Bogus Gold

Paul Krugman today:

"In a way, it was easy to take stands during the Bush years: the Bushies and their allies in Congress were so determined to move the nation in the wrong direction that one could, with a clear conscience, oppose all the administration’s initiatives."

To me this is the clearest explanation cum confession offered by an ostensibly thoughtful lefty about where the heck their common sense and intellectual integrity went during the past eight years. They left them behind "with a clear conscience," in the name of morally pure opposition.

Krugman is not an idiot. And yet anyone from quick-thinking geniuses to nose-picking morons knew exactly what Krugman's opinion was going to be about any issue for the past eight years - his opinion was the opposite of whatever the Bush administration supported. Krugman substituted a reliably pure strain of reactionism for thoughtful commentary and bleated it with all the gusto of an agitated sheep. Only now that scary Republicans do not inhabit the land's highest offices does he feel free again to flex his long neglected thinking parts.

Without getting into a whole "the media is biased" diatribe, this is the problem when media classes turn into left-right cliques. Krugman spent the last eight years in blind, unthinking opposition, and probably made himself more popular because of it. The lefties didn't want to hear careful thought about a Republican administration. They wanted their smart people to give them smart sounding justifications for their automatic opposition to everything that administration attempted. Krugman more than happily danced to that tune. The fact that this schtick works just as well for right-leaning pundits doesn't change the basic point - it's a fundamentally anti-intellectual approach to punditry. Rather than using reason to determine one's opinion, the opinion comes first and reason is used simply to justify it after the fact.

Now that the need for automatic rejection of an administration's efforts has passed, we're actually getting some punditry that doesn't start with a pre-determined conclusion. As an unintended consequence Paul Krugman is actually starting to become interesting again, and it's kind of amusing that this is something he himself realizes and admits, albeit not in quite those terms.

Don't get me wrong - he's still not right. He advocates the same collection of warmed over late 20th century liberalism as any of the other conventional lefty pundits. But at least now he feels like he has to explain it. And that makes a striking difference in his commentary.

I'll come back and do a proper take down of his bad opinions later. But for now I offer a simple congratulations and welcome back to a Man of the Left. You are once again becoming readable to people who don't necessarily share your conclusions, and that's an accomplishment I didn't think you had left in you.

Dave Brauer is reporting that T. D. Mischke has a new "radio" gig of a very interesting sort:

T.D. Mischke's radio show is moving to citypages.com.

The participants haven't confirmed this, but an informed source says the weekday streaming show starts Feb. 25, "airing" live 2-4 p.m. Mischke will also have a weekly column in the paper, and there's talk of Mischke videos as well.

If true this is very good news, and a really interesting arrangement. Tommy Mischke - the flashback to old time radio talent - would be moving to the Internet.

I still wish there was a way to pull up his show on a crackling AM broadcast after the sun goes down on a summer evening, like I used to in the old days. But KSTP took that version of Mischke away by moving him to mid day long before canning him.

This will bear watching. Minnesota's best radio talent leaving the broadcast airwaves behind for the digital world echoes something Jeff Jarvis noted today:

The local TV and radio business, once a privilege to be part of, is next to fall. Timber.

Hey all you gear-heads and radio club jocks, this one is for you.

Last week when the temps hit the second night in a row of around 25 degrees below zero, my car radio stopped picking up AM channels. I could hear FM stations loud and clear. AM stations all disappeared. I thought they'd come back when the weather warmed a bit, but they have not.

Any ideas on what happened and how to fix it?

Wow.

We all knew it was coming. But the reality of the Star Tribune filing for Chapter 11 is still a little stunning. It's not one of those minor "my, how things change" moments. It's smack upside the head with the "future is NOW" stick.

A few random thoughts about it:

• This isn't good news. I think our community is better served by having a profitable organization dedicated to putting in the hard work of reporting on more than just a volunteer, "when they feel like it" basis. There is certainly a new electronic age of journalism emerging. But it's not yet mature enough to replace the brick and mortar journalism of a local newspaper, however you spin it.



• This isn't entirely bad news either. The model was broken. No one was fixing it, just re-arranging and trying to milk profits where they could. No more of that. This is the first serious step in forming a realistic future for the Star Tribune (or whatever replaces them) in the new media age.



• The Star Tribune's web implementation, kludgy and frustrating as it often is, kicks the ass of most other old media efforts in that area. That's a good beginning.



• I really don't feel a lot of satisfaction here despite my lovable spats with many of the Star Tribunes more glaringly biased columnists and reporters in the past. I call attention to that stuff to shame the writers and rebut the arguments. I certainly wasn't hoping to see those people fired and thrown out on the street. There's a human element here that just ... sucks.



• Welcome to the future. It's on right now in the Twin Cities media market. However the Strib emerges from chapter 11, it won't be as a traditional newspaper the way you remember... because it's going to have to show how to turn a profit, and the old way can't do that any more. I'm hoping they recognize James Lileks as one of the key people within their organization to lead them into the new electronic age... in a way that doesn't abandon the past altogether. Wish I could say I had more than hopes to back that up.



• No guarantee the Strib will survive this at all, of course. It's hardly a sure thing. If not are we ready to be a "half a newspaper" town? (I refuse to concede that the Pioneer Press in current form is even trying to fulfill the entire role of a major metropolitan newspaper. I'll only credit them with half.)



• Word to the hard negotiating newspaper workers union: You lose. Start coping.

I'm a little puzzled as to why the recent Pravda article predicting an imminent new ice age is getting so much play in supposedly mainstream news sources. My puzzlement has two sources:

1. The mainstream media hasn't seemed much interested in the statements or work of climate scientists who have gone against the prevailing Global Warming mindset in the past.

2. It's Pravda. That's not a journalistic organ one normally takes at face value. I know there's no Soviet Union anymore, but Russia hardly has a tradition of a free press.

It's even more puzzling when you go into the article and discover they're not really talking about anything new. The article merely elaborates on the notion that we're sitting at what is likely the tail end of an inter-glacial period. We don't really know if the next ice age is a few years, a few hundred years, or a few thousand years away. We don't know this because we've never seen the beginning of an ice age before. Scientific knowledge about how to predict ice ages is, to put it kindly, a work in progress. Sure we think we have some idea about it. But until those thoughts allow us to successfully predict something it's merely a best guess.

Think about it this way. If you needed to know something of practical importance to your own life - say, for example, you wanted to know whether or not your investment portfolio was likely to go up in value if you made certain changes - you'd go to someone for advice only if they had some kind of history of making successful predictions about that kind of thing. You might not expect such a person to know with absolute certainty - after all, predicting future events is inherently an uncertain thing to some degree. But you would probably not go to someone with a record of making lots of investment predictions, but who had never been able to check how those predictions turned out. Confidence in this future predicting stuff is bolstered by experience in:

A. Making predictions.

and

B. Verifying results.

When it comes to the ice age prediction business we simply don't have anyone who has ever done the "B" part before. We couldn't have. The time the last ice age began was the era of the Neanderthal, sadly not known for its careful attention to the scientific method and unfortunately wanting in the record keeping department regardless.

