Salon Headline of the Day

Ah, where to even begin.

Maybe with the utter lack of an appreciation for the irony of calling something "hacky" literally just before writing the word "brogramming."

Or with the fact that the article somehow manages to crowbar George Zimmerman into a "review" of two TV shows.

Or with its completely predictable game of Salon Buzzword Mad Libs, which includes "white privilege," "racial and gender identity," "homophobia," "ethnic and age diversity" and a new one for the ages: "Brogramming fail."

Or with its ability to perform logical gymnastics to completely discount a factor which disproves its central thesis -- namely that Suits features Gina Torres, a strong black woman if ever there was one, in a position of incredible power -- simply because it disproves its central thesis.

Or with the inexplicable notion that watching Suits and Major Crimes is somehow a zero-sum game.

Or with the fact that, as usual, it's just a horribly written, pissy little polemic masquerading as a legitimate piece of journalism.

To Protect And Serve

You all know how much I love Falguni Sheth; she's really the perfect Salon contributor, seemingly engineered in a lab somewhere in the darkest recesses of Glenn Greenwald's Brazilian compound. Over the weekend she published a piece both at Salon and at some blog called "Translation Exercises" about how the "surveillance state" boogeyman that terrifies the shit out of professional liberals didn't work in preventing the Boston Marathon bombings. It was one of those rare occasions where even the basic premise of a column had me shaking my head because I couldn't quite fathom how the need to make hay out of a pet issue could so blatantly override basic logic and reason, that being: No, the various cameras and social networking tools that occasionally seem to indeed put us on the wrong side of the glass in Bentham's panopticon didn't prevent the bombing in Boston, but it damn sure helped lead to the very swift killing and capture of the guys who did it. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of the political point you need to score.

In addition to the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the scary surveillance state, there were of course the requisite complaints leveled at the press and the general populace, who, in the opinion of Sheth, allowed themselves to be herded like sheep by the commands of the police and the feds. See, in the world of pissy far-left liberals, the dreaded "state" isn't made up of actual people and is therefore always to be eyed with suspicion; when the police instruct you to do something during a crisis situation in the name of trying to keep your ass out of the line of fire, you should immediately stand your ground and shout, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me, man!" Of course nobody's saying that you should blindly follow every order you're given for as long as you've given them, but it's stupid as hell to assume that everything the police tell you is part of their secret cabal aimed at keeping you imprisoned in your home indefinitely so that the state can institute martial law. That's Alex Jones territory, proof that the political spectrum isn't a line but a circle and the far ends of the left and right most certainly meet.

Anyway, all of that brings me to the picture above. It's of a Boston police officer named John Bradley taking milk to a family during the citywide "shelter in place" request last Friday. I'm not saying that every cop is a doll, but by the same token, not every cop is some dangerous thug -- in fact, the vast majority of them really are fine men and women committed to public service. They don't issue requests or commands just for the hell of it, particularly not in crisis situations; they're actually interested in keeping you safe. There's no shame in not being a contrarian asshole and just listening to what the cops and feds have to say instead of proudly boasting about how you're not one of the "sheeple" and will do whatever you want because you don't trust the man. In other words, there's no shame in not being an asshole like Falguni Sheth -- far from it.

Quote of the Day

"It’s a blaring example of how casually racism and misogyny, even about young children, can be accepted and even celebrated by some percentage of the public — especially when it is couched in the form of humor. So many kinds of hostility — racial, sexual, homo- and trans-phobic humor — gain an easy acceptability, precisely because it plays into the ironic hipster self-aware racism of 'being so cool that we know it’s racist that it’s ok to participate in it. We’re above it.'"

-- Salon contributor Falguni A. Sheth, a professor of philosophy and political theory at Hampshire College and a self-described writer about politics, race, and feminism, on The Onion's Quvenzhané Wallis tweet

I won't lie, I was eagerly awaiting the entertainment sure to be had when Salon decided to step up and dispense the liberal intelligentsia's view from Olympus on this whole Onion thing -- and God knows, Falguni A. Sheth didn't disappoint.

Right off the bat in her piece, she talks about how she turned off the Oscars immediately after MacFarlane's "We Saw Your Boobs" song, echoing what she amusingly believes is the off-put sentiment expressed by the actresses cut to in the audience during the skit (and completely unaware of the fact that Naomi Watts and Charlize Theron's disgusted looks were, in fact, part of the skit).

She then goes on to hit all the touchstones of any good humorless screed from the hyper-sanctimonious contingent of the left in the wake of something like this: accusing The Onion of both racism and misogyny; bringing up a thirty-year-old dissertation on race relations and language from a law professor; mentioning Eve Ensler and her "One Billion Rocking" event and an address from Ravi Shankar's daughter, who recently admitted to being sexually abused, that the author insists should be viewed by the people at The Onion; declaring that what The Onion and MacFarlane do amounts to actual psychic harm against women. You get the picture.

The piece is so flawless in its depiction of pompous, politically correct indignation that it reads like satire itself. I'm wondering whether it was actually written by the staff of The Onion.

Again for the cheap seats: Quvenzhané Wallis is an incredibly talented young girl who was used in an admittedly tasteless and ill-advised joke to make a point about how our culture, often through social media, attacks celebrities. Wallis wasn't the one the joke was aimed at. It was aimed at us.

Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing

Today's column for the Daily Banter takes on a topic that I've written about many times and which was brought up again on this week's podcast.

Here's the opening shot:

"I’ve said this sort of thing before many times. Matt Taibbi’s said it. David Cross does an entire bit about it. But no matter how often it’s repeated, there are still those out there on the left who live in their own little epistemic bubble and don’t seem to get something: the 60s are over and continuing to protest like it’s 1967 will get you absolutely nowhere in the year 2013. Yes, it’ll grab you a little attention, but ultimately not the kind you want. It’s an ineffective model of activism in the new millennium and the predisposition to fall back on it needs to be shelved once and for all."

Read the Rest Here

Droning On and On and On

Today's column for the Daily Banter expands a little on what Cesca's been talking about for the past few days -- the reaction to the White House memo detailing its justification for using drones to take out American citizens overseas who've joined with Al Qaeda.

Bob was rational and analytical. I, as usual, am a blunt object.

Here's an excerpt:

"God bless Cesca for taking a reasonable and nuanced approach to the subject of the White House memo on the justification for drone strikes and the ongoing use of the drones themselves. God bless him because I’m glad he’s putting forth the effort and trying to carefully dissect an issue that’s much more complex than many seem to be willing to acknowledge. God bless him because he’s doing it so I don’t have to — which is good seeing as how I genuinely don’t give a crap about drones strikes or the legality or illegality of killing Americans who’ve taken up arms against the U.S."

Read the Rest Here

Necessary Roughness

Today's column for the Daily Banter is all about football and those who complain about how aggressive it is and would like to see it go away.

Here's the opening shot:

"Last week on our podcast, Bob Cesca threw out the question of whether it was a good idea for liberals to take on football and demand changes when it comes to the safety of players. He made a great point about how doping may be part of what’s creating monsters on the field so ferocious that their hits now cause permanent damage in the form of, among other things, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Certainly keeping the game as safe as possible should be a major concern football fans, players, coaches and managers, but my reaction to Bob’s overall question was that overtly screwing around with the institution of football in America was a political and cultural third rail no sane person would get near."

Read the Rest Here

All That's Left

Today's column at the Daily Banter deals with the petulant far-left and the fact that Salon.com continues to give it a pretty big voice.

Here's the opening shot:

"A couple of days ago it dawned on me how many columns and assorted quickie pieces of mine have been pegged off of Salon.com articles. For years I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Salon: On the one hand it’s been a home to people like Steve Kornacki, Joan Walsh, Alex Pareene and Mary Elizabeth Williams, all of whom I like quite a bit. (I don’t always agree with Mary Beth but she’s a personal friend and is sincerely one of the best people I know.) On the other, it slavishly played host to the insufferable Glenn Greenwald and inexplicably gave a forum to hack writers like Heather Havrilesky and Stephanie Zacharek while continuing to roll out the red carpet for the serially comical David Sirota. I suppose I shouldn’t be too harsh on the site, since there’s a lot of great material regularly published there and when it comes to progressive politics it runs the gamut between the center-left and far-left viewpoint, but maybe the fact that it’s willing to give any kind of outsize voice to the petulance of the far-left proves how intolerable I think the far-left is.

Case in point, not one but two pieces currently running over at Salon that act as perfect examples of why so many who consider themselves liberal True Believers don’t deserve to be taken the least bit seriously."

Read the Rest Here

Airhead Strike

I didn't think David Sirota could get any more melodramatically alarmist or comically self-important.

I was wrong.

Salon: Please Don't Kill Me, Obama: Why I Created a Petition for the President To Create a "Do Not Kill" List, and Why You Should Sign It/5.31.12

Get it? You should sign it because at any moment the President of the United States is going to order a Reaper drone to put two missiles into your Starbucks while you're ordering your non-fat chai or command Seal Team Six to take you out in your recliner in front of the TV. Hurry! You have to protect yourself!

Is there some way we can surreptitiously erase Sirota's name from his own "do not kill" list?

It's a start.

Eat Me

Is there anything about David Sirota that isn't perfectly engineered, seemingly in a lab somewhere in San Francisco, to adhere to the standard cliché of the American liberal? He pens an entire column not only pompously extolling the virtues of being a vegetarian but basically calling those who choose not to be "destructive" to the planet and our culture, then he writes a follow-up in which he bitches about how the meat-eaters who complained about the first column are the ones trying to impose their worldview on everyone.

I'm not a vegetarian, nor will I likely ever be; if you are, fantastic for you, because I absolutely couldn't care less what you will or won't eat. What you choose to put in your body is just that: your personal choice. If you don't like meat, don't eat it -- but the last time I checked, it wasn't the world's carnivores who occasionally feel as if their personal choice is also an assumption of the moral high ground and one that gives them the right, as Sirota did, to lecture those who choose differently. In other words, no, meat-eaters aren't generally the ones writing long-winded, self-righteously high-minded columns decreeing that everyone else is a hyper-violent barbarian who's helping to destroy the Earth.

I swear, sometimes I think Sirota -- who remember wrote an entire book essentially blaming Ghostbusters and Die Hard for our current political climate -- is just pulling everyone's chain. That he's doing some kind of performance art.

