The Other McCain

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

Who Will Courageously Defy the National Gallery’s Gay-Bashing Homophobia?

Posted on | December 12, 2010 | 15 Comments

Why, yes, of course, it’s Frank Rich! And that’s exactly how he construes the situation whereby an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art — “a survey of same-sex themes in American portraiture,” as Rich describes it — was subjected to “censorship” because one work was removed from the exhibit.

Anyone offended by a video that showed “a scene of ants crawling on a crucifix” as a metaphor for AIDS — for this is what David Wojnarowicz’s video showed — is obviously an intolerant bigot. And wherever bigotry rears its ugly head, Frank Rich will courageously Speak Truth to Power. Or at least write 1,536 words to power, which we will merely sample here:

“[A] Roman Catholic conflicted by a religion that demonized his sexuality . . . a ruthless disease that had provoked indifference and cruelty rather than compassion . . . even in a time of huge progress in gay civil rights, homophobia remains among the last permissible bigotries in America. . . . It still seems an unwritten rule in establishment Washington that homophobia is at most a misdemeanor. . . . the hate speech of persistent bullies . . . most of the recent and well-publicized suicides by gay teens have occurred in Republican Congressional districts . . . America’s signature cultural institution can be so easily bullied by bigots.”

All of this, you understand, because one video was removed from an exhibit. The controversy was provoked by Penny Starr’s Nov. 29 article at CNSNews.com with this headline:

Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit
Features Ant-Covered Jesus,
Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and
Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts

Say what you will about homophobic bigotry, but CNSNews.com editors sure know how to write an attention-getting headline, don’t they?

That article prompted William Donohue of the Catholic League to send suicide-bombers to maim and murder innocent women and children ask Catholics to call the museum and complain.

That’s it, you see? All Donohue did was to issue a press release, which was quoted by the New York Post, and a lot of Catholics called to complain that the National Gallery — which receives 55 percent of its budget in taxpayer funding from Congress — was engaged in a government-sponsored attack on Christianity.

Agree or disagree with Donohue’s religion, say what you will about the gallery curator’s taste in art, this story was in essence a repeat of that timeless journalistic classic, “Your Taxpayer Dollars at Work.” The federal government spends so much money on so many different things that some of it is bound to be deeply offensive to somebody. The Catholics offended by ant-covered Jesus were no different in this regard from air travelers offended by TSA-groped crotches or peaceniks offended by army-invaded Iraq.

In the mixed-up mind of Frank Rich, however, those offended by the Smithsonian exhibit were jumbled together with those who “demonized . . . sexuality,” who exhibited “indifference and cruelty,” and who are thereby complicit in both teen suicide and opposition to civil rights.

So here is Frank Rich, ostentatiously congratulating himself on his heroic opposition to symbolic hysteria, while simultaneously engaged in . . . symbolic hysteria.

One of these days, perhaps in New York City or Washington, D.C., some young Muslim will succeed in doing what yesterday’s Stockholm bomber failed to do, and then maybe Frank Rich will expend 1,536 words warning against religious extremists far more dangerous than American Catholics who complain about art exhibits.

But nowhere in that 1,536-word column will Frank Rich admit that he is a complete fool.

Truth to Power, baby.

(Via Memeorandum.)

Category: Art, Gays, New York Times

Terror Strikes in Stockholm: Radical Lutherans Stage Another Suicide Bombing

Posted on | December 12, 2010 | 13 Comments

Having previously warned about the worldwide menace of radical Lutheranism, I was scarcely surprised by the latest headlines from Sweden:

STOCKHOLM — One man was killed and two other people were injured when two explosions hit the heart of Stockholm’s city-center shopping district on Saturday evening, the police in the Swedish capital said. The country’s foreign minister called the blasts a terrorist attack, and an e-mail to news organizations minutes before the blasts seemed to link them to anger over anti-Islamic cartoons and the war in Afghanistan. . . .
An editor at the Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyra, Dan Skeppe, said the agency had received an e-mail minutes before the blasts; it was also addressed to Sweden’s security police, and included a sound recording addressed to “Sweden and the Swedish people.” Mr. Skeppe said the recording cited Swedish “silence” over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad drawn by the artist Lars Vilks, criticized Sweden’s 500-soldier military contingent in northern Afghanistan and threatened attacks on Swedes.
“Now, your children — daughters and sisters — will die like our brothers and sisters and children die,” it continued. “Our actions will speak for themselves. As long as you do not end your war against Islam and the insult against the prophet and your stupid support for that pig Vilks.”