I'm not saying it's never valuable or proper for a scientist to make predictions in such a circumstance. Making predictions is one of the things science does, and the subject matter doesn't always allow for easy testing of that prediction. However one needs to distinguish tried and true scientific predictions (things like: if you cut me, I shall bleed) from the untested kind (things like theories about the nature of undiscovered "dark matter" somewhere in the universe). The distinction must be made in an area summed up in one word: confidence. You can't be nearly as confident about the accuracy of an untested scientific prediction as the tested kind.

Clever readers might have caught on that I have this same problem with predictions made about global warming theory. It's very good at making predictions - about floods, droughts, hurricanes, the extent of sea ice, etc. It just doesn't like to wait for the predictions to be proven or disproven by real evidence before we MUST ACT with great certainty.

It's possible the Pravda article is intentionally written to make this very point in a wry way: "Look, we have even MORE evidence - millions of years worth - about a different climate prediction that can't be tested." It's possible, but I doubt it.

More likely it's a signal that crypto-Czar Putin has no intention of joining the G-8 in any carbon reduction plans, and would in fact prefer that the West continues to consume all the fossil fuels his country would like to sell us rather than making any of our own planned reductions. I just didn't realize Putin had the ability to plant such a propaganda piece in the middle of a reputedly professional media.

Thanks to MinnPost's David Brauer we find out why Tommy Mischke was fired from the man himself:

Q: What reason did management give you for firing you?

A: On the day I was fired, I was handed a transcript of a conversation I had with my producer two weeks earlier. I remembered the conversation. I had been curious to know where the jingle for [Hubbard-owned] Channel 45 had come from. It's the little sing-song way they say "45."

I wanted to know who came up with it, how many other ways they thought to sing it, what talent they hired to deliver the jingle and how many different takes there were. I suppose I just wanted to learn the backstory behind a modern corporate jingle.

I asked my producer to call them and ask them, knowing full well these are fellow Hubbard employees. My producer refused. I think he was just tired of me having him do various things while he was busy trying to answer the phone.

So I picked up the phone and called them myself, on the air. I phoned downstairs, a receptionist answered, and I asked to speak to someone at Channel 45. She said, “Just a minute” and put me on hold. I then put the entire call on hold and asked my producer if he'd now please speak to them off the air so as to get a sense of where that jingle came from.

That's what I was fired for. Making that call to the receptionist without getting her permission.

This doesn't exactly endear Hubbard Broadcasting to me. I understand the phone call was an FCC violation. I also understand Tommy made these kind of calls on the air all the freaking time on his show for seventeen years. Suddenly it's a "no warning" firing offense? No severence pay either? For a guy supporting his family? There's a basic level of decency and fairness missing here. Is it any wonder R. F. Moeller pulled their advertising from the station in response?

And when it comes to their programming it's not like KSTP has great talent beating down their door to get in. They've never recovered from the day they let Jason Lewis get away. Losing Limbaugh wasn't their fault, but it certainly didn't help. And now they kick to the curb an on-air talent written about in glowing terms in the local and national press? Like they come across those all the time when they make a new hire?

I fully realize radio is a business, and they're in it to make money. I realize Mischke's show was always more of a critics choice than a ratings success. But it doesn't sound like any of that played a factor in his dismissal. So all one is left with is a baffling WTF moment from a floundering radio station who probably can't afford to lose more listeners.

More thoughts after the jump...

I light of this, we have this:



I don't care about the recession and its effect on the middle class. Go buy some serious carats from R. F. Moeller, dammit. It's for Mischke.

Good lord how we'll miss him.

Who? Him. The most fiskable columnist to come along since... well that Fisk guy probably... is apparently getting the axe. (h/t Mitch) I'm talking about Nick "I'm Nobody's Monkey" Coleman, of course.

I mean just in the past week he wrote a column straining a Titanic metaphor in an attempt to blame the eeeeevil Republican governor for taking a trip abroad... which was highly symbolic of how the governor doesn't want to do anything to help Minnesotans because he won't raise taxes... which segues into the contention that we need a federal bailout for the Minnesota state government... which without transition leads back into a call to raise state taxes on the wealthy... because it goes without argument (Nick doesn't bother with any) that you simply can't think of shrinking state government in a time of acute budget deficit (and we're back to the Titanic metaphor)... and the Democrats are being wimpy for even trying to be nice to Republicans... and concludes with his punchline for a poignant call to action "Before the wheels come off." That's the powerful image Nick leaves his readers with: The wheels coming off... the Titanic.

That kind of column goes well beyond the usual whiny pap you get from your average liberal pundit. It's almost like the liberal media screed taken to the level of a crazy art form. It's not just a couple of lazy cliches and recycled old arguments twisted in support of a personal agenda cast in the name of the people. It's EVERY lazy cliche and recycled old argument twisted in support of Nick's personal agenda cast in the name of the people. And he so regularly does it in imitation bordering on parody of an old gumshoe reporter, with a "Press" tag sticking out of the band in his fedora while he chews on an old cigar banging away at his Royal typewriter. A little self-deprecating humor might soften the effect, but there's little evidence of that from Nick. He holds his "professional newsman" role with a seriousness crossing into pomposity.

If this buyout stuff leads to the end of Nick's columns (and if this round doesn't do it, the writing is on the wall), where shall the conservative league of snark turn for reliable mocking material?

Hey there fellow time wasters. As is well known, I take my reality television seriously. Well, if not always seriously, at least obsessively.

Today I'll offer a brief primer into my favorite kind of reality show that does not include commentary from a snarky Brit, stoned ex-cheerleader, and portly catch phrase spouter... Reality Food shows.


Top Chef (Bravo)

This is the top of the Reality Food heap in just about every regard. Bravo knows how to produce reality shows like nobody's business, as that's just about the entirety of their original programming any more.

Unlike most other Reality Food shows, the emphasis here is truly upon finding a great chef. Through all the weird challenges and curveballs thrown at the contestants by the producers this show actually does a pretty good job at keeping the focus on the food. They look for quality, originality, knowledge of ingredients and cooking skills, and the ability to adapt to most any situation.

The commentary and criticism offered by the judges is frequently insightful even when it's devastating. The judging panel is chaired by Tom Colicchio, a real chef with as serious cheffing credibility as one could hope for. The challenges often get goofy but the judging in the end always brings it back to making great food.

The other nice quality of this show is that it does a good job screening for chefs with real talent. No other reality food show comes close to the level of cooking skill shown by the cheftestants on Top Chef. That said, being a Bravo show, there is always plenty of drama in the personality interplay of the cheftestants. Somewhat Big Brother like, all these chefs are sequestered together in a house, isolated from the rest of the world. It gets a bit claustrophobic and tense as the pressure builds at times. That gives the show its heroes and villains; it's comedians and drama queens. Consequently, by the end of the season there are serious fan favorites here to an extent not seen on other Reality Food shows.