Because if not, then Oliver Willis may be right when he refers to him as "serially stupid."

"Psycho Talk"

For all I know, Ed Schultz may be the nicest guy on earth -- but he's a blithering buffoon on the air.

And the last thing he wants to do is pick a fight with Jon Stewart. That's relevancy suicide, and from what I've seen and heard Schultz is laughably outmatched in a battle of wits anyway.

The Huffington Post: Ed Schultz-Jon Stewart Feud Heats Up/2.4.11

Sign of the Times

Perfect example of the bullshit false-equivalence the media engages in when talking about left vs. right issues these days -- what they do in an effort to not be pegged with a liberal bias and to play the part of the supposedly objective observer at the expense of, oh I don't know, reality:

Just a few minutes ago, CNN's Jim Acosta did a report on this weekend's big One Nation liberal protest in DC; he managed to make it about a minute-and-a-half into his report before dutifully pointing out that the rally was essentially the flip side of the tea party coin -- that the event had quite a bit in common with the Glenn Beck inspired tea bagger rallies we've seen pop up ad nauseam over the last several months.

His proof of this? Acosta said there were some of those "controversial signs we've seen so much of this election season." In fact, he says he saw one that read, "Axis of Ignorance: Republicans, Tea Party and Fox News."

Yeah. Compare that with these.

Well done, guys.

Killing an Arab-American

What I'm about to say won't exactly firm up my street cred with the liberal side of the blogosphere, but it's not like I've let myself dwell on that kind of thing in the past.

There's a whole lot of righteous indignation being voiced at the moment -- just about all of it coming from the left -- over a standing capture or kill order the military has issued against American-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi. For those who haven't been following along, al-Aulaqi has risen quickly through the ranks of al-Qaeda to become one of its strongest voices in the Arabian peninsula and around the world, the latter due to his willingness to embrace the internet as a promotional and recruiting tool. He's been linked to several terrorist plots inside the United States, including the Fort Hood shootings (he had been in direct contact with gunman Nidal Hasan) and the failed "underwear bombing" of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 into Detroit last Christmas (al-Aulaqi admits to training the bomber). All in all, an impressive set of anti-Western credentials for a guy who was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

For months now, U.S. troops have been told that they're to capture or kill al-Aulaqi on sight -- but only over the past few days has the angry reaction to this standing order really ramped up. That's because al-Aulaqi's father recently enlisted the help of the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights and filed a lawsuit demanding to see the evidence the government has against his son -- the reason it would ostensibly want to see him dead. The Department of Justice's response to this was admittedly sure to raise a few eyebrows: over the weekend, it invoked the "state secrets" privilege, arguing that the courts should disregard the lawsuit because the U.S. government has every right during a time of war to engage in operations against terrorists without publicly disclosing the details of those operations.

There are a two diametrically opposed ways of looking at what the government is essentially doing. One is that the U.S. is exercising its authority to hunt down individuals who attempt to kill American citizens and will simply refuse to release information that might damage those missions before they're completed; the other is that the White House has taken out a hit on an American citizen and is invoking presidential privilege to keep anyone from knowing exactly why.

Should I even bother telling you which one of these Salon's Glenn Greenwald has latched onto with both hands?

A couple of days ago, Greenwald wrote a piece on this subject that was painfully histrionic in its Obama-bashing, even by the writer's impressive standards. It began as follows: "At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record."

That one line pretty much summed up not only what the rest of the piece was going to read like but, obviously, the antagonistic perspective Greenwald approaches the White House from in general these days -- and come to think of it, has for months now, ever since he realized that Obama wasn't going to deliver the Great Progressive Utopia he'd dreamed about, all in a big pretty bow, directly to his doorstep. For the record, I like and respect Greenwald overall and believe that he regularly makes some excellent points, but the petulant tantrums he throws over Obama's unwillingness to fall lockstep in line with the liberal fantasy presidency he and so many on the left fooled themselves into believing was coming are just exhausting by now. One more time for the cheap seats: Obama was a Democratic centrist from day one. He never promised to be anything else. He's been incredibly progressive on some issues; he's been relatively conservative, even very conservative, on others. What he's not is Kim Jong Il or Fidel Castro, which means that any statement about his supposed "abysmal civil liberties record" makes the person saying it look like nothing more than a drama queen.

I'm the first to acknowledge that there's a slippery slope when you're talking about the invocation of executive powers, particularly ones that don't allow themselves to be exposed to the light of day or the inside of a courtroom. But I do believe -- and for the record I did believe, even when George W. Bush was in office -- that the military has to have the ability to undertake secret missions for the good of the country, even controversial ones, without constantly having to reveal the details of those operations. There's no doubt that we've grown distrustful of our government lately, and with good reason. However, I find it hard, after all the independent reporting I've seen over the past several months, to peg Anwar al-Aulaqi as anything other than a very serious threat to our national security -- regardless of whether he's an American, an American living abroad, an American who's renounced his country and its people, whatever. Maybe when strict logic is applied -- and I try to do that as best I can -- there's no excuse for hunting down a U.S. citizen without due process, but no matter how hard I try I simply can't work up that much sympathy and outrage for al-Aulaqi.

