The World is Talking. Global Politics

Lance Mannion, blogger, humanitarian and freelance rodeo wrangler, will be hosting tonight’s cinephile symposium on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner over at Newcritics, starting around 10 pm Eastern. Stanley Kramer’s call for racial understanding stars Spencer Tracy at his most Mount Rushmore (lots of stagy business with his handkerchief during his Big Speech, as I recall); Katherine Hepburn looking so gleamy-eyed with admiration and adoration that it would be poignant, if only it weren’t so annoying; and an impeccable, unimpeachable Sidney Poitier. Whatever its script groaners and bad lighting, it’s a landmark movie sociologically, and a true Sixties time capsule, so feel free to join in, why duncha?

One of the greats has gone: Clay Felker, whose editorship of New York magazine was a game-changer in the history of magazine journalism, an adrenaline rush (with handy service features) that packed the social turmoil, feminist uprising, racial strife, urban romance and disarray of “Fun City” into one spray-can of neon graffiti as vividly as The French Connection, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, An Unmarried Woman, and Annie Hall. As a soon-to-be college dropout preparing to move to Manhattan, I read The New Yorker for Pauline Kael but it was New York magazine (and The Village Voice) that provided the vicarious adrenaline of sidewalk, subway, and skyscraper. It was there I first read Tom Wolfe (I remember devouring “Radical Chic” during lunch breaks at the biomedical lab on the Army base), Jimmy Breslin, Albert Goldman, Nora Ephron, Gail Sheehy, Pete Hamill, Nick Pileggi, Nik Cohn, John Simon in all his infamy, and so many others that Clay marquee’d in the magazine. Clay would eventually preside over both New York and The Voice, only to lose both to Rupert Murdoch, and his reign at the Voice was a bumpy ride for all concerned (though he was generous to me, more generous than I appreciated at the time). Writer-editor Richard Goldstein once punched him in his panda stomach, Ron Rosenbaum crumpled or tore up his paycheck (depending on the account) and flung it at him before resigning from the paper, and Lucian Truscott IV unleashed a harangue against managing editor Judith Daniels loud enough to be heard in Hoboken; all bits of classic Voice lore. His was not a downtown sensibility, though of course there is no “downtown sensibility” now in New York, only money parading in different guises. He may have never recaptured the glory of his New York heyday, but so what; the Sixties-early Seventies were a halcyon period of genius in the editorial chair–William Shawn at The New Yorker, Harold Hayes at Esquire, Dan Wolf at the Voice, Willie Morris at Harper’s–and with Felker we have a golden quintet. And of those five, he was the last one to go, the last tie to a titan era in newsstand journalism. Rest in peace, Clay.

When I first started reading this in the Sunday edition of the Daily News (NY), I assumed it was written by Michael Goodwin–it had his ineffable touch of imperishable platitude lying pale-belly up on the page. But, no, it was the brainwork of Bob Kerrey, former Democratic senator, current president of the New School, and one of those bipartisan junkies who thinks the only way to solve America’s problems is to glue an Abe Lincoln beard on Sam Waterston and heed his craggy wisdom. He’s also one of those fetishists who thinks “changing the tone in Washington” is some vital necessity. The purpose of his tone-changing piece is to offer unsolicited advice to Barack Obama on how Obama should conduct himself with his opponent, John McCain–advice that Obama should handle with tongs and dispose of in a plastic baggy. I’ve always found this genre of opinion piece–the What So-and-So Needs to Do guidance statement–as impertinent and pointless as its cousins Here Is the Speech the Candidate Should Make about My Pet Topc and the Open Letter to the Famous Personage (”Dear Hillary, Sure you’re hurting now, but in a few weeks…”), that notoriously coy device. Why should Obama take campaign counsel from Kerrey, a former Hillary-supporter, especially when the counsel is as wet noodle as what Kerrey is peddling here? “I support and will do what I can to help Sen. Barack Obama become our next President,” before offering a tepid recipe for certain loserdom.

Kerrey’s message to the Democratic victor is that he should take the initiative and strike a preemptive note of cooperative assent with his opponent, emphasizing their shared goals instead of sharpening and highlighting their differences. “From this comes a modest proposal and an immodest wish: That Obama begin now to look for opportunities to say to McCain: ‘I agree with you on that.’”

