Dude, Did You Have to Diss Ann Coulter? Also: Obama Has ‘Certainly Been Massively Disappointing to Young People’

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Let’s face it: Ever since Ann Coulter volunteered as head cheerleader for Team Romney, some of Miss Coulter’s longtime conservative defenders have been under tremendous pressure to denounce her.

The problem is that nearly all the people who joined the anti-Coulter movement back in the day — and I’m looking at you, Ace of Spades — are also now on the “Roll Over for Romney” bandwagon. So while I defended her when she called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “raghead” and called John Edwards a “faggot,” I should probably be content to let Ace (and Sean Hackbarth, Ed Morrissey, Joy McCann, et al.) defend Miss Coulter now that she’s snuggling up with Mister Inevitability.

Nevertheless, I was irritated when I saw that Matt Lewis cited Ann Coulter as an example of a media “peacock” in a Daily Caller item he posted last week, even while Matt was making a point worth considering:

[On March 16], there was tremendous buzz about a picture of Rick Santorum sunbathing. I’m sure it got a lot of hits, but  it was completely irrelevant, and utterly vapid. I’m sure we probably ran it — we sort of had to. But can you imagine back in the old days if a reporter had  come to a grizzled, old newspaper editor with the idea of publishing that photo?  The old fella might have said, “Son, we’re not going to run that because it’s  not news. We’re not going to run that as long as I’m here. I don’t care if other  newspapers do — we’re not. Now get the hell out of my office!”
Today, that old guy is dead. Or retired — probably pushed out by some  upstart.

Having dealt with a few grizzled old newspaper editors in my day, I very well see the point Matt is trying to make. What is happening is that the news media are being democratized, for both good and ill, so that the readers get whatever the readers want, including society reporters turned strippers and NFL cheerleader sex scandals.

Yet I’ve always said that if I were ever put in charge of a newspaper, I’d run it like the NY Post: Lots of celebrities, scandals, sports and crime stories to pull in the readers, thus to pay the bills for the political coverage and the right-wing op-ed pages.

So if I were the grizzled old editor and some reporter brought me a picture of Rick Santorum sunbathing, my response would be: “What the hell is wrong with you, kid? I said I wanted Ann Romney bikini pictures! Now get to work on it, or you’re fired!”

Part of what’s wrong with the conservative movement — and maybe we can discuss this at “DoomCon 2012” — is a sense of insecurity that manifests itself as a craving for respectability.

This prudishly superficial concern with being “respectable” causes some conservatives to scurry for cover the minute Ann Coulter says “faggot” or Rush Limbaugh says “slut,” so that all liberals have to do is make a big deal about some silly little “gaffe” or “scandal” and they win.

Wake the hell up, conservatives: Are you going to let Politico and Media Matters pick your leaders and spokesmen for you? Remember Breitbart!

OK, so that’s my rant about that. Meanwhile, via the eminently respectable Washington Free Beacon, we have this delightful video:

Obama has “certainly been massively disappointing to young people,” says Stephen Marche of Esquire, a liberal magazine that features lots of pictures of nearly naked women.

Polls show Obama’s popularity among the young “started at 63 percent and I think it’s in the 30s now,” says Marche. “It just continues to fall.”

Good. Now go get me those Ann Romney bikini pictures.

Update: linked by Fishersville Mike.

Think Happy Thoughts!

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Today’s headlines perhaps explain why feelings of foreboding have recently overwhelmed my otherwise nearly infinite capacity for hope. In a private e-mail exchange today, I found myself explaining that what may appear to some a transient problem is, in fact, a predictable consequence of long-term trends. It occurred to me that, because I have always considered it foolish to talk strategy in public (the enemy can read our blogs, y’know), few of my readers had ever seen me in deep analytical mode, so I decided to share this excerpt:

For many years, going back to at least 2006, I have considered the problems of the conservative movement not episodic and random, but rather systemic and structural. The way the movement is organized, the incentives built into that organizational pattern, and the types of personalities that exercise influence within the system, are in some sense haphazard, reflecting the gradual accretion of institutional habit. At the same time, however, there is the factor of conscious human action involved, and thus the potential for change, if the people involved would attempt to look beneath the surface of day-to-day events and recognize how the incentives built into the system generate ineffective or counter-productive results. . . .
[T]he movement lacks a conscious, rational and critical understanding of itself from the standpoint of organizational dynamics. . . .
The system resists reform because those who benefit (or expect in the future to benefit) from the status quo are unwilling to admit that the system is flawed. Only when the outcome is clearly a failure — as it was in 2008 — is it possible to get leaders to take seriously the need for reform. Yet on such occasions the tendency is always to make ad-hoc patchwork changes, rather than to look at the deeper structural flaws of the movement in terms of organizational dynamics, and attempt to incentivize genuine success.
A major problem is the difficulty of locating the blame for failure in a system where many of the participants are experts at blame-shifting and only too eager to make unpopular scapegoats bear the responsibility of failure. This was what happened to Sarah Palin in 2008, and I claim no special prescience in saying I saw that coming and tried to warn against it. The Steve Schmidts and Nicolle Wallaces, however, had acquired influence which enabled them to manipulate perceptions in such a way that the crucial failure of the 2008 campaign — John McCain’s panicked reaction to the financial crisis — was forgotten, while Palin was unjustly blamed.
Now we come to 2012 and, if the pundits are to be believed, Mitt Romney is now the “inevitable” GOP nominee, despite the fact that he has to date received less than 40 percent of the vote in Republican primaries and caucuses. If Romney is nominated, therefore, it will be despite the opposition of GOP voters and the conservative movement. Many believe that Romney is doomed to repeat the Republican failures of 1996 and 2008 and, if those prophecies are accurate, there will be a reckoning after the November election, in which the leadership of the conservative movement will have an opportunity to examine the causes of its failures.
God forbid that it should take Mitt’s nomination and Obama’s re-election to force such a long-overdue re-evaluation, as one wonders what would be left for conservatives to conserve in the event of such unprecedented catastrophes. (“Sweet Meteor of Death 2012!”) Maybe the ancient Mayan calendar was right about this year being the end of the world. Nevertheless, if the world endures and we survive the electoral cataclysm, I will be interested in discussing exactly how we got to such a disastrous result as all the omens now portend.
On the other hand, let’s hope that the pundits and pollsters are wrong, that Rick Santorum is on the verge of a world-shocking triumph in Wisconsin, and that this “Roll Over for Romney” bandwagon can be halted before the GOP Establishment once more succeeds in saddling us with a doomed loser who will utterly demoralize whatever remnant of grassroots conservatism survives the looming debacle.

We haven’t yet scheduled “DoomCon 2012,” but if anyone is interested in sponsoring, attending or participating in such an event, holler back.

Flaming, Multitudinous Jeremiads Retard Advances (FMJRA)

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Flaming, Multitudinous Jeremiads Retard Advances

by Smitty

This week’s FMJRA celebrates those like #OccupyResoluteDesk or his Raaaaacism Industrial Complex minions, who excel at moving responsibility away from themselves in lengthy diatribes, while never quite reviewing their old and busted ideas.

Leaders are those who can detect the death of a horse and cease flogging it.

The Congressional Affordable Care Act (CACA), or,
Will anything interesting ever happen at the Supreme Court?

Are Nancy Pelosi And Harry Reid Racists, Or Something?

Remember, We’re Paying This Incompetent To Steal Our Liberty

Could The SCOTUS Prove Worse Than Nancy Pelosi?

Rutherford B. Hayes Responds To Pelosi

Yeah, Raaaaacism Industrial Complex, yeah:

Trayvon Martin Case Discussed by Noted Civil Rights Leader … David Plouffe?

Black Panthers Offer A Cool Million For Someone Named Zimmerman

What If The Left Threw A Race War, And No One Came?

Another Liberal Narrative Gone Wrong

‘Those Festering Stereotypes’

The Riot Ideology

Trayvon Martin Rashomon

#OccupyResoluteDesk and his sidekick MuttlyJim Moran, remain a wonder to behold:

#OccupyResoluteDesk Meets Strongest Allies. Someone Named ‘Abovetheirweight’ Hardest Hit.

Carpet Dime

Not Even #OccupyResoluteDesk’s Most Athletic Supporter, ‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran, Voted For BHO’s Budget

The Brain Drain Campaign:

Newt Campaign Death-Watch Begins

Roll Over for Romney?

Why Was NY Times Reporter Jeff Zeleny Doing Romney Campaign’s Bidding?

Since You Asked, Mr. Quick. . .

When Did Newt’s Campaign Become Unsustainable? And What Was the Result?

Rubio Unqualified For VP?

