Friday, October 07, 2011
ANNALS OF McMEGAN. "Whenever I suggest that not everyone should go to college, I am met with cries of classism and snobbery. But here's the thing: I love studying in a way that most people just don't." -- Megan McArdle, who also explains that those non-studious non-McMegan types just sort of wander into college as if it were a blues bar on Beale Street, with no thought whatsoever of the job market, and would be better off if we made college prohibitively expensive (especially now that Megan McArdle no longer goes to one); this would also cause employers to hire high school graduates for desk jobs, of which there must suddenly be an enormous over-supply.
The whole thing is a nightmare, but I don't have time. Feel free to work it over in comments.
8:53 AM by roy edroso
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THE END OF THE AFFAIR.. It was only when it came that I realized it had long been inevitable. But like all the other poor Gomers who followed her, I thought Sarah Palin was something special. Just a few weeks ago I actually found myself telling a very skeptical labor lawyer that next summer I expected Palin to ride like a Valkyrie into the convention hall and relieve the Republicans of whatever false idol they had put in her place.
She certainly kept a game face on to the end. Just weeks ago, when the prominent dopes of the GOP were cautiously essaying their ridiculous war on crony capitalism, Palin jumped in with both feet, and got a lot of the punters to go with. Any time a crackpot idea came down the pike, by the time it was in the public's view (thanks, Liberal Media ) Palin was at the wheel with her pedal to the metal.
But I still should have seen what was up when the more prominent apparatchiks, who are more dazzled by the prospect of re-looting the treasury than by any candidate, started bailing on Palin. Chief RedState buffoon Erick Erickson:The ["Sarah Palin Cult"] is full of people with little prominence outside a twitter stream, a few nominal soapboxes imagined to be bigger they they are, and possessing a lot of bile and little grace inside an echo chamber of indecision 2012 dementia. About the only thing this cult lacks are thetans...
As Ann Coulter said, “Fish or cut bait.” Governor Palin has teased us long enough. Most of us are tired of it. She has harmed her own entry into the race and now, even if she got in, would only see a modest rise in polling. Shorter'd: The Republican field has found several fresher, more exciting lunatics, we don't need you. And we of "little prominence" who followed her better get with the program, and pitch in for the big win behind someone normal Americans have not yet learned to hate.
Erickson is nothing if not a wind-sniffer, and would not have put himself out there if he didn't think the Palin dream was really over -- though, being also a coward, he drenched it in enough don't-get-me-wrong sauce that he could afterwards say "Oh, no, I didn't mean YOU" to every person involved who might someday be in a position to do him some good, or some harm-- from Palin on down to those campaign operatives whose ship-jumping skills were in order.
And that explicitly did not include those poor sods who carry the hods -- the salt-of-the-earth types who are now left standing at Palin Central, waiting on a train to Galt's Gulch and glory that will never arrive.
I note this with some sadness, and not only on my own account. Most of Palin's retinue will peel off without many tears to the Perry and Bachmann bandwagons, where their thirst for blood and bullshit may be slaked. But I spare a thought for those who actually believed in Palin -- who thought this venal con woman was the real deal, their mama grizzly, their wingnut messiah -- someone who, though swimming in unearned wealth and privilege, understood their underwater double-wide lives and, though incredibly averse to responsibility, would bravely take up the Old Standard and be the backwoods Boudicca of their redneck resurgence.
She was as close to a new Reagan as the Tea Party people had -- simultaneously sunny and impenetrable, a great grinning billboard behind which they could safely wreak their bitter vengeance on the hippies, ethnics, and paupers on whom they blamed the modern world. How long will it take for them to move on, and where to? And -- here's a strange thought, coming from someone who expected to see her crowned -- whether they did or not, are there enough of them that anyone will notice? Or was the whole idea that battalions of backwards-looking, flintlock-shouldering patriots marched with her just a scam as well? That would seem the cruelest thing for them to find: that they were doomed all along, and had only seemed close enough to victory to yearn for it because hucksters found profit in telling the world that they were.
7:03 AM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, October 05, 2011
WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE -- LET'S SEE, WHO DO WE HAVE HANDY? Charles C.W. Cooke at National Review:Today I saw a side to the Occupy Wall Street protests which hasn’t been much reported — the impact on local businesses. A Vietnamese immigrant came up to me and, frustrated, asked me what the protesters wanted and when they would leave. He hasn’t worked for two weeks, he said: I don't recall this issue coming up back in the days of large Tea Party rallies. (Come to think of it, given the Tea Party position on the subject of immigration, shouldn't Cooke have verified that his Vietnamese subject isn't here illegally? Maybe Cooke, who has a furrin accent himself, didn't want to open up a can of worms.)
Next Cooke should talk to the banksters' cleaning ladies, whose workloads I'm sure have increased since the Occupation began, especially in and around their employers' liquor cabinets and toilets.
UPDATE. At Hot Air, Tina Korbe learns that Americans are warm toward the protesters' slogan, “The big banks got bailed out, while we got left behind," but fancies this means they share her feeling that Obama is a monster for regulating offshore drilling, ergo, "Clearly, the American people understand the problem of crony capitalism better than the protesters themselves." It's amazing what they come up with when their whole philosophy is challenged by what's right in front of their noses.