If you watch only one Reality Food show, this is the one to choose.


Hell's Kitchen (Fox)

While the promotions for this show focus on host/chef Gordon Ramsay's profanity and insults, that's not really all this show is about. But it's also not really about the food - at least not much. This show is about the ability to work in and eventually run a top caliber kitchen under high pressure and with the highest standards. The interest is in seeing which contestants can't handle the pressure as the orders pile up, which don't have the cooking skills, and which can't handle the criticism. Anyone who has actually worked in a real restaurant will be able to attest that they may exaggerate the experience, but it's close enough to the real thing to draw real lessons from it.

Ramsay himself seems to hold all the contestants in utter contempt initially. The ones who make it about half way through begin earning his grudging respect. And by the end he transforms into a proud poppa effusive in praise for whomever manages to win. Imagine a boot camp complete with barking drill instructor intent on breaking down his recruits only to build them up again as proper soldiers... only set it in a kitchen and lose the weakest member each day until only one is left. That's Hell's Kitchen.

The contestants here are a mixed bag, apparently by design. There's always a couple of professional chefs tossed in with caterers, hobbyists, line cooks, and personal chefs.

It's a decent show if you have interest in how to run a restaurant kitchen, or want to learn creative new insults (I never realized calling someone a "donkey" could sound so demeaning); but it's not too deep on the food side.


Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (Fox)

Because of the success of Hell's Kitchen, Fox brought one of Gordon Ramsay's other BBC shows over to America, Kitchen Nightmares. The premise of the show is simple: Find a restaurant going out of business, bring in Gordon Ramsay for a week to try to turn it around, let the drama and hillarity ensue. Sometimes this works well. Sometimes it's almost painful to watch.

It should be noted that the BBC version of this show is quite a bit better than the Fox version. Fox, typical to stereotype, emphasizes anything with shock value, and lays on the family drama very thickly. This takes screen time away from the actual restaurant turnaround process. Fox also gives Ramsay the unrealistic advantage of several thousand dollars of cash to invest in the restaurant to help turn it around, which is something not many restaurants struggling to survive have lying around. The more understated BBC version didn't do this, and it made for a more compelling and real feeling show as a result.

Anyway, Ramsay is a wildly successful restaurateur, and this show demonstrates that a lot more goes into that than simply being a good chef. The restaurants chosen come in most any sort, from burgers to fine dining to ethnic cuisine. It doesn't really matter what style of food they're trying to sell as this is a show about how to run a business that happens to be a restaurant. Major emphasis on the business side distinguishes this from the rest of the Reality Food world. Also, this one is not a contest show. The "prize" is in the attempt to keep the restaurants from bankruptcy.

There's plenty of excellent advice offered here that many a restaurant owner should find helpful. That said, Ramsay definitely has his own preferences that come through as a bit cookie-cutter when you've watched enough of these.


The Next Food Network Star (Food Network)

You would think that if anyone "gets" how to make a compelling Reality Food show it would be this network. You would think that and you would be wrong. Half of the reason I watch this show is to see how badly they've mangled the contest angle here considering their ostensible goal of finding a "star" to give an actual television show to. Because this show is so bad at doing this, you wouldn't know that they've gone through four seasons already. Stars produced? One. Guy Fieri. And if you watched that season you realize he only narrowly made it, even though it was completely obvious he was the only one with any star potential in the lot.

And that's the thing that is so frustrating about this show. Based on the kind of challenges that form the basis of the show you'd think they're looking for someone who can cook excellent food really, really fast; and also able to improvise well in totally unfamiliar situations with no forewarning; and someone who can entertain a live audience; and someone who can innovate brand new dishes with unfamiliar ingredients upon demand. But in the end you find the winner doesn't apply any of that. The winner gets a show... a taped, half hour cooking show. They don't have to whip up things they don't know how to make. They know perfectly well what their set and equipment will be. They don't have a live studio audience. They don't have to start and finish a single dish in an alloted time. So how the heck to most off the challenges they put the contestants to even apply toward finding their "star"? They mostly don't.

And that makes this the most pointless and confused of the whole Reality Food world. Best leave this one alone unless you're really desperate for entertainment. I watch it so you don't have to.

You know what I'd like to see more of in the press? Lack of curiosity. When a major public official says he has no connection to some crime or scandal I'd like them just to take his word. Heck, it would be even better if they didn't wait for such a denial. Just assume the best. People wouldn't have voted for a major politician unless he was a pretty stand up guy in the first place, right? Well... mostly. I mean you may get a few bad apples in the bunch, but they shouldn't affect the way reporters handle politicians in general.

Let's say, for example, a young politician without much of a record rockets to the top tier of a political party in a state riddled with corruption. A cynical business-as-usual reporter might start making inquiries, asking questions, and entertaining some of the very worst possible scenarios explaining his success.

Wouldn't it be a lot better to just believe in the exception proving the rule? It's not like every single politician is corrupt, so why not just let it go. Don't ask questions. Don't investigate. Just... move on to happier things.

After all, isn't that what a free press is for: disseminating comfortable disclaimers protecting the powerful so we can all sleep easier at night?

I'm glad some in the media are finally getting on board with this new style of journalism, rather than wallowing in the negative. Who would really benefit by a reporter getting all suspicious about the relation between something like this and this?

Happy media assumptions of squeaky clean political leaders emerging from apparently very corrupt political environments. That's change we can believe in!

A tragic day in Twin Cities radio. Tom "T.D." Mischke, the last truly original radio talent in the Twin Cities metro, was fired today.

I will have more to say about this. For now I just turn to Mitch and flip a choice finger in the direction of Hubbard Broadcasting.

I'm back. November was a bad month. I'll get into that another time. For now I present something with about as much weightiness and gravitas as I can muster... my observations of a bunch of television shows which I have watched over the past few months.

Some are already off the air, but I finally saw the DVD's. Others are still airing now. One is still airing now, but already cancelled. The only common thread is... I watched them. Here are my thoughts:


Arrested Development - Whole Series

Probably the best situation comedy of all time. I can’t praise this series highly enough. I, like most everyone else, missed this one while it was originally broadcast, which is the primary reason it was cancelled. Stupid me. This show took the best elements of so many great television comedies and made them even better. It had inside jokes and running gags that made the show funnier and more rewarding the longer you watched. It had clever characters who developed in unexpected and usually hilarious ways over time; and they were played by a terrific cast of actors. It had mystery. It had morality cleverly hidden within the comedy of misunderstanding and basic human frailty. It made clever call outs to other shows and pop-culture references without getting cute about it. Most of all it was just darned original, consistently funny, and never predictable. I can’t think of a single television comedy belonging in this league except perhaps John Cleese’s classic Fawlty Towers. Cleese only kept that level of excellence up for twelve episodes with a comparatively tiny ensemble. Arrested Development ran for three seasons with an enormous cast. Advantage for difficulty – Arrested Development.


