that run afoul of Occam's Razor. Sometimes the simple, obvious explanation is also the true explanation.

Do not succumb, Miss Miller, to the politically correct fear that identifying a Muslim terrorist as a Muslim terrorist will produce a "backlash" of bigotry.

Such backlashes do happen, of course. I recall a particularly obnoxious incident after 9/11 in which some dimwit attacked a Sikh. But dimwits are responsible for their own crimes, and I rather doubt they require prompting from political blogs to commit them. (Question: Do people that stupid actually read blogs?)

Also, Miss Miller, resist the temptation to strike a pose of earnest thoughtfulness: "On the one hand this, on the other hand that," as if the business of pondering alternatives were an end to itself. Be decisive, even if decisiveness occasionally means being wrong.

How not to deal with a gang-rape

Let's start with some basics: When a girl is gang-raped for two hours at the high-school homecoming dance, the generic "community" is not the victim and generic "violence" is not the perpetrator. But leave it to the Left Coast to respond to this heinous crime in politically correct fashion:

Upward of 200 people marched from Richmond High School to nearby Wendell Park, where speakers decried violence against women and what they see as the social forces that take such behavior in stride.
"Men need to speak to other men and say, 'Stop,' " said Richard Wright, a community activist from Oakland. "Men need to stand up in this to make a cultural change, to say that rape is no longer acceptable."

Uh . . . to whom was rape ever "acceptable," Mr. Wright? But wait, there's more:

Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin . . . thanked people for bringing an affirmative message of support into her community.
"It's great to hear you raising your voices loud and clear against this horrible crime, and against the horrible crimes against women that go on all the time," McLaughlin said. "This is not about Richmond youth. This is a much larger systemic problem."

Way to muddle the issue, Mayor! Could you please elaborate on that "larger systemic problem"? Because I'm thinking the real problem is the criminals who committed this act. And I'm also thinking that every attempt to externalize guilt by attributing this rape to amorphous "social forces" tends toward the exculpation of the rapists.

There's not really much that rallies and speeches can accomplish in terms of preventing rape. A more simple and useful response: Prosecute the guilty to the maximum extent of the law and, if you have a daughter, don't ever let her go near a California public school.

Debunking Frank Rich's NY23 fantasies

He never set foot on the ground in the upstate New York district during the campaign, but previously interpreted it as Republicans "re-enacting Stalinism," and now the former New York Times theater critic knows exactly what the result means:

This race was a damaging setback for the hard right. Hoffman had the energetic support of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Fox as well as big bucks from their political auxiliaries. Furthermore, Hoffman was running not only in a district that Rove himself described as "very Republican" but one that fits the demographics of the incredibly shrinking G.O.P. The 23rd is far whiter than America as a whole -- 93 percent versus 74 -- with tiny sprinklings of blacks, Hispanics and Asians. It has few immigrants. It's rural. Its income and education levels are below the norm. Only if the district were situated in Dixie -- or Utah -- could it be a more perfect fit for the narrow American demographic where the McCain-Palin ticket had its sole romps last year.
If the tea party right can't win there, imagine how it might fare in the nation where most Americans live. . . .

Blah, blah, blah. Hoffman began the campaign with near-zero name-ID in the district and, by his own admission, was not the sort of "poised" and "polished" candidate who attracts voters by the telegenic force of his personal charisma.

Frank Rich didn't bother talking to the Hoffman campaign staff who, the day after the election, explained to me how the GOP establishment candidate Dede Scozzafava's dropping out (and endorsing the Democrat, Bill Owens) hurt their candidate.

Once Hoffman established himself as the conservative choice, this left Dede with a rump vote of liberals, personal friends, labor allies, etc., who amounted to less than 20% of the electorate, whereas Hoffman had more than 40%, and Owens was in the vicinity of 35% -- the usual Democratic vote in the 23rd District.

Until the morning of Oct. 31, then, Hoffman was set to win with something like a 44% plurality. Dede's withdrawal and endorsement of Owens, however, threw that calculus into disarray. It also created havoc with the Hoffman campaign's messaging effort. As of Sunday, there were still ads running on TV bashing Dede and depicting the election as a three-way contest. The Hoffman campaign was unable to get those ads stopped and replaced with new ads; meanwhile, the DCCC dumped $1 million in negative attack ads -- depicting Hoffman as a callous greedhead who wanted to ship jobs overseas -- into the local TV market in the final days of the campaign.