Stuffing words into Obama’s mouth, Kerrey offers a rollcall of issues on which Obama can reach out and ally himself with McCain:

- Sen. McCain, I agree with you in one critical way on the global war on terror. Some Democrats - and Republicans like Ron Paul - minimize the danger posed by violent Islamic fundamentalists. I say we must relentlessly pursue those who have declared themselves to be existential enemies of the United States. I will need your help, and that of other Republicans, to accomplish that objective.

- Sen. McCain, I agree with you on immigration. We need a comprehensive solution to this problem. I will need your help to accomplish that objective.

- Sen. McCain, I agree with your demand that Congress change the way it organizes oversight of our intelligence and homeland security efforts. I will need your help to accomplish that objective.

- Sen. McCain, I appreciate your leadership on campaign finance reform, and my opting out of public financing isn’t meant to abandon the system. There is a lot more that needs to be done to clean up the influence of money in politics. I will need your help to accomplish that objective.

This is so wrong I barely know where to begin. First of all, it’s boring–if Obama wants to disillusion even more Democrats than he has recently, the best way to do it is by mouthing mush such as, “I agree with you about the need for a comprehensive solution to immigration–help me help you help me to help America.” And what is John McCain going to be doing while Obama is doing all this agreeing?–he isn’t going to face pressure from the Republican side to make similar overtures to Obama. The voters, watching Obama strike one note of harmony with McCain after another, are going to think, Hell, if McCain is right on so many issues, why not just vote for him to begin with? Why go for the echo when you can have the golden-oldie original? The time for Obama to be conciliatory and solicit McCain’s help in the Senate is after he’s beaten his ass in the general election, not before.

“Build a bridge, Barack Obama” is the title of Kerrey’s exercise in David Broder-ism, but the bridge Kerrey wants Obama to build would collapse like a giant set of matchsticks at the first crossing, sending everything dashing down as John McCain enjoys one of those heh-heh chuckles that have made him as such an endearing rascal on the American scene.

On the need to show gratitude to those who were truly great, our text for today taken from Mudrick Transcribed, an armory of classroom talks and public speeches by the critic Marvin Mudrick:

I think we have no reason to be anything but grateful to those geniuses who are genius and who don’t exercise what I call, in a bad sense, power over us. That is, they offer us something which have the right to refuse, and which everybody refuses. They’re not like politicians, who impose their wills on us. In fact the greatest artists, as I say, have no will; they’re pure imagination. And to represent these people as deficient in some way is it seems to me a kind of sin against human nature.

These are the greatest human beings who have ever lived, and if we don’t respond to what they’ve done, well, that’s tough. There are certainly plenty of geniuses to whom I don’t respond, I mean there are arts to which I don’t respond–painting, for instance, is one of them. But certainly in the arts to which I do respond I am nothing but grateful to the persons who have created these works, because they have literally brought something out of nothing. They have made human life more bearable. And how you be anything but grateful to them, and how can you fail to what to understand that what they’ve done represents the highest achievement that human beings are capable of?

[snip]

I think that gratitude is very important. For one thing, from history you get the wrong idea of great men. You get the idea that the great men are the politicians. There are great men who are politicians, but most of them are simply spectacular murderer–the Napoleons and the Alexanders, and of course the Hitlers and the Stalins and so on. There are a few geniuses who happen to be politicians. One of them is a man who is my favorite politician, that is, William of Orange, the father of his country in Holland. A very, very great man and probably as great a man as a politician can be and still be a politician.

But when you think of the geniuses in the arts, especially those arts that you respond to, you should be extremely grateful to those people. And you shouldn’t allow them yourself to make snide remarks about They were human too or They were stupid like me. No, they weren’t!

Accolades continue to shake the rafters over the Bayadere that roused ballet from its afternoon nap and scattered the clouds on Mount Olympus. From Oberon’s Grove:

All this Spring, Ms. Part had been rumored to be leaving ABT but as it happens she will be staying with the Company. In past seasons I have seen her in some maddeningly uneven performances but tonight as Nikiya, Part danced like the consummate prima ballerina she is. With Marcelo Gomes on magnificent form as Solor and Michele Wiles in a spectacular performance as Gamzatti, this was a great evening. I think probably BAYADERE is the best thing ABT does and now I’m trying to find a way to squeeze another performance of it into my already-full week.

