FMJRA 2.0: A Day Late And A Dollar Short

The occasionally great @skippystalin says something important, not cloaked in his dreary libertarianism skippy-posts.blogspot.ca/2012/12/a-new-… READ IT

— Ms. Navillus (@SalaciousSully) December 2, 2012

I read the post, based upon this photo:

Emphasis mine:

I’m not going to discount entirely the possibility that I’m just a hyper-conservative whackjob and genetically wrong about everything, but it seems to me that the socialization process regarding sexual assault should start a lot earlier than when you’re eligible for our first federal student loan. Again, I could be way off about this. I just don’t think I am.
Look, I get that statements like this make everybody feel good, but I reckon that it’s well past time that we recognize that things that make you feel good are often pretty stupid. Take cocaine as just one example. It makes you feel awesome, but it’s a really poorly considered lifestyle choice unless, of course, you’re me. Always remember that these are professional tricks, performed by a professional and not intended for home use.
The basic premise of this message is silly for practical reasons, as well. For those of you who spent too much time in school, I think it’s necessary to point out that feminism is a philosophy. It might well be that it is among the finest philosophies ever devised, but that misses an essential point. So far as I’m aware, no philosophy is going to overwhelm a violent oaf with a hard cock that outweighs you by as much as 80 pounds. I have yet to see that in a mixed martial arts class. There comes a point when things like reason are pretty much useless.

“Socialization process”. That’s Progress for ya! The notions of “parenting” and “growing up” are macerated, puréed, atomized, and turned into a “socialization process”. Up that noise.

How about we scuttle this negative “Don’t Rape” thought, and, instead of a specific negative rule, offer a positive guideline: “Be A Man.” BAM! We’ve been going through Stu Weber’s Tender Warrior at my Friday morning Breakfast Club (as men do), and it’s about the umpteen thousandth variation on the theme of Traditional Manhood.

Cultural restoration comes when we reject pretty much everything that has occurred since the Summer of Love (i.e. my whole lifespan) and realize that the classics are classic because, unlike the Postmodern, anti-Enlightenment piffle currently polluting our Precious Bodily Fluids, the classics are lasting.

Hold a door for a lady. Call her ‘lady’. Under-react when she tells you treating her chivalrously is a veiled form of sexism. It’s all good. Her personality is her reward.

Truly, “Don’t Rape” is a waste of time. It invites the misuse of God-given creativity to rationalize sinful behavior: “She asked for it.” Yes, you can “rational lies” it every way under the sun; if she wasn’t your wife, you had no business going there. Even where consensual (Petraeus).

BAM! Being a man ties the man to the principle of manhood. You can’t outrun that. The more you try to rationalize, the more you realize that you’re (a) wrong, and (b) need to man up.

Being a man isn’t always easy, granted. But neither is it complicated.

Update: great follow-up at Andrew J. Patrick’s blog.

Update II: another apropos piece by the fabulous Gabriella.

Category: Uncategorized

Is Norquist Thinking Wishfully?

Posted on | December 2, 2012 | 34 Comments

by Smitty

The whole clip is interesting, but the interviewer brings up the Tea Parties ~9:55. Grover’s premise is that Obama’s economic policies are going to have such a negative effect as to trigger a small-business backlash against Obama, presumably because after BHO has, say, doubled unemployment, there will be more loose people to demonstrate:

Via Tea Party News Network.

Donald Douglas cautions: “Don’t Promote Grover Norquist as Voice of Resurgent Tea Party Movement“, and links a Front Page Mag article that highlights GN’s various ‘odd’ connections.

They are indeed worrisome, but, if Norquist is on the board of the NRA and the ACU, should we blow off the NRA? Should we skip CPAC? The guilt by association is a slippery slope, for all have sinned, and fall shortly into the glory hole of Cthulhu.

My ambivalence on Norquist’s famous Tax Pledge is similar: you have to start somewhere, but self-congratulation for plugging one hull breach is silly if we’re still taking on water in five other locations. I’d like to know GN’s plan for moving from controlling taxation to unwinding the rest of the Progressive Project and restoring federalism and the notion of separation of powers.

Ground truth: there is a tremendous leadership vacuum on the right. While we can agree on a laundry list of things to do, there really is not yet any standard bearer with enough charisma, vision, and name recognition to unite the right. Thus, if Grover chooses either to promote or try to become that frontman, I’m not going to bother heckling until there is something more interesting available. Leadership is where you find it, and all purity test victories have a Pyrrhic flavor to them.

