IT BEGINS WITH A 'P'. I am cracking my toes in glee repeatedly over the special election in New York. Brief recap for those not up to speed: Obama appointed a NY "Republican" Congressman to be the Secretary of the Army. No clue what his name was, but it doesn't matter. The Governor (can't recollect his name either, but I think it rhymes with 'blind') called a special election to fill Army guy's seat. Naturally, a Democrat, Bill Owens, and a Republican, Dede Scozzafavorita, are selected in non-smoke-filled rooms to run for the seat. Owens is a monster (but I repeat myself! HA!), and Scozzafatta is worryingly described as "moderate to liberal" by every news outfit reporting. Another lock for the forces of octopoid government, right?

Hang on. Out of nowhere, some nonentities called The Conservative Party of New York State FUBARed the race (HA! again) by nominating some nobody named Doug Hoffman who actually believes what Republicans claim to believe. Suddenly, support for the nominated Republican doughgirl starts falling so fast all the graphs measuring that sort of thing have to be renumbered.

Finally, last Saturday, Scozzafatasso quits! Really!



Now it's a two-man race, between a genuine conservative and a run-of-the-mill totalitarian. Zounds! (Sorry. That's to make the Boss happy. Won't happen again.)

But what does our stateswomanish Republican do next? She turns around and endorses Bill Owens -- the Democrat -- over the ostensibly ideologically compatible candidate who knocked her cellulitic RINO ass out of the race. Sour grapes much, Scozzafyouio?

Today, she's got robocalls going out that remind me of nothing so much as the "confessions" at a Soviet show trial. Just before the train ride to Siberia.


Guess what, Dede? The only people who think they have to keep telling everyone that something isn't "about them" are narcissists. And since you brought it up, one of the great rhetorical victories of the left has been to erase the difference between the words "partisan" and "principled," turning the former into a slur of the latter. Thus, "rise above partisanship" means, and always means, "sink below principle."

It took me all day yesterday to remember the word for people like this: feckless. Morally flakey. Indifferent to obligations. Lacking in feck.

What excuse could she, a Republican, have for endorsing a Democrat over a conservative? If it's out of spite, she has no principles. If she truly prefers a Democrat, she has crap principles. What's the point of you, Scazzafollotypo? Why don't you believe in anything good? WHERE'S YOUR FECK, WOMAN?

Speaking of woman, I can't let this pass without comment and correction:


He actually has an airtight "excuse": IT'S A PLAY ON WORDS, AND YOU KNOW IT'S A PLAY ON WORDS, DUMBASS. And we know you know it.

I love how stupid people think everyone's dumber than them. You think we don't know a dumbass liberal like you would only use the word "assemblywoman" to play on the sympathies of the decent?

So it's unconscionable to even joke about bestiality, since Scoffatollo is a woman? Chickenshit. Playing the damsel-in-distress card is as despicable as playing the race card. The older Punks may have half a notion that women are fragile flowers and whatever, and should get a social handicap in games of hardball. I can't agree. You want to play with the boys? You consent to play as rough as the boys. Can't handle it? Then you shouldn't even be voting. And you sure as hell shouldn't be in a position to write and pass laws, for Chrissake.

Harsh? Yep. But fair. The price of full equality is giving up special treatment. If Scozzafoolo has any partisanshipprinciples, she'll denounce her beloved Bill Owens riding his white charger to her defense.

One more thing. The Wall Street Journal offers a well conceived word of caution:



A bitter pill to swallow but one that's medicinally sound. Nevertheless, look how easy it is for another (increasingly) feckless politician to twist this caveat into a threat against party disloyalty:



In other words, it'd be too hard to do anything without the GOP, so stop trying. Because God forbid we "anoint" candidates based on PRINCIPLE rather than PARTISANSHIP. Or do I have that backwards?

New York's 23rd district has a chance to make history. To make some change we can really believe in. Don't fuck this up, guys. Vote early and often.

H/T HOTAIR. Finally, some people are noticing that Ayn Rand is back on the front burner of political philosophy. It must be significant if Ed Morrissey has noticed:


Us.


Good of you, Ed. One might even call your tone generous. Not that we think Ed is ever ungenerous; it's just that a political philosophy like his, which consists of bringing the meat cleaver down sharply in the middle of whatever topic is being discussed, rarely lends itself to recognizing any kind of whole without first bisecting it into moderately digestible halves. However...