Rick Santorum: It’s About a Movement

NEWT MET SECRETLY WITH MITT BEFORE LOUISIANA PRIMARY

Newt Ally Says We’re Doomed

The Rest of the Story:

You’re Darn Right I Bought A VW TDI Diesel Jetta

Hey, Lefties, It’s Sunday: Are You Finding Joy In Life?

Rule 5 Sunday: Bad

Big Fake Boobs

@Soledad_OBrien’s Unpopularity Destroys Morning Ratings for CNN

Forget WI Lt. Gov. Kleefisch: She May Be A ‘Man With Breasts’

Twenty Percent Plus One

I Write for Money

John Hinderaker, Optimist

In Response To The Recent Unpleasantness

Bizarre NFL Sex Scandal

Mandatory Whittle

Shocking Republican Sex Scandals!

‘Hot Mic’ Admittedly Not As Hot As Conservative Women, Yet Still Toasty

The Worlds Youngest Blogger: ‘Relax’

Olbermann’s Career: The First Time as Tragedy, the Second Time as Farce

‘Due to Her Excellent Reputation Among California Democrats …’

In closing…:

A hearty thank you to the Wombat, both for his great Live at Five work, and for taking over the FMJRA and Rule 5 Sunday features. Especially now that I’m dealing with the World’s Youngest Blogger, the additional manhours are essential.
LIVE AT FIVE – 03.26.12

LIVE AT FIVE – 03.27.12

LIVE AT FIVE – 03.28.12

LIVE AT FIVE (CDT) – 03.29.12

LIVE AT FIVE (CDT) – 03.30.12

Update: linked by Ol’ Skull’n’Bones himself!

It Is Not Often One Locates An Oversight In Professor Jacobson’s Reasoning

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by Smitty

The Card Game is a great feature over at Legal Insurrection, and last night’s was no exception.

This is cold fusion on the race card (h/t American Power):
“The new racism is denying racism.”

And, a little further on:

Thanks to Bill Maher, of all people, we finally have a simple, effective, and self-perpetuating theory of racial grievance used for political purposes, in which not only racism is racist, the denial of racism is racist, so the charge of racism cannot ever be defeated because to deny it is to confirm it.
Unless of course the charge of racism is made by a Republican or conservative or Tea Partier, in which case the new racism rules do not apply.

And so we need a new term for this Schrödinger Card, and I have a suggestion:

Erasism, noun: (1) The Orwellian attempt to mask one’s own racism by continuously accusing members of an out-group of exactly that, while strenuously denying one’s own habitual DNA-driven thinking.
(2) A masterful blend of Postmodernism, hypocrisy, and racism.
Example: “That Bill Maher is one erasist pig.”

Update: Daily Pundit likes the usage, and Obi’s Sister also approves.

Call Me a Cynic

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My initial reaction to this story was “Book Deal, Movie Rights,” and I’m sure the Hollywood agents are begging her to sign:

A Texas newspaper has fired staff reporter Sarah Tressler after she was exposed — by a competing paper, natch — as a stripper. Tressler, who has a bachelor’s and master’s degree, worked as a society reporter for the Houston Chronicle and taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston. But for eight years, she also worked at upscale strip clubs.
Sarah Tressler blogged about stripping at “Diary Of An Angry Stripper,” writing articles like “Customers To Avoid List” and “10 Things You Should Know Before You Date A Stripper,” and tweeted from @AngryStripper. Yet she told “Good Morning America” that she never assumed she would be “outed” by anyone because it seemed “like such a mean thing to do.” (Houston Press, the paper that exposed her, said they only did it because it was a “good story.”) After getting canned by the Chronicle for not revealing the job, Tressler is now working as a teacher, and is also still stripping. . . .

My secret blog, “Diary of a Man-Whore,” never got many readers.

Go figure.

But I’m sure Tressler’s new career as a teacher will turn out as well as it did for that Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader, right?

UPDATE: Almost forgot to hat-tip Instapundit. If Sarah Tressler doesn’t get a movie deal out of this, maybe she can fill in for Professor Reynolds next time he goes on vacation.

Piers Morgan: ‘What a Load of Fatuous Nonsense You Speak, Touré, Don’t You?’

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OK, I almost never watch CNN and hadn’t previously had a high opinion of Piers Morgan, but on the other hand, I’d never heard of this Touré character at all, until I saw the Breitbart headline:

MSNBC’s Touré Has Epic
Race-Baiting Meltdown On CNN

So I wondered what the heck this was about. Watch the video:

Touré, whose career has been mainly writing about hiphop music, thought Morgan wasn’t sufficiently aggressive in questioning George Zimmerman’s brother Robert Zimmerman. Morgan objects to being lectured about journalism, and then Touré tries to claim that Morgan doesn’t really know or care anything about the “American soul.” Read the transcript at CNN.