All of which is to say that there were unique factors at play in the final days of the NY23 campaign that argue against Frank Rich's claim that Hoffman's narrow loss represents an emphatic, decisive and final failure of the "tea party right."

Rich's biggest error is his mistaken impression of the Hoffman campaign as representing a narrow ideological sect. Anyone who spent much time at all talking to Hoffman supporters in the 23rd District -- you could ask John McCormack or Dave Weigel about this -- would tell you that his candidacy drew strong support from every component of the conservative movement.

The lessons of NY23 are really more tactical than ideological. There were about a dozen top people on Team Hoffman who are privy to the inner rationale of the campaign, its methods and strategies. This esoteric understanding of NY23 will be missed or misunderstood by those who view the campaign in a superficial way.

Hoffman's candidacy provides a template for a different style of Republican campaign, one that bases its appeal on a grassroots "outsider" argument, effectively employs online messaging and fundraising, and draws on the Tea Party volunteers for organizational "boots on the ground" support.

What was learned from the NY23 experience will be applied first in a series of GOP primaries -- including the Florida Senate primary -- and subsequently in the 2010 general election. If the GOP stages a comeback in next year's mid-terms, the Hoffman campaign will be seen in retrospect as a turning point.

Fort Hood Massacre: Jeffrey Goldberg on the See-No-Evil elite

When "Sudden Jihad Syndrome" strikes, there is a curious incuriosity in some quarters:

A consensus seems to have formed here at The Atlantic that the Ft. Hood massacre means not very much at all. Megan McArdle writes that "there is absolutely no political lesson to be learned from this." James Fallows says: "The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre 'mean'? A decade later, do we 'know' anything about Columbine?" . . .
It seems, though, that when an American military officer who is a practicing Muslim allegedly shoots forty of his fellow soldiers who are about to deploy to the two wars the United States is currently fighting in Muslim countries, some broader meaning might, over time, be discerned, especially if the officer did, in fact, yell "Allahu Akbar" while murdering his fellow soldiers, as some soldiers say he did. . . .

The whistling-past-the-mass-graveyard reaction Goldberg discerns is quite striking among the opinion elite, if we contrast it to their reactions in other cases.

Remember when Andrew Sullivan fretted about "Southern populist terrorism" in the death of Kentucky census worker Bill Sparkman? (Investigators now believe it to have been suicide.) Remember how Frank Rich interpreted the NY23 special election as "nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war," demonstrating how "the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult"?

The tendency of elites to leap to hysterical, far-fetched interpretations when dealing with phenomena associated (rightly or wrongly) with the Right is counterbalanced by their "nothing to see here" reaction when confronted with events that implicate pet causes of the Left.

The nature of elite reaction is not strictly a matter of the potential political ramifications of events. There is also the matter of complexity and nuance, which are specialties of the intelligentsia. When events seem to teach a simplistic liberal lesson, there is no need to seek out any mitigating factors. Yet when the simple lesson would seem to favor a conservative argument, there is a frantic search for mitigation, or else the event is dismissed as meaningless.

The murder of Matthew Shepard was interpreted as evidence of mass homophobia induced by Christian conservatism, even though the murderers were a couple of two-bit hoodlums with no known ties to the Religious Right. Yet here we have Nidal Malik Hasan reportedly screaming "Allahu Akbar" while gunning down U.S. troops and . . . well, this means nothing.

So instead of a search for meaning, the elite engage in a search for non-meaning. The Fort Hood killer attended a radical mosque? Meaningless!

What is most amusing is how the elite assume that the rest of us are so stupid as not to notice the pattern.

UPDATE: Phyllis Chesler observed Saturday:

Quickly, reflexively, without waiting for more of the facts to emerge, the mainstream print media has already decided that Major Hasan is a tormented “innocent” who must have snapped under alleged conditions of extreme provocation and humiliation. The mainstream media assures people that there is no such thing as jihad; that the Ft. Hood massacre has nothing to do with Islam or with violent jihad; that if there are any victims here, it is not the dead and wounded soldiers . . . but the man accused of their mass murders.