Wait . . . what’s this stuff about Aghanistan and Muhammad and Islam? Let’s check in with Michael Moynihan at Reason:

The bomber cited the Swedish military’s involvement with NATO in Afghanistan and “threatened” those serving there. According to Expressen, the letter also urges Muslims to fight back against “Islamophobia” in Sweden, presumably by murdering Swedes, and calls on “all mujahadin in Sweden and across Europe” to rise up.

What? No Lutherans? How can Moynihan ignore the Clear and Present Danger to the American Way of Life posed by Lutheran fundamentalism?

UPDATE: Stockholm Bomber ID’d as Sven Olsen Taimour Abdulwahab Al-Abdaly

Category: Sweden, Terrorism

Incestophobia?

Posted on | December 11, 2010 | 50 Comments

Sometimes it’s strange how one thing leads to another. Last night, while blogging about the arrest of Columbia University Professor David Epstein, I noted that several people seemed to have a hard time understanding why incest is illegal:

Readers might suppose that arguments involving phrases like “thou shalt not” and words like “abomination” are sternly frowned on at Columbia University, so that the faculty would have a hard time answering such a question from their students.

Somewhere along the long journey from the “thou shalt not” standard to the “consenting adults” standard, the line between right and wrong got blurry enough that some people became hopelessly confused. Tim Blair responded to one such confused person:

According to Salon‘s Tracy Clark-Flory, “it isn’t a clear-cut case of child abuse.” Really?

Many people have been carefully taught (to borrow a lyric from Rodgers and Hammerstein) to look at the world through the prism of “rights.” The personal is political and vice-versa, so that by the process of what Mary Ann Glendon has called “rights talk,” everything becomes politicized.

Even when confronted with the most clear-cut case of perverted evil — and if the allegations against Epstein are true, “perverted evil” is certainly an apt phrase — some people cling so tightly to this rights-oriented worldview they care nothing at all about real people, except as political symbols.

Bigot Compares Incest To LGBT Rights
In Columbia Prof’s Incest Case

The “bigot” in Bridgette P. LaVictoire’s headline? Me.

And of course my alleged bigotry is a far more serious problem than Columbia University professors having sex with their daughters, because “LGBT rights” is the only thing that matters in the whole wide world.

 “LGBT rights” is Bridgette P. LaVictoire’s raison d’etre. Nothing else has any meaning. Ask her which football team she hopes wins the NFC East, and her answer will reflect her understanding of which team most symbolizes the cause of “LGBT rights.” (Hint for Bridgette: It’s the Eagles.)

Making an argument that offends Bridgette’s sense of what is in the best interests of  “LGBT rights” is sufficient to justify the “bigot” label, because the personal is political and — if you buy into the radical By Any Means Necessary mentality — no weapon is out of bounds when attacking our political enemies.

One thing leads to another, you see.

Meanwhile, Ann Althouse notes the relevance of recent Supreme Court decisions to the frightening concept of a constitutional right to consensual adult incest. (And I’m sure that’s what the Founding Fathers had in mind, aren’t you?)

Professor Glenn Reynolds seems to have tongue firmly in cheek in asking, “Why are they only charging the man in what’s said to have been a consensual relationship between adults? Isn’t that an equal protection violation? Where’s the civil rights community on this?”

Have we lost our cotton-picking minds?

Has some large segment of America succumbed to a mental disorder that makes them unable to accept any moral standard beyond legalistic, politicized notions of “rights”?

UPDATE: Notorious “bigot” Vox Day:

Once traditional mores have been thrown out the window, it is very difficult to rationally declare “thus far and no farther” since every single argument made in support of those legal abominations can just as easily be utilized in this case. If the professor chooses to vigorously defend himself on those terms, he should have a pretty good chance of being exonerated even if he is guilty. It should be interesting to see what folks like John Scalzi and other outspoken supporters of state-sanctioned homogamy have to say about this case.

The Scalzi mentioned is, appropriately, a writer of science fiction. A commenter notes that Ms. LaVictoire seems to have indicted me under the “Transitive Property of Internet Idiocy,” which as Cassandra of Villainous Company explains, “allows us to impute the utterances of one blogger to every other blogger of his acquaintance, to anyone who shares the same political persuasion or who dares to agree with him.”