Kath & Kim - First Season

Yech, what a dog. I really wanted to like this show due to Molly Shannon and John Michael Higgins. But the writing… oof! It seems to spoof only things that are obvious, safe, and dull while turning its yawner plots into banal morality plays by the end. The idea seems to be that Kath and Kim are shallow and clueless materialists, and the smitten men in their lives are devoted to enabling their worst instincts in their attempts to woo them. Hilarity ought to ensue, but doesn’t. Plus Kath & Kim, being mother and daughter, have this whole generational angle which could make for some additional yucks. But also doesn’t. Watched the first three expecting it to get better. When it didn’t I had no desire to see the fourth.


It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Whole Series

The South Park of non-animated comedy. A good deal of the humor of this show comes from exceeding your expectations of how far they will go to shock you. So far they’ve continued to make that work. There’s also shades of Seinfeld in the notion that every one in the ensemble is largely unlikable when you think of meeting such a person in the real world. Yet for comedy purposes you find yourself drawn in by their quirks and choosing favorites (I’m partial to Charlie, for the record). The humor is often crude and usually over the top – which is again like South Park. This is not a drawing room comedy by any means, but it’s damned funny on its own terms. If you can laugh at South Park’s third graders trying to get an elephant to make love to a pig, you can laugh at Always Sunny’s social misfits mistakenly believing they’ve developed a hunger for human flesh or unraveling the plot of "Who pooped the bed?" Really, you can. I tested this.


The Office – Fifth Season

Is it just me, or is something seriously missing from this season’s show? I was a huge fan for the first four seasons. Steve Carell remains consistently hilarious as Michael Scott. John Krasinki is as dead-pan brilliant as ever as Jim Halpert. Rainn Wilson is still excellent playing the alienesque-straight man Dwight Schrute. Maybe the problem is that they wrote themselves into too many uninteresting corners by the end of last season. Jan’s no longer in charge. Nor is Ryan. Pam is out of town from the rest most of the season. The new HR lady gets transferred away and written out just when her subplot relationship with Michael got going. The Andy/Angela engagement with Dwight lurking in a secret triangle gets little focus, even though it’s one of the few elements in the season that seems to be working (Dwight applying to Cornell to mess with Andy was the funniest bit of the season). I dunno. I like this show enough on the basis of the first four seasons to keep watching, but I really hope this season is a temporary and fixable problem rather than a writer burnout.


Buffy the Vampire Slayer - First & Second Seasons

Hey, another one that turned out as good as its reputation. And another Joss Whedon show I only saw via Netflix after it was off the air. I made it through the first two seasons of this one, and am definitely hooked. Sure there is some silliness, but as the show rarely takes itself too seriously this somehow works. Like other Whedon works, this one is hard to categorize. It’s an action show. It’s a comedy. It’s a horror show. It’s well written. It’s unafraid to write out characters that aren’t really doing anything for the show and replace them with new characters who work. It’s unafraid to write out characters that DO work for the show for the sake of furthering a compelling story. Most of the episodes are self-contained, but there are enough long-running story arcs to hold a season together. I was already a Whedon fan after Firefly and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog. Now I’m even more so.


Heroes – Third Season

I never watched the first two seasons of this show. But out of boredom I watched them via Netflix as the third season approached. I was hooked. I thought he first season was okay, but the second season really wound me in. The weird thing is I think the third season might be my favorite so far, yet for the ratings and critics I am clearly in the minority opinion here. Alright, there are some things that do bother me. Syler turns from evil to good to gullible stooge at the drop of a hat this season. I write that off as “mentally f’d up” and roll with it. It’s made for some good sub-plots. Claire Bennet often gets so whiney and self-absorbed it’s annoying this season. I write that up as “realistic portrayal of a typical teenager.” Solar eclipses last minutes, not hours, and a full eclipse is a local rather than global event. But that's all stuff I can let go. Hiro Nakamura remains funny and fantastic. Matt Parkman is angst-ridden and soul-searching as usual. The Petrelli intra-family feud works well. The rival company to “The Company” adds new depth and intrigue. I dunno… I have a feeling this one is about to be canceled for a lot of the wrong reasons.


Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles - Whole Series

Meh. It’s alright. It’s certainly more action-oriented than most other shows, so if you’re into that kind of thing… this is the kind of thing you’d like. The characters are lucky if they get to express two whole dimensions (and very few of them have the excuse that they’re playing robots to give justification). Every plot seems to boil down to mixing and matching the following elements “Run away! Set a trap! Shootout! Make something/someone explode! Hide! Escape! Car chase!” There’s some attempt at character development along the way, but it’s pretty bad, and largely confined to trying to bring out the human in the helpful terminator or trying to understand the need to prioritize survival over living a normal life. This gets old after a single episode, and it’s been carried on tediously for a couple of seasons here. I haven’t watched many of these episodes, but I catch one now and then when I have nothing better to do.


My Own Worst Enemy - First (and last) Season

Better than expected. Not good enough to keep watching. I saw the first three episodes and decided I had better ways to spend my time rather than catch the fourth. I hear it has already been cancelled. I won’t miss it. Christian Slater works better on the small screen than I thought he would though.


The Middleman - First Season

Remember the hilarious animated comic book superhero The Tick, and how they tried to make it into a live action television comedy and how it totally sucked and failed within the first season? You don’t? Good, then you can watch THIS animated comic book hero turned into a television comedy without all the baggage. Anyway, this one is everything the other series failed to be. It’s funny. It’s smartly written. Its gags don’t get in the way of the plot, let alone get mistaken for the plot. The dialogue is crisp, witty, and loaded with humor even in erstwhile dry exposition. It defies conventional expectations for character development. It captures a “Dr. Who” like sense for making the normally absurd into compelling drama at times. I really like this show, and hope it runs for many seasons. And it's on ABC Family! Who knew they were making good shows?


House - Season Five

Continues its run of awesomeness. Week in, week out, this is my most reliable for "cracking good television." I rather like how House's old team has transitioned to their new roles, yet still manage to get wound into enough plots in a plausible way to keep them involved in a non-stupid manner. Amber's death was stunning and handled brilliantly. The House/Wilson feud was painful in the way it was meant to be. This is the only show on television that consistently shows that a "formula" (i.e. baffling medical case solved every week) need not be creatively limiting.


Fringe - First Season

I loathe this show more than I ought to. It's really not terrible. I suppose it's even kind of good in spots. I just can't get over how fantastically it underwhelms given the hype. I liken it to taking the X-files, throwing out the interesting character development for flat and predictable stereotypes; throwing out plausible FBI professionalism for sensational Hollywood drama cops; throwing out hints and clues of the supernatural which defy easy explanation for over-the-top science-fiction-is-real plot devices; and throwing out complex and ephemeral conspiracies for a "conspiracy" so simplistic and obvious you spot it in the pilot episode. Then recast the whole thing without so much talent. That's Fringe.