[snip]

When Veronika Part’s Nikiya is ‘unveiled’ I had a momentary illusion of Cynthia Gregory but as soon as Veronika began to dance, it was All-Part-All-Evening. The tall beauty looks gorgeous in these costumes. Her dancing was revelatory in its grandeur and flow, ideally showcased by Marcelo’s ardent sincerity as a partner. Beyond that, Part brings something extraordinary in terms of presence. I was trying to put it into words during the intermission and Susan summarized it in one sentence: “She creates her own world and draws you into it.” So true: so often when you focus on Veronika she has an almost visionary expression; there’s no theatricality in her performance, just a sense of purity lit from within.

Let’s say right off that Marcelo Gomes is the handsomest man ever to grace the Met stage. You might have someone else in mind, but you’d have a hard time convincing anyone who was there tonight. What’s so great about Marcelo is that his good looks don’t seem important to him in the least: he could easily coast along and win hearts on his face value alone. Instead, he is a phenomenal dancer, partner and presence. He is also something of a rarity: a very tall man who is also a top-class technician. He and Veronika were so compellingly committed to expressing all the beauty, tenderness and poetry of the music and of the dramatic situation.

Equally aglow, Mary Cargill at Dance View Times:

The audience at the opening night of ABT’s “La Bayadere”, as it stood and cheered, probably wasn’t thinking about Natalia Makarova, but her production is one of the most valuable gifts ABT has ever received…

The opening night cast, Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes, were as powerful and moving a pair as I have seen in some thirty years of watching this production. Gomes, with his natural authority, was absolutely convincing as the noble warrior of the opening scene; walking on stage and creating a world with a few simple gestures is far harder than the now common jump, jump, and jump some more entrances that more modern productions seem to think is necessary. Gomes made the act of swearing on the eternal fire so resonant; just raising his hand brought to life the period when a man’s word was important.

Gomes played Solor like a noble innocent, unable to cope with the web the Radjah and Gamzatti put together. He didn’t reject poor Nikiya, he just didn’t know what to do. His helpless regret during the betrothal scene developed into his yearning in the shades scene, where his expansive dancing and soaring jumps seemed a natural expression of his feelings. In the wedding scene, he appeared trapped in a circle of dancing girls, still dazed by his dream of Nikiya; in a stunning piece of acting, he just stood there with slight slump of his shoulders, so different from the bold, confident bearing of the first scene, a man beaten down by sorrow.

Part was a Nikiya to be sorrowful for. Her astounding beauty helps, of course, but her lyrical, expansive dancing gave Nikiya life. She captured Nikiya’s many moods, from her horror at the Brahmin’s lust, to the innocent joy of the first dance with Solor, to the sorrow of the betrothal dance. Her brief moment of joy, when she thought Solor had given her the flowers was followed immediately by such heartbreak that her death was as moving as many “Giselles” I have seen. She made it clear, in the shades scene, how this act differs from other Petipa white acts. Nikiya is not the loving ghost that Giselle is, or the attainable vision of “The Sleeping Beauty” or the enchanted human of “Swan Lake” or the generic beauties of the “Jardin Anime” or “Don Quixote”, she is only a memory of what had existed. Part’s moonlight and marble had no condemnation or forgiveness, she danced it as if it were something that came from Solor’s imagination. Part is more comfortable in adagio, but she didn’t force the more technical aspects, and her turns with the scarf were secure and flowing. She made the final turns float, and the effect was magical.

I, shame be told, will be missing Part-Gomes’ Saturday mat performance of La Bayadere today, but if any of you have the afternoon free to trance out on beauty and glamour and dangerous arabesques, check on ticket availability here.

Update: The reports on the matinee performance are near-unanimous–Thunderbirds Are Go!

It appears that once again Washington Post journalist and social arbiter Sally Quinn has created a stir by opening her brassy mouth. Not because of what popped out of it, but for what she let slide in.

Now, get your minds out of the bowling alley.

Smutty innuendo has no place in this clean, well-lighted blog.

We’re talking church doctrine here, and the perils of religious smorgasborging.

The tempest in a chalice began when Quinn, co-creator of the Washington Post’s On Faith website (an accident waiting to happen), paid memorial tribute to Tim Russert and went a bit overboard with the best of intentions, telling her readers…

At Tim’s funeral mass…communion was offered. I had only taken communion once in my life, at an evangelical church. It was soon after I had started “On Faith”; and I wanted to see what it was like. Oddly I had a slightly nauseated sensation after I took it, knowing that in some way it represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Last Wednesday I was determined to take it for Tim, transubstantiation notwithstanding. I’m so glad I did. It made me feel closer to him. And it was worth it just to imagine how he would have loved it.