UPDATE 2. In comments, Chuckling offers some primary reporting from the protest site.
6:04 PM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, October 04, 2011
BRIEFLY NOTED. God bless Hank Williams Jr., who got in trouble for comparing Obama to Hitler. I'm giving him the same respectful treatment I gave the Dixie Chicks when they made their (non-Hitlerrific) remarks about Bush -- that is, snidely favorable comments. If a celebrity can't act like a buffoon in this country, then why the hell did Beaver Cleaver fight and die in Vietnam?
UPDATE. Making things even better is the coverage at Big Journalism, where I learn that Mike Tyson is a progressive and that Dana Loesch is still the master of schoolyard argument:It seems that progressives are doing more to call Obama “Hitler” with their accusations than Williams implied with his remark. That's their strength, you see -- you'd be embarrassed to say something like that, wouldn't you? These guys will smear themselves with poo just to keep the guards from grabbing them.
UPDATE 2. He can get tiresome, but I really do like HWII. His cover of "Kaw-Liga" is most kicking.
UPDATE 3. I see some of y'all don't like ole Hank Jr., though commenter Matt T ably defends him here. Again I am reminded of that unnamed New York Times editor who, years ago, blurbed TV listings for especially crappy, lurid old movies thus: "You want Hamlet, read it."
7:26 AM by roy edroso
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Monday, October 03, 2011
IS LANGUAGE A VIRUS? DEPENDS ON WHO'S USING IT. At Hit & Run, Meredith Bragg mentions that Reason has interviewed Ken Burns, whose Prohibition documentary is available via [looter-moocher network] PBS:"The telling of history need not be Castor Oil, the dry recitation of dates, facts, and events" says Burns, who rejects doctrinaire activism in his art despite calling himself a "Democrat for life." Similarly, I understand that despite calling himself a libertarian, Matt Welch does not have resounding B.O., nor reflexively correlate occurrences in everyday life to scenes from obscure science fiction novels, nor stand too close to you when he talks. (Gillespie I don't know about.)
2:38 PM by roy edroso
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Sunday, October 02, 2011
NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the rightblogger response to Occupy Wall Street. They seem to think it's a bunch of hippies being their usual dirty hippie selves, and a great occasion for hippie-punching. I don't know nothing about it, but anytime the rightbloggers and the New York Times are on the same page ("Look at these kids, sitting here with their Apple computers") you have to assume all right and justice is on the other side.
9:29 PM by roy edroso
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Thursday, September 29, 2011
DON'T LAUGH, YOU'RE NEXT. The whole ridiculous beef over The Onion's Congressional hostage joke is about this: the Internet is overstocked with miserable people whose miserable mission in life is to turn everything into the lowest kind of politics -- not the kind we have fun with here, but what the serious people call retail politics -- which is a great term for it, if you imagine these guys as telemarketers whose bosses have drilled them to never promise anything, to never take no for an answer, and to never go off script.
These people are as carefully trained as guard dogs, and they don't take well to humor. For one thing, it interferes with the sales pitch. They have their time-tested script, and they've learned how to react to every possible response -- but then some joker makes fun of it, and suddenly their logic is uprooted. Some of them may have the wit to roll with it, but generally the kind of person who gets hired for these gigs doesn't. (Maybe they had it coming in, but a few years of following the script will take it out of you.)
When they see a joke that rouses some political controversy, they're more comfortable. Because that's not this messy ha-ha stuff that interferes with business -- this is something that can be turned to their advantage, like a recent news item about some poor girl who would be alive now if only she'd had their product.
This kind of joke has a place in their decision tree. Does it make fun of the competition? That's good for business, and if someone squawks about it he's just being [see card G] politically correct. Does it make fun of the product? Then leverage the controversy. There are other emotional cues they can work -- outrage, sensitivity, concern. Are they fake? Hey, buddy, they just work here -- if the suckers buy it, it's as real as a paycheck.
Look, you know what kind of people these are. They have websites all about how Hollywood is trying to destroy America. They're constantly telling each other that the people on the TV are trying to sap their moral will. They read about street crime in a distant city, shiver in their Barcaloungers, and think: Obama is rousing the blacks against us! When they talk about their children, their homes, their encounters with friends or strangers, or anything at all, even something as simple as a joke, they're still giving you the pitch.
Because the pitch is all they know. Everything they see, whether it's from the front page or the gossip column or the street, they turn to their purpose. For them nothing in this world is merely what it is; everything is, must be part of the pitch.
And you? To them you can be someone they're trying to sell, or someone they're trying to recruit. But make no mistake: to them, that's all you are.
10:04 PM by roy edroso
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DORKUS MALORKUS SPEAKETH. Attend Maximus Super Victor Davis Hanson as he sayeth the sooth! Well, it's soothing if you know how to take it. As is his custom, VDH bids us ware the Ides of March, then Delphically describes an America recognizable only to old cranks who spend their evenings with a glass of port and a volume of Heroditus open (in a place where visitors can easily see it), wailing that we are just like old Rome in her decline, except for our endless wars, which are great (though we really should be spending less money on them, and more plebes' lives).