Plus there's something else to consider: A lot of polemical hay has been made over the notion of a government sanctioned "hit squad" tracking down al-Aulaqi -- or anyone else really -- and engaging in a form of extremely prejudicial military action that seems utterly nefarious and underhanded at face value. It's true that assassination has a disturbing ring to it no matter which way you couch it, but maybe this is one of those times that our new transparent media panopticon has rendered the unpleasant realities of war almost intolerable. People die during war. In all sorts of horrible ways. They're blown to pieces along with those around them, some of whom just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; they're shot through the head in the dead of night; they go down fighting or drop before they even know what's hit them. This is why sending young men and women into battle is never under any circumstances a decision that should be taken lightly or be the product of caprice. The reality has always been brutal and hideous; the only difference is that now it's much easier to see this fact for ourselves.

But if you believe that war is occasionally necessary -- and I'm not saying that our fight in Afghanistan is, only making a generalization -- then what's a more humane way to kill an enemy? Is it to drop a bomb on him and likely slaughter innocents in the process -- or is it to take out him and him alone? Once again, the latter, strangely, sounds more corrupt -- but the truth is that, simply as a matter of numbers, it's not. Far from it.

I don't know all the details regarding the Anwar al-Aulaqi case. But I also don't automatically believe that I'm entitled to know. And I'm sorry, but I also won't lose a whole lot of sleep if I wake up one morning to learn he's not with us anymore.

Their Own Worst Enemy

So Evan Bayh is retiring from the Senate for thoroughly horseshit reasons -- the kind of thing that drew laughter and ridicule when Sarah Palin made the same basic argument for her own resignation from the Alaska governor's seat.

This isn't really all that interesting; the Democrats have been dropping like flies lately. What's worth noting, though, is the predictably self-defeating response of many on the left to the news that an admittedly centrist Democrat is quitting Congress. Bottom line: They're jumping for joy -- tweeting unmitigated crap like "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Evan!" If there's a better example of how willing the left is to shoot itself squarely in its overly pious foot, I haven't seen it. Bayh may have been a gutless little turd and occasionally an obstructionist of the highest order, but at least he was a Democrat, which means that he was ostensibly on the same side as those who are now gleefully pissing on his grave. Who does the left think is going to replace Bayh in Indiana? A more liberal Democrat? Yeah, right. At best it'll be another centrist Dem -- at worst and much more likely it'll be a Republican, someone who won't even caucus with the Democrats or pay lip service to the concerns of progressives.

This all-or-nothing, Utopia-or-bust stance that some on the left continue to adhere to will be the death of the progressive agenda. Hell, it probably already is.

Realted:

DXM: With Friends Like These.../8.21.09

We Report, You've Already Decided

I'm not sure there's been a story in recent memory that's better illustrated the unnavigable divide between the perspectives of the left and right than the whole James O'Keefe controversy -- especially when it comes to each side's opinion of the media. As far as the right is concerned, O'Keefe is a modern day folk hero, the conservative press's answer to Michael Moore and Bob Woodward and a guy whose efforts to rage against the liberal machine by way of supposedly capital-J journalism is deserving of a Pulitzer. To the left, meanwhile, O'Keefe is a joke -- a rich, dumb kid whose irrational hatred of progressives has tainted and compromised every "investigation" he's ever undertaken, culminating, of course, with his arrest following what seems to be a failed attempt to tamper with the phones at a Democratic senator's office.

The battle lines over O'Keefe are just about set in stone. He's essentially the Elian Gonzalez of the perpetually stalemated left-vs-right media war: Anybody who takes an interest in his case isn't likely to be indifferent to how the whole thing turns out.

Maybe that's why a couple of new reports about James O'Keefe, while mildly eyebrow-raising at face value, don't really amount to much in the great scheme of things -- simply because they're just not going to change anyone's already made-up mind. Today both Salon and the Washington Independent are reporting that O'Keefe attended and played a hands-on role in a conference in 2006 that hosted leading white nationalists -- basically putting O'Keefe in the direct company of racists and anti-Semites and implying that he may be one himself (or that he at least had issues with those who weren't white, Christian, Americans during his time as a campus Republican activist).

It's certainly true that more than a few of O'Keefe's stunts have seemed to specifically target minorities, but does that make him a racist or simply your average conservative -- given that issues like affirmative action and illegal immigration have traditionally been right-wing boogeymen -- and is there even a distinction to be drawn? There's just no way around the fact that a guy who refers to himself as "James O'Keefe III" on his Twitter profile and dresses in a faux-ghetto get-up -- what Real Time with Bill Maher's Chris Kelly humorously refers to as "Prescott, the Preppie Pimp" -- to dupe an urban outreach group is going to face some serious questions about his motives and mindset.

The problem, though, is that those who've already eagerly jumped to the defense of O'Keefe aren't going to be swayed from their beliefs; it would take the revelation that their hero wandered the streets of Lower Manhattan, Bateman-like, scooping homeless peoples' eyes out with a pen knife for them to possibly rethink their devotion -- and even then, the story would have to be reported by Andrew Breitbart himself for the right to even believe it was true. And that's the real point, and the real shame: The distrust between the two media factions is so toxic that each side simply discounts any negative press against it by the other as made-up mudslinging. The Fox and Breitbart people aren't going to give a good crap that Salon and the Washington Independent have uncovered what could be a history of racist behavior or sympathy on the part of James O'Keefe -- the same way the left was hardly willing to consider that O'Keefe may have been on to something when he targeted ACORN.