I don’t question Quinn’s grief or the sincerity of her gesture, though I suspect that Quinn may have also queued up to receive Communion because it would give everyone at the service an opportunity to get a good look at her on such a somber, star-studded occasion. It’s hard to pass up such an opportunity for visibility. Nothing like a Mass with all the trimmings to blossom the drama queen within (which may explain Tony Blair’s recent conversion–the man loves to preen). But because Quinn, unlike Blair, has not undergone conversion to the Catholic faith, it was a Eucharistic faux pas for her to receive the Host. As a former Catholic for whom vague, nagging guilt remains a constant companion, I could have warned Quinn that the phrase “transubstantiation notwithstanding” would land her in the soup, because there is nothing ‘aside’ about it–transubstantiation is the whole point. For devout Catholics, the Communion wafer isn’t some token of fellowship or button-shaped metaphor dispensed at the altar rail to inspire pretty sentiments, a wholesome mini-wheat. (As Flannery O’Connor famously retorted when Mary McCarthy said the Eucharist was a pretty good symbol, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”) Quinn’s receiving of the sacrament would have been a trivial, pardonable trespass had she not made it all about Her, elevating her personal feelings above the deeply encoded traditions and regulations of Major League Baseball.

Charging the mound with a headful of steam (his gauge needle’s always in the red zone) was Catholic League chieftain Bill Donohue, who took extreme umbrage at Quinn’s presumptuous “narcissism.” Of course, taking umbrage is what Donohue does for a living–I’m convinced he and Abe Foxman of the ADL are the same person, operating under a dual identity–but Quinn didn’t help cause much with this sputtering defense delivered to TNR’s The Plank:

There’s no sign out there that says you’re not allowed to take Communion. [The Catholic Church is] like, “Everyone is welcome. This is God’s house.” God doesn’t turn people away, supposedly.

She needed a sign to tell her she needed to be a member of the Catholic Church to partake of the sacraments? She sounds like a teenager–”Nobody told me you couldn’t make a right turn at a stop light. It’s so unfair.”

A more dulcet defense has been crafted by The Anchoress, who seems be crossing Peggy Noonan’s bridge of sighs with a basket of pearly sentiments.

As Mother Angelica liked to say, before she lost her power of speech, “you might be the only Christ your neighbor ever sees.” I think Tim Russert had become for Quinn, and for many of his colleagues, the very face of Christ - the only Christ they had ever seen. And now all they knew of Christ has been taken from them.

Would that make Mike Barnicle and Chris Matthews his apostles? I think I may lose my own power of speech, not to mention what’s left of my mind. The self-glorification of the Beltway press corps has reached the messiah stage, making the eulogies to William F. Buckley look like models of modest decorum by comparison, but I didn’t realize The Anchoress had bought into it too. Shouldn’t it be possible to mourn Russert’s untimely death without deifying him? And shouldn’t our nation’s journalists being doing more journalizing and less Jesus-fying? On the Imus show last week, Quinn said that after she described herself as an atheist, Newsweek’s Jon Meacham spent three hours trying to persuade her not to hastily adopt such an identity label, perhaps hoping to entice her into the coils of Episopalianism. I wouldn’t care about the missionary work celebrity journalists get up to in their off-hours if their reporting and punditry weren’t so gummy. Having Jesus in their midst while Tim was still alive doesn’t seem to set their consciences ablaze over the Bush administration’s top-down torture policy. Meanwhile, The Anchoress worries that the Communion fuss may have driven away a possible convert:

Ms. Quinn might have looked back on her mistaken reception of the Eucharist and recalled the sense of peace she found there, and it might have spurred her on, perhaps, to look more deeply at what the Eucharist is. It might have brought future, more devout, encounters. Now, her memory of that moment will always be overshadowed by the finger-wagging, name-calling scolding she’s received.

As I recall from my brief stay in parochial school, finger-wagging and name-calling were an integral part of the package, but I suspect Sally Quinn would scare the nuns much more than they could scare her, though probably scary nuns now belong to the fabled past, like Runyonesque bookies and saucer-eyed soubrettes. Wherever Sally Quinn’s spiritual odyssey takes her, I feel certain Jon Meacham will be there at the arrival gate, ready to help claim her soul from the baggage carousel.