Category: Tea Party

ALABAMA 32, GEORGIA 28

Posted on | December 1, 2012 | 10 Comments

An exclusive report from our Alabama bureau:

By Bert The Samoan Lawyer
SPECIAL TO THE OTHER MCCAIN
TUSCALOOSA
In a stunning display of the ability to run out the clock, in a game punctuated by clock mismanagement on both sides, an Alabama team that displayed exactly the same weaknesses that it underlined in Sharpie, highlighted, and pointed to with those little 19th-century “pointing finger” logos in both the LSU and Texas A&M games, managed to hold on for a win that the Georgia Bulldogs would surely have procured had they simply stopped the clock with a spiked ball after their last first-down.
Alabama fans everywhere are praying that Notre Dame’s game-film viewing machines will break down, and that all its coaches were struck blind during Alabama’s last four games but, as Billy Joe Bob Stumpwater observed, “it’s ok if the Irish watched the Auburn game, just not the other three.”
The overwhelming fan sentiment, however, is “who cares; we’re going to the BCS and Georgia isn’t. And neither is Texas A&M,” as relayed by some blond girl in a houndstooth hat who followed up with, “I’m so drunk . . .”

Plans to provide exclusive blog coverage of the BCS Championship Game Jan. 7 in Miami are contingent on readers hitting the tip jar in a very serious way. Media credentials deadline is Dec. 14.

Category: Alabama, Sports

The Sexual Avant-Garde

Posted on | December 1, 2012 | 10 Comments

From the Wall Street Journal:

Writing to James Jones in 1965, [novelist William Styron] describes a weekend visit to the Vineyard by Jackie Kennedy: “We swam around quite a bit on the ocean beach and I rubbed a good deal of Sea n’ Ski foam on the widow’s thighs. . . . I hate to make it sound like such a sexy weekend . . . but our baby sitter got laid by one of the Secret Service.”

Instapundit linked that, although not under the category of “21st-century relationships” because, quite naturally, the decadent elite got there about a half-century ahead of the rest of us.

Category: History, Sex

‘Roid Rage’ in NFL Shooting?

Posted on | December 1, 2012 | 16 Comments

Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher has reportedly murdered his girlfriend and then committed suicide. More details at Buzzfeed Sports.

While the motive for this murder-suicide is yet unknown, whenever I see something like this in the news — professional athletes engaged in extreme violence — I automatically suspect it may be a side-effect of steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.

This suspicion may be misguided: Romantic relationships between ordinary people turn violent all the time without any parties to the crime being under the influence of Dynabol, etc. Still, whenever the crime involves one of these musclebound behemoths, I always think, “Roid rage.”

UPDATE: Kate at Victory Girls reports that Belcher’s slain girlfriend was named Kassandra Perkins, and the couple had a 2-month-old baby.

Category: Uncategorized

At The VA GOP Advance

Posted on | December 1, 2012 | 21 Comments

by Smitty

I just took in Morton Blackwell’s post-mortem on the election. He quoted extensively from Goldwater:

I had a very exciting time at the Republican National Convention. My conservative allies and I all worked very hard in the presidential election.
When I woke up the day after the election, everything I had worked for appeared to be in ruins. An extreme leftist had been reelected president of the United States.
Some liberal Republicans immediately began to blame newly activated conservatives for the presidential defeat. I knew they were wrong. It was clear to me that these newly active conservatives would be the key to major future victories for conservative principles.

Blackwell quoted the Lincoln Four-Step, and pointed out that the air game (consultants blowing piles of money on SuperPAC ads) at the expense of the ground game was a big non-winner, as it is a mis-allocation of resources. No kidding, said starving bloggers across the land. Aside: is Citizens United still the worst SCOTUS decision evar, or does the re-election of BHO mean people exercising freedom of speech in groups is OK again?

Another point brought out by Blackwell was that Ronald Reagan managed to say unpleasant things pleasantly. Mr. Romney never seriously articulated why the class warfare rhetoric is so false. Not all fights are tasteful, genteel, and on the ground of the general’s choosing.