Helpful link: Hulu has a bunch (not all) of the above available for online viewing.

'Yah, I know the Frat Boys hate the Fratellis on the basis of politics. Not too helpful. Most of the best artists of our (probably any) generation endorse sucky politics.

The thing is, the first Fratelli album was freaking awesome! It was all punky yet dancy and introspective, yet only to the extent it made it even better. It was pretty much the perfect album for its genre and its age. Infectious. A bevy of hit singles to choose from. Hitting the right notes for the time.

Then comes the latest. And... what the heck happened?!

All at once there's nothing threatening. Nothing challenging. Nothing interesting. It's all so safe... so formulized... And the weird thing is the formulas don't seem to follow the previous album at all. They're some kind of bland "this should be more accessible" formula only a soulless studio drone might have preferred. Makes the whole thing tedious. Seriously.

I listened to the Fratelli's initial offering so often I almost wore out my headphones. I'm having a hard time thinking why I would subject myself to a listening of their next album again without payment.

Rating of the Fratellis first album: "Costello Music": 5 out of 5.

Rating of the Fratellis second album: "Here We Stand": 2 out of 5 stars.

I know it has happened before. But nothing is so fresh in my mind as this complete fall from GOOD.

Exhibit A in why I listen to less and less talk radio: Watch conservative talker Kevin James get pinned to the mat with ease by Chris Matthews over a wee historical point James had raised.

It's not that I expect everyone in the world to posses an encyclopedic command of every historical detail. But those who want to rant and demagogue over the appeasement of Neville Chamberlain should damn well crack open a book, or at very least consult Wikipedia, before attempting to lecture the nation about its applicability to a modern situation.

Chris Matthews is an intellectual lightweight about such things. But he toyed with James so easily before swatting him aside it was pathetic. Too many conservative talkers these days merely have the talk part. They replace intellectual firepower with a fair to middlin' stylistic aping of the genre's big dogs. Shall I name some names? Sean Hannity (obviously) is the king of this game. But Mike Gallagher didn't get the job due to his incredible intellect either. On the flip side Laura Ingraham is surely smart enough but she plays the role like a successful con job far too often. Michael Savage is so smart he turned an outright parody of the style into a hugely lucrative career.

But the act works. P. T. Barnum said no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public, and this whole talk radio industry tests that more and more.

For the record, the answer to Matthews' cocksure assertion that, "What Chamberlain did wrong was give Hitler half of Chekoslovakia" is...

No, you idiot. Chamberlain allowed a weaker power in constant violation of international treaties to bully the stronger free world time after time after time, watching passively as this same weaker power built itself to military parity and eventually superiority to his own nation. By the time Munich came around in 1938 Chamberlain's political career was so deeply vested in appeasement he could not politically afford to take a firm stand. He felt compelled to prove appeasement worked, rendering war unnecessary. Chamberlain watched Germany renounce Versailles, march into the Rhineland, annex Austria, flaunt military re-armament agreements, and on and on and on. His continual unwillingness to forcefully stand up to this early on in favor of keeping relations warm and communications open was one of the leading causes of the Second World War. Post-war documents show how weak Hitler's cause was. Any of half a dozen major showdowns with the West might have deposed Hitler by internal German opposition, because he could not afford to lose any of them. But because of Chamberlain's constant caving in to Germany's increasingly outrageous demands and actions he made Hitler look stronger and stronger and stronger among the German people. Chamberlain watched a yipping pup the allies could have kicked to the curb easily grow into a fearsome monster capable of destroying civilization because he was so committed to the principle of appeasement that he could be played the fool by anyone who didn't share his personal devotion to peace at any price. Munich was merely the capstone on the grave of appeasement. The plot itself was dug over years and years by a constant policy.

This is stuff Democrats like John F. Kennedy considered a basic lesson of the Second World War. Neither America's pig-headed disengagement from the world, nor Chamberlain style appeasement must be allowed to enable another power-hungry dictator to threaten the world's peace again. The partisan opposition to this perspective used to come from the Taft wing of the Republican Party (who favored the isolationist rather than appeasement position it should be noted). Now this new Chamberlainism bubbles up from many in the Democratic rank and file who seem to believe, like Matthews, that anything short of a full-blown Munich sellout to aggressive dictators is not a mistake. Because it averts war and war is bad, mmkay? That this happens to be precisely Chamberlain's foreign policy (remembering that Munich came as a crisis that nearly drove even Chamberlain himself to declare war) totally escapes them.

But I doubt Chris Matthews wants me on his show regardless. And I'm sure as hell not wasting my time trying to educate the talker-pretender. So pass the word along if you care.

As the Obamessiah's poll numbers recover from that embarrassingly off-script crazy pastor saga (largely due to a return to the hands-off media coverage that enabled his rise in the first place), the Democratic presidential race is returning to a study writ-large regarding the mental state of the Democratic electorate. To the extent you can set aside your belief that voters are by and large rational creatures it has its own special fascination. Especially in contrast to the substance that characterized the parallel Republican race earlier.

Let's reflect on that latter point for a moment. In the Republican primary there was much fluff and pompery attempted by many candidates trying to skate past the issues with airy proclamations that they represented the next Ronald Reagan. Time after time this strategy failed, as voters held candidates accountable for their positions on immigration (which almost sank McCain's campaign last summer), war (which resurrected McCain's campaign in the winter), domestic security, federal spending, the environment, and many more. The important thing was, there were clear differences between the Republican candidates regarding their policies around these issues, and what the candidates themselves represented. Rudy Giuliani was seen as the social liberal who would be a foreign policy hawk and a law and order guy at home. Mitt Romney was the guy who adopted all the right socially conservative positions (but perhaps too conveniently close in time to his presidential run) and brought a whiz-bang understanding of private sector business wisdom. John McCain was the "maverick" who may occasionally thwart his own party but possessed of an iron sense of honor, who would never compromise with terrorists and who's resume gave instant credibility over matters of war and peace. The list goes on (Huckabee, Thompson, Hunter, etc.). These were candidates with DEEP resumes and considerable track records of accomplishments by which to measure them, forcing them to explain themselves to one another and to the electorate exhaustively.

Flash over to the Democratic race and one finds plenty of candidates with equally impressive resumes (Biden, Richardson, Dodd). The difference was how little impact they made upon the race, while inexperienced candidates with little to offer but rhetoric soared to the top of the polls. Obama, Edwards, and yes, Hillary.