Housekeeping notes: Within the last week, Vanity Fair undertook a platform shift to Movable Type that resulted in a few blog posts sliding into the Phantom Zone, where they have since been rescued and reposted. Also, I finally, after much Hamlet agonizing around the arras (which could really do with a proper cleaning), squeezed the trigger on a new laptop purchase, opting for a refurbished white Macbook that should enable me to tap into the unified field with a minimum of static and distortion, resulting in blog posts that will shimmer in the mist and guide guardian angels to their destinations. Once, you know, inspiration hits.

Fortunately, a hard-drive meltdown didn’t prevent Jan at Broadway & Me from giving the devil his due and celebrating the Jerome Robbins exhibition at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (Lincoln Center) that’s in its final week. Not only is there memorabilia galore but, for all you audiovisual buffs, behold the wall of video monitors featuring vintage samples from various stages of Robbins’ career–from Peter Pan to West Side Story to “Other Dances” w/ Baryshnikov and Makarova, and it’s near heartbreaking to see the dances that were so jazzily showcased on the Ed Sullivan Show or Omnibus and realize that dance will never be beamed into homes again as a form of popular entertainment that didn’t need to apologize for itself, or tart itself up as American Idol-ish applause-whoring competition. As Jan writes, those clips “convey a visceral sense of how exacting he could be. I spent over two hours and still couldn’t get through it all.” And I second her exhortation:

If you love theater and you live in New York, go see it before the end of next week. If you love theater and you live elsewhere, think seriously about making a quick trip here. It’s really that good.

And until I can compose myself to do full justice to the halcyon evening of ballet and human congress that was last night’s triumphant performance of La Bayadere at ABT, I beckon thee to attend to the vibrant report on the audience joy ride from Tonya Plank (”Last night’s La Bayadere was ABT’s best night at the Met yet”), whom my wife and I had the honor and delight to meet, which may explain the electric ripple that stallioned through the cultural blogosphere as the spirit of concord was loosed throughout the land. I also spotted the Ronald Firbankish figure of Hamish Bowles across the aisle and considered hailing him with a hearty, “Hey, Hamish–whuzz happenin’?!” But I restrained myself, unsure of whether we had ever been properly introduced, and not wanting to commit one of those grievous ballet intermission faux pas that could cost me my place in line at the Conde Nast cafeteria.

If Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is content to be a preening hack, that is between him and his feather boa. That his preformulated ideas ooze across the op-ed page like synthetic foam from an aerosol nozzle makes him no different from David Broder or any of the other giants of journalism blinking in the abrupt light left behind by Tim Russert’s departed shadow. But must he be a hick as well? In Cohen’s latest recital, he responds to those surly detractors (i.e., me) who have accused him of cutting out heart-shaped valentines to John McCain and pasting them in his locker. Coyly he begins:

In politics, we’re having a Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr kind of year. It was Karr, a French writer, who coined the phrase plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, which means, as Barack Obama has shown, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. N’est-ce pas?

Oui…

My own French is rusty, so I’m not sure what the proper French equivalent for “fucking embarrassing” is, so forgive me, but really–The Washington Post is not only the most powerful paper in the nation’s capital but enjoys an international reputation, and here’s one of their premiere columnists blithering away like Mayberry’s Howard Sprague with a carnation in his lapel. It’s amazing he didn’t stick an “ooh la la” in there somewhere. Of course, Cohen is just clearing his throat before getting to the chief topic of today’s monologue, to wit:

In some recent magazine articles, I and certain of my colleagues have been accused of being soft on McCain, forgiving him his flips, his flops and his mostly conservative ideology. I do not plead guilty to this charge, because, over the years, the man’s imperfections have not escaped my keen eye.

“Keen eye”–hmm, Missy here seems to have been studying up on her irony. After acknowledging a litany of McCain’s flippety-flops, Cohen draws a sharp soapy line of distinction:

But here is the difference between McCain and Obama — and Obama had better pay attention. McCain is a known commodity. It’s not just that he’s been around a long time and staked out positions antithetical to those of his Republican base. It’s also — and more important — that we know his bottom line. As his North Vietnamese captors found out, there is only so far he will go, and then his pride or his sense of honor takes over. This — not just his candor and nonstop verbosity on the Straight Talk Express — is what commends him to so many journalists.

