Moe Lane has been laid low by the mysterious post-CPAC illness that’s been going around among attendees of last week’s conference, but in fact there’s nothing mysterious at all about this malady.
If you gather 11,000 people from around the country for a conference, how many of the attendees are traveling by commercial aircraft? Suppose that it’s 5,000 and that, on average, each of them spent two hours on a plane with 200 other passengers. So these air travelers bring with them to the conference the germs of 1 million people.
Let’s further note that a lot of partying went on at CPAC. The lobby bar was packed until well after midnight every night, and the conference started at 9 a.m. every morning. So people’s immune systems were suppressed by alcohol consumption and loss of sleep.
In all, an event like that is a perfect storm for the spread of contagious disease. I managed to escape the pandemic, a good fortune I attribute to three main causes:
I got enough sleep. Not eight hours nightly, but enough to keep from getting completely run down. On Thursday, I took a nap in the afternoon. On Friday and Saturday, I slept late. Lack of sleep is a major stress on the immune system.
I blogged from my hotel room. Last year, the Internet connection in the Bloggers Lounge was atrociously slow. So this year, I set up my laptop in the hotel room I was sharing with Ladd Ehlinger, and did my blogging from there until the final few hours. I’d go out on expeditions around the conference to collect notes and photos, then return to the hotel room to blog it. This minimized my exposure to the Bloggers Lounge, which seems to have been Ground Zero of the CPAC Plague.
I ate a good breakfast most days. Hunter S. Thompson, who engaged in more heinous substance abuse than any other journalist in history, was a firm believer in the value of a hearty breakfast. No matter how hard he partied, Thompson always began the day with a big breakfast. If it was good enough for Dr. Gonzo, it’s good enough for me.
Teacher Natalie Munroe makes no excuses for writing blog posts about her students which include statements like, “A complete and utter jerk in all ways,” “although academically okay your child has no other redeeming qualities,” “I hear the trash company is hiring,” and “There’s no other way to say this, I hate your kid.” . . .
The 30-year-old teacher used the name “Natalie M” and never identified the name of the school in the posts that also lashed out against other teachers and administrators. But once word got out it was her, the school suspended Munroe with pay.
In one posting on her blog she called her students, “out of contol,” and “rude, lazy, disengaged whiners.” . . .
In another, she created a list of comments teachers could use on report cards to describe students, like “rat-like,” “dresses like a streetwalker,” and “frightfully dim.”
So now we have finally learned what a public school teacher has to do to get fired: Tell the truth.
America’s Favorite Feminist responds to this morning’s provocation by accusing me of promoting the narrative, “Brown people are savages who will go after pretty white women.” A near-miss there, Ms. Filipovic, but thanks for linking me. Meanwhile . . .
It’s really sad that he’s got nothing better to do. While I’m on the hook for whatever irresponsible things I’ve said, neither Jim Hoft nor Pamela Geller can be blamed for my rantings, nor can I be blamed for their rantings. But just out of curiosity, let’s see what they had to say, starting with Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit:
Lara Logan is lucky she’s alive.
Her liberal belief system almost got her killed on Friday. This talented reporter will never be the same.
Why did this attractive blonde female reporter wander into Tahrir Square last Friday? Why would she think this was a good idea? Did she not see the violence in the square the last three weeks? Did she not see the rock throwing? Did she miss the camels? Did her colleagues tell her about the Western journalists who were viciously assaulted on the Square? Did she forget about the taunts from the Egyptian thugs the day before? What was she thinking? Was it her political correctness that about got her killed? Did she think things would be different for her?
This horrible story gets worse and worse. Worse still, CBS tried to keep the whole thing quiet and was forced to get in front of the story only when it became widely known that other media outlets were on to it. Who are they covering for?
And why? Because the false narrative the media is painting of what is going on in Egypt is patently false, and this brutal sex attack points to something else entirely.
The NY Post is the only news outlet reporting that the Muslims raping her were shouting “Jew, Jew, Jew.” Obama should make a statement addressing this horror and condemning the vile Islamic anti-semitism at the heart of Islam.
Not that there’s ever a bad day to blog about Justin Bieber, but it’s not every day that a Bieber story turns up on the Memeorandum feed:
“I don’t think you should have sex with anyone unless you love them,” Bieber says. . . .
The Canadian-born Bieber never plans on becoming an American citizen. “You guys are evil,” he jokes. “Canada’s the best country in the world.” He adds, “We go to the doctor and we don’t need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you’re broke because of medical bills. . . .”
He does have a solid opinion on abortion. “I really don’t believe in abortion,” Bieber says. “It’s like killing a baby?”
OK, so he’s anti-American, pro-socialized medicine, and anti-abortion. Maybe someone could explain to him that socialized medicine pays for abortion. But since it’s killing “evil” American babies, maybe he’d be in favor of that.