The resurgence of Ayn Rand is hardly news. It's ongoing and will likely only increase. We're living through the crisis she prophesied. With that in mind, we thought it might be helpful to remind people of some interesting posts and the comments on them in which Instapunk has talked about Ayn Rand or Atlas Shrugged in the past. (There's also a post, summoned in response to the search term "Atlas," which isn't specifically about Rand but adds tremendously to the argument made in another recent post.) Enjoy the synaptic activity occasioned by the following:


There's some authentic reason for hope in there if you look, especially in some of the comments.

INSURE YOURSELF. I don't know anything about Traveller's Insurance. But I do know something about capitalism. And I just luuuuv the way the market is trying to respond to the recession. Think about it. During the Great Depression, there was no television. What I see today on TV is car dealers, insurance agents, real estate companies, fast-food franchises, and the big guys in every conceivable industry fighting for business. Result: Immediate responsiveness, competitive pricing, and some of the most creative advertising I've ever seen. Like my all-time, completely love-it-to-death favorite:


There are actually multiple versions of this commercial. I watch all of them, all the way through, every time. I want to buy the album. I want to buy the dog, which is sick, because I already have four, every one of them dumb as fenceposts (sighthounds are idiots: I'm no doggist. But pugs are morons too.) When I was a kid, we had German Shepherds (scary smart) and terriers (annoying smart)... and now I have a, uh, Scottish Deerhound. Handsome, sweet, noble, dignifiedly affectionate, and smart as a bathroom U-joint. Capitalism. Non-Rand style. Him we take care of. Because he can't compete.


The rest of them? We watch them compete like nobody's business -- clever as rocks and contending for every scrap...


If and when they want an insurance policy, we'll help them with that, too. But they have to ask us first. That's the capitalist way.

Monday, November 02, 2009

JESUS. Well, this is rich:


Kewl. A "biopic" that won't depict its subject. Just think about that cinematically. Seems like a horror movie doesn't it? Lots of heavy breathing behind a camera that keeps closing in on its victims... Think of the Matrix with Neo permanently off-camera. Sound interesting? uh, no. Sounds awful. Sounds like political whoring with a ginormously huge checkbook behind it. But please correct me if you have ideas about how to do a biopic that never shows its protagonist. "Malcolm X" would have been so much greater if we'd never seen the face of Denzel Washinton, wouldn't it? Can't wait for all the filmic innovations that will make "Muhammedix" an Oscar winner.

Maybe you thought Hollywood had reached its lowpoint with the Polanski defense. Not at all. Hollywood hasn't yet begun to reach its lowpoint. Two kinds of points to make here. The first is theological and historical. Jesus Christ transformed the world and human consciousness without being documented in any verifiable historical terms. The proof of his existence rests entirely on the fact that unless he existed, it's impossible to explain the subsequent course of human civilization. Muhammed was an historical figure, a fairly obvious imitation of a Biblical prophet who plagiarized his betters to found a religion based on racial and ethnic hatreds, mysogyny, brutal oppression, and mass murder. (Find me any language beautiful in the Koran that competes with the King James Bible. It's all generic phony scripture, as dull as it is mean and didactic.) But all religions are equal in the eyes of those who simultaneously patronize all faiths that proclaim a god of some sort and forgive every barbarian excess as a proof of the evils of civilization itself.

The second point has to do with the real bond between Hollywood and Islam -- the twisted sexuality that has produced both the casting couch and honor killings, a tradtition of open-secret homosexuality (uh, yeah, gays have a whole 24/7 cable movie channel even as they ululate about the uniqueness in cinematic history of Brokeback Mountain) that promulgates female subjugation while it pretends to respect women even as it sanctifies purely male kinship and bromances (however defined), espouses artistic and moral freedom for everyone but dumb sluts who show off their vaginas on camera, and promotes (dirtiest secret of all) systematized pedophilia.