It should be remembered that Hillary Clinton is only an "experienced politician" in the least conventional sense of the word. Yes, she's been close to matters of the utmost political importance for decades as First Lady of Arkansas and then of the United States. But after the one major political issue she had unquestionable accountability for (Hillarycare) went down in flames, she was carefully protected from clear positions of authority or accountability until she became a U. S. Senator years later. Her Senate record is weighty compared to Obama and Edwards, but hardly compared to most anyone else. And when it comes to matters of policy substance, it has been pointed out repeatedly there's almost no difference between Obama and Hillary (Edwards offered a slightly stronger whiff of anti-capitalism, but he's gone now and both remaining candidates have subsequently adopted his populist rhetoric too when necessary).

The real question is, what the heck is going on in the Democratic race? Why has that entire party chucked experience out the window and driven themselves mad over a choice between two major unknowns? Why has half the nation decided they could chant words like "hope" and "progress" and not have to worry about being bitten by the far more consequential presidential traits like "inexperience" and "ambition" in the end?

I think a keen look into part of the answer comes in this revealing piece in New York Magazine today attempting to rationalize the media's crush on Obama.

Contrary to the vast-left-wing-conspiracy visions of the right, much of the press never really loved the Clintons—they just feared and loathed their enemies more. The first people I ever heard viciously ragging on Bill Clinton, early in 1992, were a liberal reporter covering him and a writer then working as a Democratic staffer on the Hill. Part of it was visceral suspicion of the Clintonian political M.O. and character. And part of it, I think, was a kind of half-conscious intragenerational resentment.

Despite conservative conspiracy theories to the contrary, this jives very well with my memories of the Clinton era. The media would fall all over themselves to cover for the Clintons, but became exhausted and frustrated in the effort. They needed the Clintons because they knew how to win against Republicans. They had no one else on deck who seemed capable, as the subsequent George W. Bush presidency bitterly taught them. One has to remember, Democrats always believe their Republican opponent is unbelievably worse than their nominee. They thought Carter and Mondale were clearly superior to Ronald Reagan. Michael Dukakis was clearly superior to George H. W. Bush. And of course Al Gore, John Kerry, and any random third grader were clearly superior to George W. Bush. So to them this strange ability to win the presidency has little to do with the quality of their candidate. It all has to do with some mysterious formula of winning over the rubes who keep getting it wrong. The Clintons seemed to have this magical touch, and it grudgingly won over the liberal media.

That, in a nutshell, was at the heart of Hillary's once "inevitable" nomination. She didn't have to prove she was better than the other Democrats. It was presumed any Democratic candidate would be "better." The Clintons weren't about "better," they were about "winning."

So how the heck did Obamania emerge amid all this? Now we come to the most interesting part (subsequent emphasis mine).

...it’s ironic that the media and their fellow upscale Americans are now disposed to like Obama precisely because he resembles them in so many ways. The difference is he’s relatively unsullied, an exquisite, idealized version of themselves: educated, thoughtful, twigged to nuance, a lovely writer, well-traveled, witty, cool, dignified, candid, a little quixotic, a clued-in grown-up but not yet ruined by the ugly facts of Washington life.

And, mirabile dictu, a perfectly postmodern embodiment of compromise between the hard binaries of race and age. He’s both white and black. Born on the very cusp of the baby boom and Generation X, he’s both oldish and youngish. And as a skinny, athletic, gentle-seeming, virtually metrosexual man, he nearly splits the difference on gender as well.

What we're seeing here is the triumph of egotism over compromise. If Hillary Clinton's appeal was that she had that mysterious "winning" formula, Barack Obama's appeal is to every Democrat who believes they themselves know how to win too. It's as if a mass movement all believe that, "Sure John Kerry and Al Gore and Michael Dukakis, and on and on might not understand it. But I, (insert individual upscale Democrat's name here), am smarter than them. I know how to beat those nasty Republicans. And look - there's a candidate that is like an 'idealized version of myself.' He and I don't need Hillary in order to win the White House. It's a new era and finally people like me are calling the shots."

Why would a mass of people come to believe this all together? Because Obama's campaign rhetoric is an explicit demagogic appeal to this impulse. "We are the change we've been waiting for" is the thing in a nutshell, swelling the vanity of the individual voter into a cult of personality around Obama.

So where does Obama's appeal increasingly fall flat? Among anyone who looks at Obama and is unable to see their own idealized reflection. Don't take my word for it. Here's how the same article describes them:

Uneducated white people, residents of the so-called C and D counties, and the elderly—in other words, Hillary Clinton voters

There's a serious implication here, which I think Republican strategists ought to chew on. Hillary Clinton remains far and away the candidate more likely to win over any Republican in November. Why? Because while those "uneducated white people, etc." may not be enough in number to sway the Democratic nomination, they're far more significant in the general election.

Obama's cult of personality is built around a shared ego-trip. Hillary's campaign is (now that she's had to actually battle to win the thing) built around tough campaigning and often shameless pandering campaigning to the key demographics that swing elections. You want to know the Clinton's special "winning formula"? That's it.

With most every other key indicator favoring the Democrats in the general election, that Clinton "winning formula" is positioned perfectly for a November victory. Voters are by and large ready for a new party in the White House. Perhaps the Republican "maverick" represents enough of a break from the Bush presidency to suffice, but I wouldn't bet upon it. I don't like John McCain's chances against Hillary Clinton in November at all. But, of course, Obama stands a very good chance of keeping her name off the ticket.

Nick "Your Schools Are Burning!" Coleman, turns his excitable mind and simile-laden prose to a serious issue today: his inability to write a coherent column.

Oh, also he is apparently against people being shot. I presume there's some lobby in favor of this he wants us to oppose, but that first point seems to get in his way of pointing out whom this might be and how we ought to go about it. There's some blather in there about Glocks and gun sales, but also Minnesota shootings which may have nothing to do with either Glocks or legally obtained firearms; and there's a whole lot about an unintentionally funny demonstration at the state capitol. Oh heck, let's just take a lookie...

I went to a die-in at the State Capitol on Wednesday, marking the anniversary of last year's slaughter at Virginia Tech, where a deranged kid killed 32.

I brought my Glock.

Alright, so Nick went into a "die-in" at Minnesota's State Capitol to commemorate an undoubtedly tragic killing... in Virginia. Clearly those Minnesota legislators are slacking if they're supposed to be accounting for legislative problems in Virginia. Virginia, Minnesota I believe they've got somewhere in the docket. Virginia, as in one of the original thirteen colonies? Not so much. Thanks for breaking this story Nick!

But the truly shocking statement here is that Nick - a self-described licensed concealed gun permit holder - chose to bring his gun to an anti-gun rally! Wow! That's totally a man-bites-dog kind of story! I can't wait to read the significance of this interesting symbolic act!

I didn't really.

Oh. Never mind. He made it up, because engaging in an act of actual irony is so much harder than not doing it and saying you did.

For the record I am reacting to this Nick Coleman column while enjoying his incredible mastery of prose.

Not really.

It would have been weird and crazy to take a gun to an event marking a massacre, especially the very kind of gun used in the massacre. But then again, this country is weird and crazy about guns.