My opinion? Since he first entered the spotlight with a hell of a lot of fanfare, I've always pegged James O'Keefe as an arrogant and obnoxious little tool -- a modern young-conservative cliché in just about every way and damn sure not the brilliant investigative journalist he claims to be (for a whole host of very objective reasons). Much of this is why the notion that he has issues with minorities -- and that they seep liberally (no pun intended) into his advocacy -- doesn't faze me in the least because I can't say that I didn't expect it. But I'm willing to concede that the very fact that I feel this way is likely part of the problem.

I do my best to keep an open mind these days, but if they have their way, the echo chambers and spin merchants on both sides of any politically charged story will be happy to reach a conclusion for me -- do the heavy lifting so I don't have to. And the noise they're pumping out is so loud that you, literally, can't hear yourself think anymore -- which is probably the idea.

So James O'Keefe may have broken bread with racists and anti-Semites. The people who hate him won't be shocked and the people who worship him won't believe it or won't care. And if no one's really listening, it makes you wonder if it's even worth reporting at all.

X-Man

Yesterday I took a shot at those on the right who inexplicably feel that they have the luxury of worrying about whether there's a liberal subtext to James Cameron's Avatar. My point was that with everything else that's going on right now, you'd think that anyone serious about fixing the country would ignore inconsequential pretend controversies, at least for the time being. Well, not to be outdone -- and proving that there are overly touchy dingbats on both sides of the political fence -- say hello to what's shaping up to be the politically correct left's own Avatarian cause célèbre du jour: David Letterman's crack about President Obama's latest appointee to the Commerce Department, Amanda Simpson -- who happens to be the first transgender ever named to a federal post by the President of the United States.

Two nights ago on The Late Show, Letterman mentioned the appointment of Simpson during his monologue, including the fact that she's transgender; upon hearing this, someone behind the scenes on the show immediately jumped up from his seat in a panic, shouted, "Wait, Amanda used to be a dude?! Oh my god!" and ran offstage in horrified disgust, implying of course that he'd been intimate with "her" at some point. It was a totally juvenile gag, but one that was actually pretty funny -- not so much because it was taking a shot at Simpson but because the guy who supposedly had hooked up with her was 67-year-old Alan Kalter, The Late Show's amusingly staid announcer.

Needless to say, as soon as the bit was over you could've practically counted down the seconds before the mushroom cloud of thoroughly unnecessary liberal indignation appeared on the horizon. Yesterday the muscularly named Human Rights Campaign -- which concentrates solely on the human rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders -- sent an official letter to CBS demanding (wait for it) that Letterman issue an obligatory on-air apology. The group's somewhat dubious claim is that it's a very short hop from using transgender people as a punchline to, you know, actually punching them. Admittedly, the notion of "trans panic" has been used, unsuccessfully, as a defense in a number of cases of crimes against transgenders, but to claim that a gag about a sexagenarian (no pun intended) who fooled around with someone who used to be called "Mitch" before he became "Amanda" is somehow beyond the pale for a comedian -- that's monumentally silly.

There's been quite a bit of back-and-forth on this subject on Twitter this morning, with those who support the outcry against Letterman claiming that poking fun at a transgender -- which I don't think the Late Show bit was doing as much as it was poking fun at the most immature response to a transgender -- is the same as making a racial or ethnic joke.

Except that it isn't.

I'll catch a certain amount of hell for this, but the difference is that you can't choose your race, ethnicity or even your sexual orientation -- as in, which sex happens to appeal to you -- but transgenderism, be it hormonally enhanced cross-dressing or surgical sexual reassignment, is a choice. I understand that for many, they feel as if it's a choice that they really have no choice but to make, however there's still a conscious and informed decision at play in whether someone lives outwardly as the opposite sex. It's wrong to ridicule a person for a state of being that he or she has no control over -- and I think, by the way, that genuine ridicule and light-hearted kidding around are two entirely different things -- but if you're aware of the potential real-world consequences of a decision and do it anyway, you forfeit your right to complain too loudly. Now before anyone screams bloody murder, yes, of course in a perfect society no one would ever make fun of those who choose transgenderism, and I'm all for a more tolerant culture -- which doesn't mean that I think that trying to force people to be tolerant is a good idea. The problem, though, is that we don't live in a perfect society. I've used this example here before but I have tattoos -- 14 of them; I don't have the nerve to assume a position of righteous indignation when someone looks at me and forms an immediate and even wrong-headed opinion of me based on my decision to cover my arms in ink -- even if I see the tattoos as a form of expression that I felt compelled to commit to. People make decisions about who we are based on the image we present to the world. There's just no way around that.

I'm not sure that anyone has the right to single out dressing like the opposite sex -- or undergoing surgery to become the opposite sex -- and declare it off-limits for everyone else to notice and potentially comment on in a way they see fit or, possibly, find entertaining.

Moreover, the Letterman thing was a joke. Just a freaking joke.

But as we all know by now, if there's anyone who cannot take a joke -- and who consistently appoint themselves the gatekeepers of potentially offensive material for the rest of us -- it's the perpetually aggrieved left.