Pretty sure I'm the first ever to call out the similarities between Hollywood and Arab oil magnates. But they're legion. Way too much unearned money on both sides. The Hollywood kids are, by definition, not anyone. Imagine what it's like to play all those parts of people who are brave, accomplished, eloquent, creative, and important. They're not those people. And they don't see their own movies the way we do. They see them the way they're made -- with lights, sets, glass paintings, cameras, directors, stand-ins, stunt people, scripts, multiple takes, and blue-screen-CGI effects. No wonder they feel guilty when they get a $20 million check for pretending to be Napoleon, Shakespeare, Cleopatra, or a cop who refuses to give up in the face of formidable odds. Add to that the fact that most "action heroes" are shrimps, and most "femme fatales" are the creations of cosmetic surgeons, or makeup (guess who...) who wow people on-screen without being able to keep their boyfriends or husbands faithful and interested for more than a year or three at best. They're all fakes and they know it because that's their line of work. And they've all, male and female, slept with someone they wouldn't have if a part they wanted wasn't on the line. How much purer a definition of "hypocrisy as a profession" could you ever find?

It's basically the same situation with Arab oil princes (and royalty generally). They get all this money, truly endless amounts of money, just for being someone's son or cousin or brother. Are they motivated by religion, even the mysterious barbarian religion of Islam we automatically excuse ourselves from understanding? No. A fact of human nature: nobody ever really believes in an evil religion when they're in charge of enforcing it. Islam is an evil religion. What men of the spiritual desert get from Islam is permission. For everything a self-righteous, Jew- and woman-hating man might want to do. A rich muslim is a hypocrite-paradox by definition. Hypocrite because rich is a violation of jihad while infidels still exist. Paradox because riches are a persistent temptation to luxury, and luxury usually wins over orthodoxy. It certainly did with Muhammed. So maybe hypocrisy isn't that big a deal with Islam after all.

Quivering, are you? Offended? Outraged. Politically correctly protesting? Terrified? Muhammed consummated a marriage with a nine year old girl.


I'm thinking that the same rationale applies to righteous muslims who desire the bottoms of nine-year-old boys. Clearly, there's no sexual moral distinction at work, no Koranic differential postulated between the adult sexual desire of a bearded man and the target of his lust. How can it count? If a woman is responsible for being raped, then how can a man be responsible for raping a woman, a girl, or a boy? Kind of a perfect Hollywood religion. Those who have the money and the power get to do what they wantdesire.

Saudi princes and Hollywood bigwigs are the same. No doubt, Hollywooders have witnessed the behavior of Arab princes when they come to this country (i.e., Los Angeles) and believe they understand the faith they share in common, which is that the powerful are accountable to no one. Arab chieftains are free to believe in the chastity of muslim womanhood, the preferable promiscuity of Hollywood actresses, the moral ideal of clitorectomies in general (er, in muslim countries specifically), and that Roman Polanski is not guilty of rape. (If only we could have clitorectomies in show biz, the producers say, er, thay.)

As for the Hollywood women...? Not women. That's the other secret of Hollywood. The ones who make it big are also sexual predators. They're the only ones who survive the honor-rapes of the casting couch. (Jon Voight is upset because his daughter isn't a woman but an alpha male with a perpetually erect vagina. I'd be devastated too.) It wouldn't occur to them that there are females who might guard their chastity or modesty as a treasure worth preserving. (Not saying there aren't exceptions. There probably are. They just keep quiet about it. Kind of like female Christian converts in muslim neighborhoods.)

It's not about religion. It's about elites. Money. Power. And a lot of the frightened insecure people who know this about themselves hate themselves for being frightened and insecure. They think everyone else is like that too. Which makes them deathly afraid of the idea of meritocracy and and thriving or not on the basis of what you're worth. Which makes them think the biggest problem is capitalism. But it isn't. Capitalism is about earning money. For having a better idea. For working harder. For manufacturing products and providing services people couldn't have had without your imagination and inventiveness and determination.  Which is a very different thing from being paid for being a little guy who looks big on camera, a dull witch who looks interesting on camera, or a smelly, concupiscient barbarian who looks white-robed and rich on the world stage.

Saudi princes want to kill the whole world for the temptations they can't resist. So do Hollywood stars. But we do need fewer sodomites and pedophiliacs. It won't work to condemn the Catholics, forgive the Arabs, and celebrate the Hollywood celebrities who would make a religion of perversity.

Oh. Forgot to include the film trailer that Fox Entertainment has made the World Series a wholly owned subsidiary of. It's great. All about the evil military who do whatever it is evil American militaries do so that Hollywood directors get to spend $300 million in hopes of earning half a billion condemning it.


I'm not paid to do this promo. I'm just hoping I won't get arrested for the rest of the content because I'm following the lead of Media Nation.

Do I sound bitter? I hope so. Because I am.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

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