Weirder and crazier to take a gun you're legally licensed to carry along with you than it is to begin a column about the event claiming that you did? I'm not so sure.

I mean if he'd kept the thing concealed and didn't start a spree killing would anyone have actually noticed? See this is where the anti-gun nuts and gun-nuts ought to be able to find some common ground. The firearm in question surely holds the potential for dangerous misuse. But considering that most police forces in the United States equip their officers with the exact same gun Nick is bloviating about today, it's hardly a case where the mere presence of a Glock causes people to start dying. Must we freak out like we're making some nonsensical syllogism every time we see a model of a gun some maniac once used (A mad man killed innocent people with a Glock. Than guy has a Glock. Therefore that guy must be a mad man about to start another killing spree. Eeek!!!)?

I went to a local gun store Wednesday (I have a permit) and found I could get a nifty Glock 19 -- the 9-millimeter semiautomatic model that Cho Seung-Hui used on April 16, 2007 -- for less than what Cho spent.

He bought his Glock for $571 at a Roanoke, Va., gun store. I could have purchased one Wednesday for $550.

It was on sale! Who says Americans don't celebrate history?

I know... the lack of any transition here is kind of jarring to the uninitiated Nick Coleman reader. I should have warned you. And no, I didn't cut out anything. Nick jumped from pretending to carry a gun to a "die-in" at the Minnesota State Capitol to pricing the very gun he was pointedly NOT going to have with him at the event immediately after confessing he would never, ever consider such a "weird and crazy" thing.

And apparently Nick thinks prices should be driven by moral outrage, rather than supply and demand, or the desire of a store owner to turn a profit. A Glock firearm - specifically one of the most common and popular models of one of the most common and popular hand guns in the world - must never come down in price, since a crazy guy once used it to massacre people. In Nick's world that's just common sense. In the real world we have a term for this. It's abbreviated: WTF??!!

The die-in (it was called a lie-in, actually)

...except by Nick Coleman until just now...

...was organized by Protect Minnesota, an umbrella group representing five gun-control organizations pushing for tighter rules on sales and universal background checks on buyers. Thirty-two people wore black T-shirts that said, "Minnesotans Against Being Shot" as well as ribbons of maroon and orange (Virginia Tech's colors) made by families of the victims. One by one, to the solemn beat of a drum, they went down on the Capitol steps and remained motionless, as if asleep.

So... the point of a bunch of people lying down on the Capitol steps was to make people think they were... sleeping? The topic of guns makes people too sleepy or something? I mean, the fact that there's a lobby who thinks they're uniquely opposed to being shot makes me kind of giggle. The fact that people want the Minnesota legislature to do something about campus safety in Virginia makes me groan. But what is this strange reference to sleeping? I mean, didn't Nick call this thing a "die-in" when even the organizers didn't? So shouldn't the reference be "as if dead" rather than "as if asleep"? What's the point of talking about sleeping here at all?

It was like the state Senate, but without the pompous speeches.

Oh. It was all just to set up ... that. He'll be here all week, folks. Tip your waitress.

OK, it was one of those media events that is easy to mock...

Actually, a lot easier to ignore until Nick put his unique stylings on the proceedings.

...and, indeed, it was mocked by a few underemployed members of the gun-rights lobby who couldn't resist the temptation to spoil a somber moment by holding up frat boy signs to the effect that a teacher or student packing heat could have stopped the carnage, which is the kind of thing I wonder about when a cop gets shot.

Funny how those cops continue to carry firearms, eh? I mean... they just get shot anyway. What's the point?

And for the record, I have no problem with juvenile demonstrations receiving juvenile responses. Acting "somber" is not an adequate stand in for being mature and serious about a topic.

Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people. And sometimes people with guns kill other people with guns. It's as complicated as our feelings, and nobody's come up with a convincing response to slaughters such as Virginia Tech, especially proposals to let college kids carry guns on campus. Rep. Tony Cornish, a Republican from Good Thunder, introduced one such obscenely timed proposal Wednesday. Are you kidding, Cornish? Have you ever been to a kegger at Mankato or St. Cloud or the U of M and thought, "Cool! I hope these dudes have guns!"

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the idea of the bill was to hand out firearms as freely as stale beer at drunken frat parties. As someone who - allegedly - completed Minnesota's process for legally acquiring a concealed carry permit, Nick would probably be better suited than most to point out the actual merits or detriments of any such bill. You know, how many college students would be able to meet the requirements and based on that how likely they might be to provide any change in protection in cases like the shooting in question - that kind of thing.

Yet, Nick being Nick, he can't resist reverting to the same kind of baseless jibes you could draw from any lefty yokel. Colleges are basically Animal House because that's snarkable when we're considering allowing the students to apply for concealed carry licenses. They're tender places of serious learning populated by our precious next generation only when they're facing down the other side of the gun barrel.

The die-in folks [wasn't it a "lie-in" or perhaps "sleep in" just moments ago? - ed.] had a spot of trouble with choreography. At first, they began prostrating themselves from the west end of a line of "victims," but that was wrong. They regrouped, helped the first few victims back to their feet and resumed falling down from the other end of the line as planned. You ever have one of those days?

One of those days where I needed to pad a column, so I started tossing in damn near anything I had in my notes regardless of how relevant it was to the point I forgot I was trying to make? Can't say that I have.

As silly as it was, it produced an emotional response. Some of the folks falling down were real-life parents of gun victims in the Twin Cities, and it is hard to see 32 people on the ground (I could only count 31, despite several tries) without a twinge of horror at the senselessness of the violence in the world.

Alright this column is starting to get random and senseless in its own horrific way. Nick counted 31 people over and over and came away convinced he saw 32 people on the ground. Which we earlier learned made Nick think they looked asleep. And somehow this whole package - we are to conclude - is impossible to witness without a jarring revelation about senseless violence worldwide. This from the guy who counts to 31 and apparently has a "twinge" making him unexplainably leap to 32.

One of the real-life victims' moms was Doris Thomas, whose 15-year-old son, Tony, was gunned down in north Minneapolis two years ago.

Wait... her son was gunned down in north Minneapolis? Tragic as that may be, wasn't this about concealed carry laws on college campuses? Or the sale price of Glock 19's? Or commemorating the tragedy of a year ago in Virginia? Oh wait... we must be on to the senselessness of violence now.

"It was very serene," said Thomas of her time lying on the steps, "dead." "I didn't have any strong thoughts or a vision. I just thought about my son and how there was truth to the words we are saying."

So were they lying "dead", "asleep", or just "serenely." This column has taken all three positions, and it's almost over. Will we ever know for sure? How random and senseless.

Then there's this matter of Nick quoting someone talking about the truth of the words they were saying, and not bothering to clue us in on what those words actually were. Welcome to your role as a mere prop for another one of Nick Coleman's egotistical ramblings Doris.