VDH is full of stories, but sometimes he wanders:Somewhere around 1985 in California I noticed that my students were hoping for a state job first, a federal job second, a municipal job third — and a private one last. And this at the height of the Reagan era! We were told in those days that the kids had all become little Alex P. Keatons, high on trickledown and entrepreneurial as fuck. So either Maximus Super speaketh bullshit, or in '85 his young charges, having grown up under Governor Reagan, got an early whiff of the fraud and were opting out. (Or maybe they thought, "Jesus, if he can teach at a state school, I could be a fucking Dean!")
VDH also Sphinxes out some riddles:Why is it more moral for a federal bureaucrat in a state-supplied SUV to shut down an offshore oil rig on grounds that it is too dangerous for the environment than for a private individual to risk his own capital to find some sort of new fuel to power his government’s SUV fleet? Answer "what's morality got to do with it, cloth-ears?" (rather than the correct "You got me there, Senex Gloriosus!") and VDH will not let you pass, but will block the hallway and forcibly regale you, no matter how badly you say you need the bathroom, with his proposed solution to our nation's low, mean state: Tax the Poor ("Their noncompliance bothers the foundations of our society far more than that of the stingy, but minuscule, number of grasping rich") and restore "a different popular culture that honors character rather than excess," presumably by throwing non-Christians to the lions.
On and on it goes, with awkward modern correlations ("the elite have responsibility to use their largess wisely and not turn into the Kardashians") and stretches of senile dementia ("In our strange culture, that someone drives an overpriced BMW apparently means that our own Toyotas don’t have air conditioners or stereos" -- what?). You may wonder how he gets published. Well, they can't all be bellowing goons like Chris Christie or Mr. Reasonables like David Brooks -- sometimes the avatars of the New Feudalism must have a schoolly look, so that the half-educated may look upon them and think, aha, the rage I feel when I see impertinent minorities and nubiles on TV is not just a gut reaction, but the judgement of history!
7:45 AM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, September 27, 2011
THE FAT MAN SINGS. I could have sworn it was just a crazy dream:
Judging from Christie's speech today, he's willing to milk this thing for all it's worth, lining up his union-busting reputation with Reagan and the air traffic controllers ("I cite this incident not as a parable of labor relations...") and even, ridiculously, with international affairs ("What we say and what we do here at home affects how others see us...").
Whether Americans at large will agree that yelling at unions is good training for the job of Commander of Chief in the War on Whatever, or that the absurd slogan "Leadership and Compromise" makes any more sense than "Rice Krispies and Beer," is moot. American politics has changed a great deal since William Jennings Bryan stormed the 1896 Democratic convention and swept the field, and even with a head start Christie would be sailing into a (you'll pardon the expression) big fat wind if he took this thing seriously. A lot of money has already changed hands, and the entry of a few new rich guys into the game isn't going to much change the outcome.
I'm rooting for him, of course. Not only because I love the idea of Rick Perry fluttering around in some conference room, petulantly asking his advisors why he can't use the jokes he brought in about lettin' out his drawers. If the GOP field is really listing into such chaos, it may encourage the ever-opportunistic Sarah Palin to come in and regulate. Then the debates, heretofore merely risible, will resemble the scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian where all the messiahs gibber simultaneously in the market. Panderfest will become pandermonium! If we're really going down the tubes at least we should have some laughs along the way.
Meanwhile we can get pleasure enough from classic messianic guff like this from Daniel Foster:Christie absolutely owned the Reagan library tonight, a point made most clear during the Q& A by the earnest, trembling plea from a woman who begged, on behalf of her “daughter and granddaughter,” that Christie reconsider running for president.
“I know New Jersey needs you, but I really implore you — this isn’t funny — we can’t wait another four years,” the woman said. “We need you. Your country needs you to run for president.”
Christie responded: “I hear exactly what you’re saying and I feel the passion with which you say it and it touches me.” But Christie also said that the decision to run “has to reside inside me.” Try to imagine Phil Gramm or Paul Tsongas in the lead role of this passion play! A few years hence it'll be just as plainly absurd.
UPDATE. Commenter Glen Tomkins makes an excellent point:Not that I believe that Christie wants in, or would not stumble for other reasons, but I don't follow your point that the late start putting him behind the power curve with big donors would be a show-stopper.
We now live in a post-Citizens United world. The fact that a lot of big donors and aggregators have already placed their bets no longer carries the weight it once did. A lone crazed billionaire could step in, and for chump change compared to other business expences, single-handedly finance a major effort by any late entrant simply because their crazy happened to vibrate on the same harmonics as his own, much less whose policies promised an excellent ROI. But that's one of the blessings of freedom, comrade: the market for buyable politicians is now wide-open and entrepreneurial, so rich bastards who once amused themselves by purchasing a basketball team and pitting it against his fellow rich bastards' basketball teams may now do the same with Presidental candidates. I just wish that crazy bastard Ted Turner would get into the act and pay George Clooney to run. What? He can still do cameos and cartoon voices.
10:11 PM by roy edroso
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