Anyway, I was tired and bummed out and about to go to bed until I saw this and, somehow, it cheered me up wonderfully. Don’t know why.

The Riot Ideology

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Yesterday, I mentioned Fred Siegel’s The Future Once Happened Here in connection with the Trayvon Martin case. Siegel’s book is one of those timeless classics — like Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed — that I frequently recommend as guides to understanding important social phenomena more deeply.

The Future Once Happened Here recounts how liberal policy turned three once-great American cities — New York, D.C. and L.A. — into dangerous urban nightmares, and one of the things Siegel describes is the “riot ideology” whereby organized violence (or the threat thereof) is used to intimidate officials into doing the bidding of “community leaders.”

Having recently begun re-reading Siegel’s book, the latest news in the Trayvon Martin case is both familiar and disturbing:

The feet of thousands pounded the cracked pavement of Sanford’s 13th street . . . to reiterate that apathy won’t be an option for those moved and outraged by the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager.
The Goldsboro community played host to a march and rally Saturday organized by the NAACP that brought together a coalition of national civil-rights organizers, community leaders, clergymen and droves of local residents who joined the chants demanding the arrest of George Zimmerman for Trayvon Martin’s death.
The Rev. Al Sharpton came to a podium outside Sanford Police Department headquarters amid raucous cheers from many of the roughly 1,000 participants. But he revealed few details about a plan he unveiled Friday for economic sanctions to force authorities to arrest Zimmerman.
Instead, he talked generally about sanctions against corporations that support and fund stand-your-ground laws, but didn’t name specific entities or outline strategies.
Everything is on the table for the nonviolent civil disobedience that could come in the coming days, he said. . . .
A special prosecutor has been assigned to the case and the U.S. Department of Justice has launched an investigation.
“We want an arrest. Shot in the chest,” marchers said Saturday en route to Sanford Police Department headquarters. “I am Trayvon Martin.”

Wait: A special prosecutor? A USDOJ investigation?

Why not wait and see what happens with the investigation? Why this idiotic talk of “economic sanctions” and lynch-mob mentality toward Zimmerman? Why is MSNBC letting one its on-air personalities engage in such demagogic nonsense?

If George Zimmerman is not arrested in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin soon, the Rev. Al Sharpton will call for an escalation in peaceful civil disobedience and economic sanctions.

Civil disobedience toward whom? Economic sanctions where? In Sanford? A town of 53,570 people, 45% white, 30% black and 20% Hispanic? What possible good can Sharpton’s incendiary demagoguery accomplish for the people of Sanford? And isn’t it possible that, by purposefully inflaming racial animosity, Sharpton will make matters much worse for the people of Sanford?

If you’ve read The Future Once Happened Here, you likely suspect that Sharpton’s “activism” will produce only harm for those whose cause he claims to advocate. The consequences of the “riot ideology” are sadly predictable. Meanwhile, on the other coast:

Seven black teens have been arrested on suspicion that they committed a hate crime when they attacked a 15-year-old Hispanic boy while he was walking home from school in Southern California, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
The March 14 beating in Palmdale was captured on video and posted on YouTube . . .
During the beating, the teens made racially derogatory statements that were captured on the video . . .

Perhaps Al Sharpton will call for “civil disobedience” there, too.

 

No Mohawks for Jefferson

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Longtime commenter T.R. Sterling sends along this news item as fair warning for my redheaded son:

Derrill Rockwell told police he grabbed his rifle, the .22-caliber he kept handy to kill rodents around the house, about 5 a.m. Oct. 5 and walked outside to confront it.
The bird.
Possibly, he told police, the same fowl he suspected of harassing his cats recently around his home near Orchard Mesa Cemetery.
It was red, sitting at the top of a hill about 90 feet away from Rockwell.
“His intent was to spook it away,” Deputy District Attorney Jason Conley told District Judge Richard Gurley on Friday.
Rockwell shot once but said he didn’t see the bird fly away. Soon after, he heard a woman’s voice, moaning in pain. Rockwell discovered a 23-year-old woman, with a large red mohawk, with a gunshot wound to the head. . . .
Six days after the shooting, Rockwell told . . . police detectives . . . he fired the weapon after confusing the woman’s red mohawk hairstyle for a distant bird.