The Virginia Tech killer shouldn't have gotten a gun, because he should have been in a psychiatric ward. Virginia closed that loophole two weeks after the 32 died. But there remain many loopholes to shut, including in Minnesota, where some unlicensed sellers can still sell guns to unknown buyers without background checks. To tighten those laws is not anti-gun. It is pro-safety.

So, wait... the loophole which allowed the killer in question to get a gun has been closed. In Virginia. So that's not really the issue here. This protest in Minnesota was important because there are "many loopholes to shut." Umm... gosh, that sounds like it might deserve a column to point out what those might be... oh darn, Nick's almost out of space.

"It's harder to transfer title to my fishing boat than a gun," said St. Paul City Council Member Lee Helgen, who was displaying a gun shot map showing that the area north of the Capitol was well-sprayed with gunfire last month.

"Something is broken."

Yes, but the warranty on Nick has expired, so we have to keep him anyway. Ha! I keed.

Seriously, where in any of this was it established that Minnesota is having a problem stemming from the legal transfer of firearms? Because a bunch of shooting happened last month in Frogtown? Were any of these shootings the result of legally transferred firearms resulting from a specific legislative "loophole" we're supposed to support closing because they're somehow related to the spree killing at Virginia Tech last year?

Oh, if only some local columnist cared enough to look into such a matter to let us know! Don't bother Nick though. He's all done in his characteristic "I only care to the extent I don't have to research anything I can't easily Google" style, he's finished with the topic.

What we've learned:

A. Nick totally did not carry a Glock to a small demonstration of gun-control activists at the State Capitol. Suck on that, gun nuts!

B. If Nick counts to 31 several times it equals 32.

C. There are dangerous, unspecified loopholes regarding the transfer of firearms which Nick believes ought to be closed.

D. You don't have to write very well or make much sense to have your own column in the Star Tribune.

I've never bought Laura Ingraham's "I'm an authentic heartland conservative" act. Call me crazy, but the likelihood that an Ivy League educated lawyer from Connecticut just coincidentally grew up to love Nascar, country music, and a muscular U. S. foreign policy right at the moment blonde conservative chicks were a hot ticket as media pundits seems a little too... convenient.

But, not unlike Michael Savage who I think is a far more transparent (though still lucrative) conservative parody, I have to give Laura her props for her profitable demagoguery. She sticks her finger into the wind and reads the mood of the conservative mob better than most and has built a heck of a successful career out of it. So, you know, good for her on that count. These people are all basically living in the house that Limbaugh built anyway, and if he doesn't object why should I?

It's kind of amusing when her mask slips a little bit though and other people notice she seems to be faking her way through the mob's expected opinion on a topic. At such times she seems a little too obvious a parody of conservative opinion rather than a fellow traveler. Like Ace noticed when she ripped on Bret Favre for blubbing at his retirement announcement.

... but for crying out loud, Laura. Try not to descend into self-parody just to get some "hot" radio. ...

So come on, Laura. Lighten up. And butch up, too. Yeah, butch up. Because if you're doing this Brett-Favre-is-a-big-fat-blubbering-pussy schtick you're not really as flinty-tough as advertised. It's pantomime.

Gosh... do you think so Ace? Next you'll be telling me that hushed, reverent tone she drops into every time she uses the phrase "for the troops" is somehow practiced and artificial. Or that it's likely that she might secretly likes watching "Sex in the City" more than Nascar. Or that it's kind of weird for such a staunch pro-life, pro-family social conservative to remain single into her 40's. It's almost like she adopts certain positions because it makes her popular rather than having any substantial basis upon which she arrived at those opinions.

Anyway, I'm sure most of you reading this love your Laura and wouldn't dream of questioning her character and all. So, you know, go back to all that. I can take a little solace in the fact that certain cheeseheads will take her a little less seriously from now on.

Time to start preparing to overpraise the next sub-par Oliver Stone movie, as the political message is likely to hold much appeal out in Hollywoodland.

I caught Jonah Goldberg's appearance on The Daily Show last night, plugging his book Liberal Fascism.

I'm sure the show's typical viewers who substitute irony and snark for more difficult thinking about political philosophy got what they desired from it. Stewart was mooning to the camera in his usual manner, demonstrating pretty effectively that his knowledge of the book didn't go beyond its cover. But it's cool to be ignorant about uncool books. Also a lot easier than reading them.

Apparently a lot of people are writing in to Jonah all outraged over the shoddy editing and content-free interviewing, but hey... it's the Daily Show. Only morons go to that show for serious information. And you don't fix a moron problem by surprising them with unexpectedly scintillating new insights during the "interview" segment of a show built upon wall to wall snark. So it's not a big deal.

What is becoming interesting to me is how bent out of shape liberals are getting over the cover. It's obviously designed to provoke. But it's not exactly a new idea. Ever hear of a book called The Road to Serfdom, which is considered one of the building blocks of post WWII American conservatism? It had this crazy central thesis that Fascism, Nazism, Communism, and the increasing socialist tendencies in the West were all moving society in the same dangerous direction, merely at different rates. That unless we fundamentally rejected the socialist ideology underpinning modern (and increasingly illiberal) liberalism we were all "on the road to serfdom."

I haven't read the Goldberg book yet, but from the reviews I've scanned through his book sounds like an intellectual history along this same vein rather than an ideological polemic. Obviously the central thesis is challenging to lefty preconceptions, but that's kind of the whole point Goldberg was making by writing it. And they're going to have a darned difficult time refuting the thesis without cracking the cover.

Considering the left's perpetual predilection for depicting the current president and other Republicans as Nazis, you'd think they might have developed a wee bit more tolerance for the far more mildly provocative happy face with a scribbled on mustache on Goldberg's cover. But then the urge to silence and/or shout over rather than engage and debate ideas challenging their ideology is a trait increasingly on display from the modern left. And, dare one observe, it seems a little bit...

Because anyone who is able to pull off a book review beginning with this sentence:

This is a bad, vain, dull, repulsive book. Don't read it. I didn't.

... is simply not to be missed. I'll tease you with a few more choice quotes before scolding you to go read the whole thing.

You see there was this fellow, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died early this year and is on his way to being forgotten but who, unfortunately, isn't quite there yet. ...

But I limped on. I made it all the way to page 12 before I was stopped cold by this sentence about Adlai Stevenson: "He is the one man in politics today who strikes an authentically new and fresh note." And that note would be? Ah, the note that was passed to Adlai in every classroom of grade school, high school, and Princeton--the small, crumpled piece of paper upon which was written, "LOSER!!!" ...

But Schlesinger dare not tell an outright lie. In one respect, Journals is a diary like younger sisters used to keep, with the key to the little lock on its pink vinyl cover conveniently "hidden" so that if big brother happens to read certain passages aloud to a particular handsome athlete .  .  .

Naturally we cannot expect a man with credentials such as Arthur's to be merely a jerk; he's an idiot, too. ...

Schlesinger's ability to make people look like cretins is by no means limited to himself.

Now go read the whole thing.