The need for a permanent campaign was another drum he beat. Politics is NOT my number one priority in life. For the Left, it seems like it may be. There seem to be Statists who view politics as life itself. A lady in the audience mentioned a rich Obama family (around Richmond, maybe) that put up four Obama operatives for a full year leading up to the election. Think of Democrats as political Jehova’s Witnesses. I say that in admiration of a work ethic, not endorsement of either viewpoint. I don’t want to make politics that important, frankly. But the need to get people to set aside a modest amount of time to engage and build a coherent conservative response cannot be understated. “A Republic, if you can keep it,” said Franklin. We have to keep it.

“Organization wins elections,” said a fellow in the crowd. Not just the phone calls and door knocks by random people from wherever. The precinct captains who know their turf are what the GOP lacks. As a terrible neighbor who hardly knows anyone on my block, I have to own my slice of the problem. If we’re not engaging in a minor invasion of privacy to get to know people, we’ll be suffering increasing major invasions of privacy from Leviathan.

Sissy Willis on Twitter points to a mea culpa from Alaska:

Sarah Palin warned us, and that is irrefutable. But I have learned from it the hard way. Instead of “forward,” which is the current battle cry, it seems that “backward” is the new norm. I shudder to think what this country will be like in the next four years.
Yes, Sarah warned us, and some listened. I don’t agree with her all the time, but what is intriguing is that she somehow knew. How, I ask? Not sure, but she knew, and that is fact. Maybe I should have listened.

Update: thanks, Instapundit!

Category: Uncategorized

Fleet Street to Be Neutered?

Posted on | December 1, 2012 | 10 Comments

As a journalist, I’ve long admired and envied the aggressiveness and flair of the British press. During the 1990s — when for the first time the Internet allowed Americans to see foreign newspaper coverage in “real time” — Fleet Street’s coverage of the Clinton scandals was often as important as anything published in U.S. papers. This attracted notice at the White House, where the role of the British press, specifically the Telegraph‘s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, was mentioned in the infamous 1995 “Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce” report.

What I love about the Fleet Street boys is that they understand their jobs in a very simple way: Get the scoop on the big story that sells papers.

This pragmatic attitude leaves little room for partisan bias, and still less for the obnoxious “make a difference” idealism that infuses so much American media with political correctness. It doesn’t matter on Fleet Street whether the corrupt or philandering politician is Tory or Labour, so long as the scandal is juicy, because the newspaper reader loves scandal stories, the editors all know it, and no reporter can afford to let himself be scooped on a big story like that.

Alas, the ruthlessness of the competition was such that Fleet Street reporters resorted to hacking cell phones and bribing police, and now the British government is considering regulations on the press. Alex Massie of the New Republic laments:

But the culture of British journalism is itself something worthy of protection. Fleet Street has long prided itself on its ability to live on its wits. Its practitioners are members of a grubby trade; unlike their American cousins they do not consider themselves members of a profession. Despite lacking the protection of anything as grand as the First Amendment the British press have largely managed to thrive until now in its own scrappy way, living on its wits while serving the public.

That’s exactly it: In recent decades, American journalism has gotten away from the “grubby trade” mentality, as the profession has attracted more missionary idealists whose progressive political commitments take precedence over the crude readership-value calculations of newsworthiness that inspire the Fleet Street headline-chasers.

As much as civilized tastes might recoil at a cynical commercial mentality in the media — “If it bleeds, it leads,” as local TV news programmers are wont to say — there is a danger also in the alternative, of editors and producers anointing themselves Platonic archons with the authority to impose idealistic myths on the public through coverage that is selectively presented to favor an allegedly superior sensibility.

UPDATE: At an event this past week in Washington, I met Jon Swaine, a young British reporter who was recently promoted to the Telegraph’s D.C. bureau. He published an article Tuesday with this intriguing headline:

FBI most wanted ‘hiding with Mormons’

It’s odd that I hadn’t seen that story in the U.S. press, and yet typical that a British reporter would find it newsworthy. Nothing like a good crime story to sell newspapers, and the unusual angle — a murderer who may be hiding within a religious community — makes it interesting.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Great Britain, Journalism

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The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

FMJRA 2.0: A Day Late And A Dollar Short

Hint: “Don’t Turn Left” X 3 Is Known As “The Hard Way” To Make A Right Turn

Is Norquist Thinking Wishfully?

ALABAMA 32, GEORGIA 28

The Sexual Avant-Garde

‘Roid Rage’ in NFL Shooting?

At The VA GOP Advance

Fleet Street to Be Neutered?

THE FULL METAL JACKET REACH-AROUND AWARD

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

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