Next time I get ragged about my shameless traffic-whoring, remind me to point out that such eminences of liberalism as Ezra Klein, Think Progress and Alan Colmes couldn’t resist the chance to get some of that easy Bieber traffic.
So now I’ve blogged about Bieber, which means it’s time to go take a nap and let the traffic come rolling in. Life is good.
Academic fellowships are how the Left rewards journalists who advance the Left’s agenda, an academic subsidy that enables them to write books and articles without having to worry about keeping the rent paid.
So there he was: Nirs Rosen, a 33-year-old writer who has been published by Rolling Stone, Harper’s and The Atlantic Monthly, enjoying a sweet sinecure which afforded him the leisure to Tweet rude things about Lara Logan. His first reaction to news that she had been assaulted was to Tweet: “Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson.”
“Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger.”
and
“Look, she was probably groped like thousands of other women.”
This is classic: If Rosen had only stopped after his first “outdo Anderson” remark, he might have been judged guilty of nothing worse than questioning the wisdom of sending women correspondents into potentially dangerous situations. Yes, he would have been scorned as a sexist for saying such a thing, but Rosen should have stopped Tweeting at that point. He might have pulled back and written a thoughful 1,200-word column for HuffPo or some other online outlet about the inherent dangers of being a reporter covering a Third World crisis, and explaining why he felt CBS was unwise to send Logan into that Cairo mob scene.
That’s the difference between (a) becoming “controversial” and (b) getting your sorry ass fired. Trust me when I say that I’m quite familiar with walking that kind of career tightrope. Instead, Rosen kept Tweeting and foolishly attempted to rally his ideological allies by pointing out Logan’s pro-war reputation, bemoaning that a “major war monger” was about “to become a martyr,” and belittling her assault.
Maybe Egyptians could use one of Filipovic’s pious lectures about “no means no” and “stop means stop.” I’d probably be accused of some sort of thought-crime if I were to suggest that the spontaneous outburst of savagery against Lara Logan of CBS News says anything about the future course of democracy in Egypt. Yet I will risk recalling how on Jan. 27, in my first post about the Egyptian crisis, I employed this quote:
“The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.”
— Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
In the Alternet article beneath that headline, pseudonymous writer Chauncey De Vega employs a lot of academic “race theory” talk to justify insulting Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. And when he’s not merely insulting, De Vega is simply wrong:
Let’s consider the routine. First, Cain enters the stage to Motown music. Then Cain feigns swimming after rolling up his sleeves to show them his black skin and how he is a hardworking negro (not like those other ones). Cain bellows in a preacher affected voice and channels the folksy negro down home accent of his late grandpappy.
First, as Duane Lester at All-American Blogger points out, the gesture that De Vega describes as intended “to show them his black skin” was actually Cain doing a “no tricks up my sleeves” gesture like a magician, meant to show that not only was he speaking without a Teleprompter, but he was also speaking extemporaneously — without notes of any kind.
Second, De Vega’s suggestion that Cain’s “down home accent” is an affectation is simply false, as anyone who has listened to Herman Cain’s radio show would know.
Having known Herman Cain since 2007, I can testify that what you see is what you get. And the thousands of people who’ve met Cain at Tea Party rallies and other events would tell you the same thing. This Alternet article was e-mailed to me by my cousin Brian Buchanan with this note:
We all knew it was only a matter of time before it happened. I find it an odd dichotomy that if you disagree with Obama you are a racist but if you agree with Herman Cain then you are only supporting him because he “acts white.” I hope that people are finally waking up to see that the race baiters have cried wolf too many times. I wonder what they think of Allen West.
Exactly, and as Duane Lester writes: “Cain has called for the article to be taken down. In one of those rare instances, I disagree with him. I want them to keep it up. . . . Leave the article up. Sooner or later it can be used to wake someone up to the left’s unnoticed history of racism.”
But if they take down the Alternet article, expect to see a lot more of this type of stuff as support for Cain’s campaign grows: Liberal writers playing armchair psychologist to explain What It Really Means.
UPDATE: Apologies for omitting The Right Sphere from the commentary roundup. By the way, to explain why I was so late getting to this article today: I went down to D.C., got back about 5 p.m., and then took a five-hour nap. I’m still still recovering from “CPAC fever.”
This latest countertemps reminds me of when Rush Limbaugh was denounced for having employed the term “magic negro,” a phrase borrowed from liberal writer David Ehrenstein’s column in the Los Angeles Times. Here’s the “Today” show segment about that ginned-up “controversy”:
Americans are belatedly realizing that Peter Brimelow nailed it when he defined “racist” as “someone who’s winning an argument with a liberal.”