Related:

Media Matters: WorldNetDaily's Bigoted Attack on Amanda Simpson/1.6.10 (As much as I hate to defend Fox News and WorldNetDaily, once again the outrage expressed in this piece is a little over-the-top.)

DXM: Why So Serious?/4.25.09

Partisan Crashers

If you've read this site long enough, you probably know that it hasn't always been this way.

I used to put a very high value on my ability to evaluate each issue on its own merits. Although I often tend to be center-left in my politics -- rarely if ever going the extreme liberal route -- I spent many years frequently siding with the right on a whole host of topics. I'm all for being strong on defense; I could care less about the political correctness that was a ridiculous liberal cause celebre for quite some time; I don't believe capitalism to be inherently evil; I want to see the poor and helpless in this country treated with dignity and everyone afforded good health care, but I think it requires a more efficient and vigilant government -- not a big one willing to just throw money around; I think that paying extra attention to certain ethnicities at airports is a natural concession to reality in this day and age and amounts to basic police work; I hate hippies; I can occasionally be as jingoistic as your average Toby Keith fan and freely admit that right after 9/11, I too had the knee-jerk reaction that wanted to see us annihilate a random city in the Middle East, just as an object lesson; I pretty much laughed out loud when those Navy snipers took out the Somali pirates who held an American captain hostage back in April.

Yes, sometimes I'm the first one to get all "America, fuck yeah."

For months and months on this site, I skewered Democrats in much the same way I skewered Republicans, believing that working backward in any argument to make the "facts" fit a predetermined point-of-view -- no matter that point-of-view -- was the most intellectually dishonest thing imaginable. I still think that I'm capable of sticking to that ideal, because if I don't, then my already somewhat inconsequential opinions are rendered utterly worthless since they're the product of nothing more than partisan prejudices.

But lately it's no secret that I have actually been more outraged by the actions of the right as a whole than those of the left. And I think the reason for that can be summed up in one simple question that may seem trite but which kind of needs to be asked: When did the primary voices of the American right become so shockingly dumb -- so shamelessly willing to jettison every last vestige of rational thought? True, during the Bush years stupid seemed to reign -- but the reality was always that those at the top were very smart people using very gullible people as stage props to further their agenda. I also get that this still happens regularly -- on both ends of the political spectrum.

But something has changed recently; maybe it started with the introduction of Sarah Palin to an already toxic mixture of paranoia and ignorance coming to a boil within certain segments of the population. Either way, over the last year it seems as if all logic and reason within the Republican party and its champions on talk radio and Fox News has gone completely out the window. It's like these people have lost their fucking minds. I'm not simply talking about their tendency to embrace and perpetuate half-baked conspiracy theories of the most mind-bogglingly outlandish variety; I mean their lack of shame at making arguments that not only don't hold up within the context of an extended timeline -- the kind of bewildering shit that can easily be proven hypocritical by comparing it to their comments of just one year ago -- but make no sense at face value.

Last night on Fox News, Sean "I Can Put You Into a Car Regardless of Your Credit History" Hannity made a comment and an implication so inflammatory and absurd that it's shocking his brain didn't rip the top of his head open to get some air. He pondered, "What does (it) say about Barack Obama and our government," that apparently the U.S. military knew that Major Nidal Nasan had contacted al Qaeda and was a growing threat yet did nothing to stop him? In other words, Hannity tried to link the fact that the military may have dropped the ball in devastating fashion on the Fort Hood shooting to the fact that Barack Obama is in the White House.

Do I need to remind you -- since reminding an obviously thick-headed ideologue like Hannity wouldn't do a damn bit of good -- that in the months leading up to 9/11, there were intelligence failures left and right within the CIA, the FBI and the Bush administration, including one in which Bush himself seemed to flat-out ignore the warnings of an intelligence report that all but spelled out the coming attack? I'm not saying that governmental agencies shouldn't be held responsible for their failures when a national tragedy happens that could have been prevented by them; I'm saying that you can't keep a straight face and castigate one president of the United States for an avoidable catastrophe that happened on his watch after singing the praises of another who was much closer to the fuck-ups that led to the avoidable catastrophe that happened on his. Well, you can't keep a straight face unless you're either a modern right-wing pundit or the lead character from Memento.

This is just another example of the kind of bald-faced, completely-detached-from-reality hypocrisy that the people who've hijacked the Republican party have trafficked in now for months into years -- the same people who spent almost eight years ranting and raving about how criticizing the president during a time of war amounted to treason, but who now conveniently add the caveat "Unless that President is Barack Obama -- That's Alright."

Crackpot conspiracy theories, circular reasoning, selective memory, insane arguments that go nowhere, the complete abandonment of logic and reason, the canonization of the craziest and most farcical among its lunatic fringe -- this is why it's become impossible to defend the GOP these days. It's gotten so bad that even taking an occasional stand for the ideals of conservatism, some of which I happen to agree with, makes me feel like I need a shower -- because those who are supposed to be advancing these ideals have instead allowed their party to meltdown from the inside out.

It's almost impossible to imagine that conservatism was once the domain of unapologetic intellectuals like William F. Buckley.

Now look at it -- it's the soapbox from which Michele Bachmann shouts gibberish.

Who with a brain wants to in any way be associated with that?