Michelle Malkin wonders, "Why do we have to read British papers to get Ft. Hood jihadist news?!" Meanwhile, Donald Douglas notices that anyone who thinks Islam had anything to do with the Fort Hood massacre has been declared guilty of anti-Muslim "bigotry."

Rule 5 Sunday

by Smitty

Brought to you from Heathrow in the wee hours with a drop of tea. One could proffer some weak excuse about traveling for not cleaning out the Rule 5 folder, but the dedicated readers of this blog deserve better than that. To work:

• The Daily Gator shows us the dirty side of the Lingerie Football League. This matchmaking scheme seems far-fetched. Then again, I have a strictly-no-matchmaking policy, so this is all too much for me. But the topic of ladies with guns is always a winner, especially when supporting Project Valour-IT.
• Honesty in Motion has taken great pains on researching the Raiderettes. This blog encourages you to stop by and support these vital research interests.
• Yankee Phil celebrates Karolina Kurkova.
• Andrew Ian Dodge earns both today's WTF? and Is That Safe? awards. Content Warning: safe for work, but mildly disturbing if your name isn't Mick Jagger. In archery news, he has some cheesecake that would be wildly unsafe if done in real life.
• Smash Mouth Politics delves into the history of Rule 5, with impressive results.
• American Power covered the Carrie Prejean scene, but not by much. Allow me to register mild disappointment. She seems to be moving towards the "typical" column.
• Troglopundit has taken his Megan Fox fixation to simply shocking degrees of spreadsheet decadence. Trog also rounded up Carrie Prejean coverage. He also comes through with the Danica Patrick update. And he finishes of, as one sometimes must, with a catfight.
• For the ladies, Blackfive has an "Aircraft Bringer-inner Dude", whose absurdity mitigates the "Why am I watching this, again?" factor.
• For Star Wars fans, a double dose of Leia.
• Dustbury is again caught reveling in obscurity, which I can appreciate.
• In music news, Fischersville Mike tries to downplay his interest in the new Carrie Underwood release. Let him know he ain't foolin' no one.
• Morgan Freeberg seems to be stuck on Marisa Miller over Nadine Velasquez in this installment of the Alphabetical Face Off.
• Rightofcourse has a report from Oregon cheerleaders who are working on a new anti-gravity shampoo.
• The Eye of Polyphemus, while a singular orb, does know its Rule 5. Jeffords brings you Blake Lively, who lives up to her surname indeed.
• Yankee Phil says that Mariah Carey will be in Madison Square Garden on New Years.
• The Classic Liberal mingles a the classic economics lesson on the broken window with Keeley Hazell, to excellent effect.
• WyBlog updates us on the strange situation between Sandra Bullock and her husband's ex-wife.
• Nation of Cowards highlights Morena Baccarin, in the new V, who was also in Firefly.
• Three Beers Later brings the workout clip, the Chris Dodd Appreciation golf clip (what did Senator Dodd ever do to you, besides help wreck your country's economy, huh?). Then there is the Monty Python Dirty Vicar sketch, with subtitles for those colonial ears that can't hack the accent. Going that extra Rule 5 mile, he subs for Paco Enterprises with a Red Hot Riding Hood cartoon.
• New grunt on the block Bring the heat, Bring the Stupid makes some claim about not being a Jessica Alba fan, merely liking the way she looks. This argument is usually phrased "I'm not addicted to cocaine, I just like the way it smells."
• KURU Lounge plays some whiny 'busy week' card, nattering on about midterms and papers and such, but then delivers the Anna Semenovitch goods, and all is forgiven.
• Bob Belvedere brings us Linda Darnell, Adrienne Barbeau, and rounds out the trilogy with 10 lovelies from I-dunno-where. Possibly he can elaborate in the comments.
• Obi's Sister was the only one to submit Sgt. Kimberly Munley for Rule 5 Sunday. Would that there was not so much tragedy and scar tissue involved in the notoriety. I'll take off my court jester hat for a moment of silence for the fallen, Heaven rest them.
• The Indentured Servant Girl rounds us out with a selection of naughty nurse pinups.

This Rule 5 Sunday has been brought to you by three cups of Twinings finest. Tea--because you wouldn't want me posting on three pints of bitter, now would you? Please send more cheesecake and good cheer to Smitty.

Update: Donald Douglas finds a Rule 5 health care angle.