UPDATE III: As background — to show that Herman Cain is no Johnny-come-lately conservative — here is my May 2007 feature article:
Speaking out with a smile Radio host Herman Cain keeps cancer, GOP in line By Robert Stacy McCain THE WASHINGTON TIMES
ATLANTA — Herman Cain laughs a lot, and he has lots to be happy about — including a successful business career and a popular talk radio show. Inside the Atlanta studios of WSB Radio on a recent Saturday, he told his listeners about a local newspaper columnist who wrote that “being a black Republican is not only oxymoronic, it’s simply plain old-fashioned moronic” and singled out Mr. Cain as a “token” and a “sorry opportunist.”
“He forgot – I’ve got a radio show,” Mr. Cain says as he issues an on-air challenge for the columnist to call in, then goes to commercial, laughing all the while.
Such cheerfulness might seem surprising for a man who, in March 2006, was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer that had spread to his liver. After two months of chemotherapy, Mr. Cain underwent surgery in August — doctors removed one-third of his colon and 70 percent of his liver, he says — and then it was another two months of chemotherapy. And he is laughing.
“Now you’re looking at a man who’s cancer-free — and all my liver’s grown back,” says the 61-year-old former executive. But don’t call him a “survivor,” he says. “I’m a winner,” says Mr. Cain, former chief executive officer of the Godfather’s Pizza chain.
A graduate of Atlanta’s Morehouse College, he worked for the Department of the Navy and Coca-Cola before joining the Pillsbury Co. in 1977. When Pillsbury acquired the Burger King restaurant chain, he went to work managing the chain’s operations in the Philadelphia area. His success with Burger King won him appointment in 1986 as president of Godfather’s, another Pillsbury acquisition. He helped turn around the division and then led a management team that bought the chain from Pillsbury.
Now retired from the restaurant business, Mr. Cain keeps busy. He is a member of four corporate boards (including Hallmark Cards and Whirlpool), a member of the Morehouse board of trustees, an author and syndicated columnist, a regular guest on Fox News Channel’s “Cost of Freedom” business program and, most recently, a radio talk-show host, frequently filling in on Atlanta-based Neal Boortz’s syndicated program as well as hosting his own two-hour show each Saturday.
Then there is politics. In 2004, Mr. Cain sought the Senate seat vacated by the retirement of Sen. Zell Miller, Georgia Democrat. In the Republican primary, he placed second to Johnny Isakson, who later won the Senate seat. But Mr. Cain’s outspoken conservatism during the campaign won him many admirers – including Mr. Miller, who wrote the foreword to Mr. Cain’s 2005 book, “They Think You’re Stupid: How Democrats Lost Your Vote and What Republicans Must Do to Keep It.”
What Republicans have done lately doesn’t please Mr. Cain, who expresses the same frustrations that many other conservatives have voiced about the party in recent years.
“They didn’t stick to principles,” he says, when asked why Republicans lost control of Congress in the 2006 elections. He criticizes Republicans in Washington for spending irresponsibly, failing to pass Social Security reform and, especially, not heeding their grass-roots supporters on immigration policy.
“They were not listening to people outside Washington. If they would have listened, they wouldn’t have lost,” says Mr. Cain, explaining that he finds people are eager to tell him their views on political issues.
“I’m like a walking poll. … It’s not scientific, but it’s pretty darned consistent,” he says of what he heard about immigration last year “Republicans were screaming, ‘Secure the borders first.’ ”
Republicans in Washington “are too afraid of their political shadows,” Mr. Cain says. He adds that many of his colleagues on corporate boards are so “disgusted” with Republicans that they have stopped contributing to the party, telling him: “When they start acting like Republicans, I’ll write some more checks.”
Considering the party’s prospects in 2008, he asks, “Where’s the excitement? Where’s the fun? There is none.”
Yet, Mr. Cain is clearly having lots of fun. He performs his two-hour radio show standing up, and provokes a reaction with his criticism of the Rev. Al Sharpton (“He gets away with inciting racial tensions, but doesn’t want to be held accountable.”) and liberals who, he says, use “name-calling … to discourage black people from thinking for themselves.”
Soon, callers fill the phone lines, waiting to share their opinions with Mr. Cain, who keeps smiling and laughing even when talking with angry callers who disagree with him.
Mr. Cain is grateful for simple pleasures such as “watching my grandkids grow up,” he says, recalling the months he spent in treatment after his cancer diagnosis. “I was saying my prayers … and I had a whole lot of people sending up prayers for me,” he says.
“You don’t stop living because you’re fighting cancer. … If everybody stopped living because they were fighting cancer, one-third of the adult population would be sitting home waiting to die,” Mr Cain says, adding that he has no interest in sitting around. “Death’s going to have to catch me, and it’s going to have to run fast.”