Left Alive

As anyone who reads this site regularly knows, I wouldn't by any means classify myself as a full-fledged liberal. (Just look back to last week: In a period of five days I went from being called a "heartless neo-con Republican" by some to a "typical whiny Democrat" by others.) That said, I think that anybody who's interested in a certain amount of equity in politics would agree that for far too long "liberal" has been a dirty word. For most of my lifetime, I've rarely heard the word used as a positive descriptor; in fact, quite the opposite -- it's almost always had a negative connotation attached to it. This is incredibly unfair, if only because the term "conservative" seems to have never been tagged with such an obvious Mark of Cain in the mainstream discourse or the public consciousness.

Basically, the word was hijacked by the right a long time ago and for years even liberals themselves were afraid to identify themselves as such.

Well, this morning quite a few avowed liberals are saying that whatever you thought of Obama's lofty rhetoric toward the end of his speech last night, it amounted to a vigorous defense of liberalism. If you'll forgive the inappropriately low-brow reference: In the words of Randal in Clerks 2, Obama's "taking it back."

Think what you want -- balance in politics is good for the country.

Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!: The Return of the Liberal/9.10.09

The Huffington Post: Rachel Maddow: Obama Offers Formal Defense of Liberalism/9.9.09

Their Own Worst Enemy

One of the reasons I link to Bob Cesca quite a bit is that he and I seem to think alike on a whole host of topics. He's a little further to the left overall than I am, I'd say (although even that's up for debate), but he knows that being too far in either direction on every single issue renders your opinion null and void because it proves that you're probably working backward in your reasoning. I get the feeling that this is one of the points he's trying to make in his criticism of Salon's Glenn Greenwald and the tendency of some on the left to throw the baby out with the bathwater in their attacks on the current Democratic power structure.

Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!: Begging Self-Destruction/8.30.09

Related:

DXM: With Friends Like These.../8.21.09

Everybody Hates Chez

Even though I long ago stopped mentioning on this site when something I've written appears in the Huffington Post, it doesn't mean I've stopped writing for them. The truth is that the decent political or media-oriented material you read here is often cross-posted at HuffPo, thereby giving me as much bang (or at least exposure) for my buck as I can get.

I typically don't think it's worth even getting into here when this double-posting thing happens, but Friday's piece is a different story altogether. My stuff occasionally generates some good back-and-forth commentary among the Huffingtonites; occasionally not. But it's been a very long time since I've published something there that's drawn the kind of unbridled blood-lust directed toward me that Friday's column on, ironically, the left's inability to stay on message has. At last check, there were more than 360 comments published in response to my little diatribe -- from some who agree with me vociferously and many, many more who think I'm the world's biggest asshole for not understanding the "critical thinking of progressives" and for being willing to supposedly "compromise" liberal values.

It's right about now that I should remind everyone that I'm not a liberal. I'm not a conservative either. I'm an independent. My argument was simply that while it's important for Obama to be held accountable, it's self-sabotaging for those who supported him so strongly for so long to now turn on him publicly and entirely just seven months into his presidency. The left's inability to settle the fighting among its many disparate factions is what allowed the on-point-to-a-fault GOP machine to crush them all underfoot for the better part of the last decade. I certainly wouldn't want to see a right-leaning, constantly-selling-out doppelganger of the Barack Obama I voted for spend four years in office, but I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for more than ten minutes. Sorry, folks, but the honeymoon's not over yet for me and Obama -- especially not when there are so many within both parties right now who seem to want to see him fail at all costs.

And those on the left who are giddily scooping the water back into the boat that Obama is trying to scoop out appear to have forgotten the massive victory that simply getting him elected was.

Add to that, this: In Friday's column, I never said anything about compromise. I'm a die hard proponent of serious health care reform (what the Paul Krugman piece I cited in my own piece was pegged off of) and have pushed for the public option for months. I don't want to see Obama wheeling and dealing with Big Pharma or bending to the will of the Blue Dogs, Tom "What the Hell Am I Still Doing in Politics" Daschle, or anyone else in the pocket of the health insurance mafia. But Obama supporters strike me as smart people; there has to be a way to both ensure that our guy doesn't leave us disappointed while continuing to sing his praises in the face of his many enemies -- our enemies. Anything else is the proverbial cutting off of our nose to spite our face.

Anyway, feel free to read some of the comments at Huffington. Decide for yourself who among the commenters gets it and who doesn't -- who makes good points and who's setting themselves up for another Republican resurgence in a couple of years.

The Huffington Post: With Friends Like These.../8.21.09

With Friends Like These...

"So progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it. And now he needs to win it back."

-- Paul Krugman in an editorial in today's New York Times

I'm not one of those people who listens to right-wing radio, even occasionally, looking for something to piss him off. If I wanted to make myself angry for no good reason, I'd call my estranged wife -- or maybe put on a Phish record.

That said, I was flipping through Sirius XM radio a couple of days ago when I stumbled across the America Right or "Patriot Radio" channel. The show that happened to be on at the time was something called The Wilkow Majority (I'll give you a minute to shake your head at the right's ongoing and obligatory need to cast itself in the most muscular terms possible) hosted by a guy named Andrew Wilkow. What separates Wilkow from the rest of the crazy-come-latlies out there in conservative radioland is his belief that he's, well, a punk.

I'm not kidding.

