David Thompson: But rejecting “liberal guilt,” as manifest all but daily in the pages of the Guardian, doesn’t require an indifference to, or denial of, real injustice; merely a dislike of pretension and dishonesty, and a wariness of guilt being distorted into a pantomime and fetish –- in which rhetorical self-harm is an assertion of superiority. Well, you have to admit, David, that nothing feels quite so good as showing
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August 30, 2010
My twenty-fourth brief conversation with the ghost of John Merrick
Me: “You know who I really dig? Like, lots? The Lord. The Lord, that’s who I dig.” Merrick: “I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!” Me: “He lifts me up. So I can climb higher than a mountain.” Me: “I shit thee not.” Merrick: “I AM A HUMAN BEING!” Me: “There you go. Testify, my horribly deformed brother! I need the readers…!”*
August 29, 2010
POP!
That sound you just heard was nishi’s head being, er, unpacked. Whoops! (thanks to Darleen)
August 29, 2010
"Ground Zero Muslim center may get public financing"
Reuters: The Muslim center planned near the site of the World Trade Center attack could qualify for tax-free financing, a spokesman for City Comptroller John Liu said on Friday, and Liu is willing to consider approving the public subsidy. […] The mosque’s backers hope to raise a total of $70 million in tax-exempt debt to build the center, according to the New York Times. Tax laws allow such funding for
August 28, 2010
Progressives Against Progress
The environmentalist agenda as a kind of aristocratic paternalism at odds with growth, prosperity, and “progress”? You don’t say! Fred Siegel, City Journal: Like the Tory Radicals, today’s liberal gentry see the untamed middle classes as the true enemy. “Environmentalism offered the extraordinary opportunity to combine the qualities of virtue and selfishness,” wrote William Tucker in a groundbreaking 1977 Harper’s article on the opposition to construction of the Storm King
August 27, 2010
"The last refuge of a liberal"
Krauthammer, crystallizing several years worth of postings here into a single column: Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the
August 27, 2010
We are intolerant of intolerance!
Evidently “academic freedom” — and the freedom of choice that comes with it — is the new “fascism” in Israel. Well, if you’re a “progressive”, that is. Because after all, nothing screams “fascism” to the left more so than your refusal to let them set every single term of your existence. Up is down. Black is white. Rizzoli is Isles. (h/t sdferr)
August 26, 2010
If instead of a pseudo-intellectual professor of three-chord progressions, Middle Tennessee State University's William Yelverton were a Constitutional Lawyer
Waitress: “For the last time, sir, yes, we have an entire pot of clam chowder in the kitchen — and no, that doesn’t mean we ‘owe it to the people’ to give you a bowl for free.” Yelverton: … Yelverton: … Yelverton: “LIBEL!”* **** update: Yelverton: “I HAVE A FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO YOUR FUCKING SOUP! NOW FETCH ME A BOWL, HATER!” **** Listen: William Yelverton tried commenting here under