Which is to say that I am now implicated in whatever errors any of Vox Day’s critics wish to impute to him, and vice-versa. Also, we are both symbolic proxies for Fred Phelps, or whatever homophobic bigot with whom you wish to compare us.

UPDATE II: Tom Maguire: “And eventually the Mormons wil be heard from.” By which, I suppose, he means the rogue fundamentalist sect (FLDS) which, in April 2008, provided us with lots of “Texas teen sex cult” headlines.

Big Fur Hat says there were clues that Professor Epstein might be a bit shady.

Category: Crime, Gays

What’s Wrong With the Republican Party in Two Words: Mark McKinnon

Posted on | December 11, 2010 | 17 Comments

Which is a synonym for “unprincipled opportunist.”

You may recall Mark McKinnon as the Republican political strategist who worked to help John McCain win the 2008 GOP nomination, but then quit because he refused to campaign against Barack Obama.

You may recall Mark McKinnon as the Republican political strategist who accused Rick Santorum of having “a lack of character.” 

You may recall Mark McKinnon as the Republican political strategist who in May 2009 told ABC News: “If the Republican party does not expand its tent, it’s going to turn into a circus, and it’s going to become a minority freak show that sort of features Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney.”

In other words, you may recall Mark McKinnon as the Republican political strategist who is always predictably bad-mouthing conservatives (whom he accuses of “drinking the Kool-Aid”) and generally doing everything he can to turn the GOP into a carbon-copy of “those of us who don’t choose the extremes.”

Given that Mark McKinnon is a vicious backstabbing opportunistic crapweasel — an inarguable fact, I think you’ll agree — we should scarcely be surprised to find that he is a late-arriving fanboy of Marco Rubio:

If Palin chooses to run and is not the presidential nominee, Rubio fixes what will certainly be the “Palin problem” for the GOP. With her unmatched magnetic appeal, which attracts headlines as well as campaign donations, there will be enormous pressure on whomever is nominated for president to pick Palin as a running mate. The only other option that provides any real conservative cover for a VP pick is Rubio. Otherwise, you will have a grassroots riot on your hands.

Obvious Fact No. 1: The “Palin problem” (whatever that is imagined to be) exists entirely in the mind of Republican political strategist Mark McKinnon.

Obvious Fact No. 2: Republican political strategist Mark McKinnon was MIA when grassroots conservatives declared war on the GOP Establishment over the attempt of party insiders to fix the Republican primary for Charlie Crist.

If it were up to gutless worms like Republican political strategist Mark McKinnon — who spent years with his best buddy Paul Begala working for the campaigns of Democrats like Lloyd Doggett, Ann Richards and Mike Dukakis — Charlie Crist would have gotten the GOP nomination, not that radical Tea Party extremist Marco Rubio.

And let’s not forget that Sarah Palin supported Marco back when Republican political strategist Mark McKinnon was declaring that “Republicans look more like a glue factory than an idea factory.”

Helpful advice for Marco Rubio and to Republicans everywhere: Don’t hire Mark McKinnon.

Don’t return his phone calls. Don’t invite him to your events. Tell everyone on your staff to treat Mark McKinnon like a contagious disease. And if you’re a possible 2012 presidential contender, don’t let Republican political strategist Mark McKinnon anywhere near your campaign. Avoid him at all costs, even if you have to take out a restraining order to keep him away.

Because the minute it becomes public knowledge that McKinnon is an “advisor,” “consultant,” or “strategist” on your campaign, you’re doomed.

You have been warned.

Category: Vicious Backstabbing Crapweasels

VIDEO: Herman Cain Tells Cavuto He Is ‘Prayerfully Considering’ 2012 Campaign

Posted on | December 11, 2010 | 13 Comments

The multimillionaire former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza was slamming “back-door welfare” in the compromise tax deal when the host — who loves Herman, because everybody loves Herman — asked him about his frequent hints that he’s going to run for president:

“We are looking at doing an exploratory committee real soon,” he says. You could compare Cain’s 2012 campaign to Steve Forbes’ 1996 campaign — which Forbes used to push his limited-government, pro-business, supply-side, flat-tax agenda — with one key difference: Cain is infinitely more charismatic than Forbes.

Having seen Cain speak at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in March, I’m here to tell you that no one — not even Sarah Palin — elicits the kind of enthusiasm from a GOP crowd that Herman gets. Tea Party people love him. If he can put together a solid campaign organization and avoid gaffes or scandals, it’s not hard to see Herman Cain placing in the top three in the Iowa caucus.