Both Wilkow and his producer, an at one time faux-hawk-sporting kid named Nick Rizzuto, have gotten it through their heads that they're the personification of the right's new school -- and that the new school they represent also happens to be the logical next step in the evolution of punk. They've even started a website called "Conservative Punk." If this sounds fucking laughable, believe me -- it is. Do yourself a favor and don't think too hard about trying to fit the square peg of punk rock culture into the round hole of unabashed capitalism and conservatism; I tried for awhile and it only made my head hurt. Jello Biafra and Henry Rollins are turning over in their graves at this ridiculous conceit and they're not even dead yet. You almost have to give credit to the right's lack of shame when it comes to attempting to co-opt some of the better trends of the left while forcibly trading off its own misdeeds, clumsily trying to shove them under the banner of its enemy and hoping that no one notices how full of shit the whole notion is (Hitler was a leftist, racism is a liberal ideal, etc.).

Needless to say, neither Andrew Wilkow nor his remora, Nick Rizzuto, is a punk. To twist a somewhat legendary phrase: Boys, I grew up with punks. I was good friends with punks. I was a punk (and according to some, still am). You're no fucking punks.

The reality is that, after taking a quick glance at his website, Wilkow looks like he could be just about any other right-wing talking head. This is especially amusing when you consider the fact that he is actually quite a bit younger than the usual suspects and yet still looks like your basic perpetually middle-aged white guy who hasn't been blown since college. I guess that's what being Sean Hannity's hand-picked protege does to you. (Now's a good time to once again remind you that a guy who counts his introduction to Hannity among the greatest moments in his life also considers himself an up-the-establishment standard bearer of punk rock's new blood. You've gotta be fucking kidding me.)

All very easy shots at Wilkow and his show aside, though, I have to admit that while listening to him for a few minutes the other day, he made a surprisingly good point -- one that I sort of made here earlier in the week. I guess we're both on the same "Punk Rock Manifesto Weekly" mailing list.

The Wilkow rant in question had to do with the tendency of liberals to seemingly revel in martyrdom and self-sabotage -- their propensity to almost embrace their roles as losers and to be able to snatch defeat from the jaws of even the most assured victory. The crux of his argument was this: The Democrats have near-complete control of the government right now -- from the White House to the Hill. Legislation-wise, they can accomplish practically anything they set out to, and yet they're somehow content to bitch, moan and blame Republicans for standing in the way of progress when in reality no one's completely blocking their path. Worse than all of that, and this is something Wilkow didn't broach but I will: Liberals can't help fighting amongst themselves. It's as if it's ingrained in their DNA to never completely agree on anything. And we've all seen how well that strategy works when it comes to pushing through an agenda or, you know, winning elections.

A couple of days ago I published a piece decrying the Democrats for not being willing to take off the gloves and get their hands a little dirty when it comes to battling the Republican noise machine trying to thwart them at every turn. My point was that there won't be much solace in being able to say, "Well, at least we stuck to the ideals that make us better than the GOP automatons," four years from now if nothing got done and a Republican president is back in office. I'm not saying that there can't and won't be disagreement and dissent; I'm saying that in order to get the job done and give Barack Obama the clout he needs to move his agenda forward by leaps and bounds, there has to be, to a large extent, a united front to face the consistently united front staring you down from the other side of the aisle. To paraphrase The Godfather, as far as outsiders are concerned, you never take sides against the family.

Sure this is slightly robotic and seems to stand against everything left-wing America stands for, but guess what? It fucking wins.

Sometimes you've gotta look at the big picture -- and if there's anyone who can't seem to do that because they're too busy picking every little thing apart just to prove how intellectual, analytical and multi-faceted they are, it's liberals.


Case in point: today's New York Times editorial by Paul Krugman.

First of all, let me state unequivocally that Krugman's a genius; he's one of the smartest people around, and his views are always worth listening to. Let me also make it clear that I'm not suggesting that any side of the political spectrum let its leaders get away with anything and everything. The good of the nation should, for all intents and purposes, trump the good of the party. My argument is that the battle lines are so clearly drawn these days, the alternative for either party is so far removed from its own desired reality for the country, that each side has to be willing to accept that a big picture victory, even a partial one, is infinitely better than a complete loss. The Republicans realize this; the Democrats seem not to. Krugman's editorial, which takes President Obama to task for supposedly betraying the progressive base that helped put him in office, is a perfect example of the self-defeating splinter cell tendency of left-wing politics. Yes, Barack Obama seems to have slipped comfortably into a more middle-of-the-road stance than much of the left-leaning electorate would've liked, but make no mistake: a New York Times editorial from one of the leading liberal voices in America declaring that Obama has lost the support of progressives and now has to earn it back accomplishes nothing aside from doing the job of Republican strategists for them.

An editorial like Krugman's is every conservative's wet dream -- because those on the right know that any well-publicized dissension within the Democratic ranks makes Obama look weak and proves their point to those on the fence: that even when the Democrats have what they need to run the government their way, they can't make it happen. They can't seal the deal, despite having everything on their side.

As Wilkow said, they're born losers.

Right about now, the Democrats need to take a hint from a recent song by Green Day: Know Your Enemy. At the very least, know who he is.

Of course, Green Day actually have something in common with Andrew Wilkow: They're not real punks either.