Meanwhile, check the latest news from Georgia:

Two African-American Democrats on Thursday announced that they were joining the Republican Party.
Hall County Commissioner Ashley Bell and former state executive committee member Andre Walker said the Democratic Party had grown too liberal and they are finding a new home with the Republicans. . . .
Bell was introduced as a Republican at a news conference Thursday at party headquarters.
“My district is pretty Republican as it is,” Bell told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “My wife and I have been thinking about this for six months.” . . .
Walker, who runs the political blog Georgia Unfiltered, resigned from the Democratic Party’s state executive committee. Walker was a delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention and is a former president of College Democrats of Georgia.
“Since the first Democratic lawmaker bolted to the Republican Party, left-leaning activists have mocked and ridiculed those individuals as being self-serving people only looking for ways to remain in office,” Walker told the AJC. “But I’m not an elected official. I don’t hold public office. I’m not trying to protect my seat. I don’t have a seat to protect. I’m just a regular citizen with a healthy interest in the political process, and I’m joining the GOP because of ideology.”

In ways small and large, this is a list that keep steadily growing: Allen West, Tim Scott, etc., etc. And at some point the cognitive dissonance of the liberal worldview will become so strained that it finally reaches the breaking point.

HERMAN CAIN FOR PRESIDENT
Because You Know You Want to See
Janeane Garofalo’s Head Explode

Category: Election 2012, Herman Cain

Conservative ‘Character Flaw’ Diagnosed by Neurological Scientist Janeane Garofalo

Posted on | December 11, 2010 | 18 Comments

“The British empire is the original douchebag empire, where sh*tty Americans and sh*tty Australians come from. . .
“What politics does shine a big light on is human frailty. And I think what conservatism has shined a light on also is human frailty. What does it mean to be a conservative or a Republican anymore? I’m not quite sure, but it clearly shows you’ve got a lot of frailty — you’ve got a lot of flaw. That you’re arrogant as f**k about that and you’re belligerent and you have very little self-awareness.
“But what does it mean to be the type of journalist who kowtows to a conservative? . . . To be a modern-day Republican or conservative, to be a George Bush type of Republican or conservative, to be a Hannity type — it’s a character flaw. It’s a character flaw or it also could be neurological. . . .
“I’m not joking at all. Limbic brain — seat of your emotions — something’s not working, whether it’s your private life or your literal neural anatomy, something is not working. . . . It is, I think, a neurological issue.
“It is also the party now . . . for racists, for sexists, for homophobes, for closet queens. Whatever, again, is wrong with you, because a tent full of hate has elastic walls.”
— Janeane Garofalo, May 27, 2009

Exactly why that audio was featured today at The Blaze, I’m not sure. Perhaps they just found it online today, but they didn’t provide a full transcript and I thought it might be a useful service to provide one.

One of my 18-year-old twin sons was sitting on the other side of the office while I playing and re-playing that audio to transcribe it.

“Who is that?” he asked.

“Janeane Garofalo,” I said.

“Never heard of her,” he said.

Garofalo probably considers her amateur diagnosis to be a real cutting-edge breakthrough in political analysis, but this business of treating conservatism as a mental disorder has a very long history, as I explained a year ago:

Even before the Senate voted on cloture, the Democrats’ health-care legislation was already delivering benefits in the form of a free mental-health screening delivered by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: If you oppose this bill, you’re a dangerous nut.
Such was the essence of Sunday’s floor speech in which the junior senator from Rhode Island quoted at length from Richard Hofstadter’s 1965 classic, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and offered it as a diagnosis of the health bill’s opponents.
Whitehouse paraphrased Hofstadter’s thesis, warning of “the dangers of an aggrieved right-wing minority with the power to create what [Hofstadter] called a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.”
This “aggrieved” minority, Whitehouse asserted, was responsible for the “malignant, vindictive passions” of those who opposed the health-care bill. He compared these opponents to the Nazi brownshirts responsible for Kristallnacht in Germany — “broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets” — as well as to the Jacobin rabble of revolutionary France and racial lynch mobs.
“Does that sound familiar…in this health debate?” Whitehouse asked. . . .

This particular species of nonsense, the widespread liberal belief that there can be no rational reason to oppose their policies and that therefore voting Republican is symptomatic of insanity, has been employed against Glenn Beck and his audience. Back in March, when Frank Rich was portraying the Tea Party movement as an aggregation of violent kooks, I wrote:

There is no cure for the liberal disorder of political psychosis, which erupts whenever it appears conservatives are gaining ground. If present trends continue, Republicans ought to make one concession on health-care reform — free Xanax for Democrats on Nov. 3.

We’re barely five weeks past Election Day, folks. The era of total moonbat madness has just begun.


Category: Celebrities

In E-Mail, Democracy for America Claims Credit for Bernie Sanders Filibuster

Posted on | December 11, 2010 | 9 Comments

If you were wondering Friday why Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont Socialist, now apparently owns C-SPAN2, the answer — at least according to Arshad Hasan, Executive Director of Democracy for America (DFA) — is that he was following orders. This morning, Hasan sent this e-mail to DFA’s list:

It’s weeks like this that I’m reminded why I love working at DFA.
This week started off with a punch in the gut. The President had caved to Republican demands and agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts — not just to the middle class — but specifically to the very rich.
It was pretty awful news, but DFA members didn’t admit defeat. You told us that you were ready to fight — and fight we did.
On Monday, DFA members made over 12,000 calls to Congress demanding “No deal!” and joining thousands more calls made by members of MoveOn, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, CREDO Action, True Majority, and SEIU in a nationwide day of action.
On Tuesday, Senator Bernie Sanders on our DFA Live conference call with 5,000 DFA members committed to “do whatever it takes, including filibuster, to stop this deal.” Then, together with Sen. Sanders, we gathered signatures of over 50,000 Americans demanding Democrats in Congress reject the so-called tax “compromise.”
You know what? It worked.
On Thursday, House Democrats voted to reject the deal and Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she wouldn’t even bring it up for a vote. On Friday, Senator Sanders took to the Senate floor and held his own unconventional filibuster for hour after hour after hour. These bold leaders are showing everyone in Washington what it looks like when progressive Democrats stand up and fight for the middle class.
There’s no denying DFA members stood up, took action and delivered this week. You told us that you expected more from our leaders and together we delivered that message to Congress. You made them listen.
We’re not out of the woods yet. Corporate special interests are putting tremendous pressure on Democrats in Congress to cave and we need to keep fighting to make sure they stand strong.
I couldn’t be more honored to work with you every day. We can’t do the work that we do without you. Democracy for America depends on small contributions from members across the country to get the job done, so please contribute today so we have the resources to finish this tax cuts fight before Congress goes home for the holidays.
Please contribute $10 now and fuel our aggressive campaign to win.
Working together, we’re going to have a lot more weeks like this one.
-Arshad
Arshad Hasan, Executive Director
Democracy for America

Here’s a couple of screen shots from the DFA Web site to show how they’re promoting this “no deal” message:


So Hasan and DFA are taking credit for the Berniethon, the result of which will be . . .?

We don’t know yet. It is entirely possible that Democrats — who just suffered their biggest mid-term debacle since 1938 — will force so many changes to this compromise that Senate Republicans will be justified in saying, “No deal.”

And then everybody will get a tax increase on January 1.

Happy New Year!

What will then happen — as soon as the incoming House GOP majority is sworn in as the 112th Congress — is that Speaker Boehner and friends will pass a straight-up bill renewing the Bush tax cuts and making the old rates retroactive to Jan. 1. The Senate will then be forced to choose between passing this straight-up bill (not a compromise, no union-approved porky “sweeteners” for Democrats) or allowing the continuation of the higher tax rates. And every day the Senate delays passing that bill, more tax money will be drained from American paychecks, helping to prevent economic recovery.

All of which is to say, “Way to go, DFA! Way to ‘stand strong’ for your own political suicide! We’ll call your bluff and see how you like it in the 112th Congress, when John Boehner is ramming the GOP agenda down your throats!”

Remember when Obama said middle-class tax cuts were being held hostage by Republicans? No, it’s Democrats who are doing that, and Arshad Hassan just sent the ransom note.

Some people are too stupid to understand either economics or politics. We call these people “Democrats.”

I repeat: Thank you, Vermont!

Category: Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, Taxes, Vermont

Miley Cyrus Hits the Bong

Posted on | December 11, 2010 | 9 Comments

TMZ’s got video of 18-year-old Miley inhaling very deeply and getting a weird kind of silly. According to TMZ, however, the former Hannah Montana star wasn’t smoking marijuana, but a legal hallucinogenic herb called salvia.

My youngest daughter, who just turned 8, is a huge fan of Hanna Montana. Just sayin’ . . .

Category: Celebrities
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