Obama might have a similar bottom line, core principles for which, in some sense, he is willing to die. If so, we don’t know what they are. Nothing so far in his life approaches McCain’s decision to refuse repatriation as a POW so as to deny his jailors a propaganda coup. In fact, there is scant evidence the Illinois senator takes positions that challenge his base or otherwise threaten him politically. That’s why his reversal on campaign financing and his transparently false justification of it matter more than similar acts by McCain.

Yes, it’s unfortunate that Obama hasn’t been unfortunate enough to be truly, sorely “tested” in the crucible of character. From Cohen’s perspective, it’s a pity slavery was abolished when it was, otherwise we could learn how Obama would bear up under the overseer’s lash; a pity, too, to be more au courant (that’s French), that Obama was never mistaken for a Muslim terrorist post 9/11 and whisked away to a secret prison where White House-approved torture techniques would lay bare his core principles, or lack thereof. I must say there’s something morbid, if not macabre, about Cohen’s notion that a presidential candidate reveal the bottom-line convictions over which he would be personally willing to forfeit his life. McCain’s harrowing ordeal is hardly a tranferable application for presidential consideration. I don’t recall such a personal martyrdom comparison study being carried out on Bush and Gore in 2000, or Fred Thompson being queried over what he’d be willing to croak for. Given that the office of the presidency ideally involves compromise with the Congress, our allies, and constituent groups, a candidate willing to die for some core principle might be a bit rigid in his governing style, or, worse, harbor a death wish that could take a lot of us down with it. Whatever one thinks of Obama, it seems peculiar to penalize him because he doesn’t have North Vietnam prison experience on his job resume. But Cohen, like so many political pundits, can’t resist drafting off of McCain’s fortitude to pass inspection in his own mind as a man of substance.

Really, it’s a shame we even bother fussing over the looming troubles confronting this country when we could just let “character” be the seeing-eye dog that guides us. McCain’s positions on abortion, Supreme Court picks, military action against Iraq, Social Security privatization?–mere trifles. “A presidential race is only incidentally about issues,” Cohen informs us, thus reaffirming Bob Somerby’s in Daily Howler that Beltway pundits are engaged in an epic bout of metacriticism, reviewing the novel that they themselves are writing, a cartoon travesty starring fictionalized versions of Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, et al that double as voodoo dolls. There’s no intellectual floor to their petty maraudings. It’s novels all the way down.

Dennis Perrin bids goodbye to comedian George Carlin, who sliced through the maya like nobody’s business.

Another angry prophet is gone. Perhaps the last one, as far as my generation goes, anyway. Not that I’m as old as George Carlin — don’t rush me. But when I became comedically aware in my early teens, Carlin was laying it down, sporting long hair, beard, t-shirt and jeans, spreading the word in straight venues like “The Mike Douglas Show,” seemingly relaxed yet deadly and precise. Carlin was a master of language and form. In my view, only Richard Pryor reached the same comedic heights. Lenny Bruce showed the way; Mort Sahl, while smart, was too reserved; Bill Hicks, as Barry Crimmins — a first-rate satirist himself — keeps reminding me, was just turning the same corner as Carlin and Pryor before cancer killed him. Chris Rock flirts with the vibe, but is too enmeshed in corporate showbiz to fully explore it. Maybe in time, whatever time’s left.

[snip]

…My respect for Carlin never wavered, and he’s the only comic I’ve ever seen who could tell Americans how full of shit we are without joking it up. By the end, he simply expressed the truth, no frills attached. As Carlin himself put it:

“Don’t confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing things the way they are, I have no interest in how they ‘ought to be.’ And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there’s a solution, you’re part of the problem. My motto: Fuck Hope!”

Now there’s a slogan I don’t see the Obama camp appropriating anytime soon. Over at Alicublog, Roy Edroso also salutes Carlin in his passing, and observes how the death of this iconoclast has given cultural conservative bloggers a case of the haughty sniffies as they dole out their condolences in dry, stingy pinches.

Try to imagine writing a sentence as puffed-up as “Thus I have less regard for his passing than I would otherwise,” as if your mourning were something a bunch of hungry peasants with bowls were desperately hoping would be ample. Finally — and you may really have to rev up your sense of tragic pity for this one — try to imagine being so utterly blind to your surroundings that you think George Carlin’s “most famous work,” which is decades old, “coarsened American culture,” rather than, “is American culture.”

For extra credit, imagine thinking all this shit while considering anyone else Politically Correct.

In a related underdevelopment (hat tip: Roger Ailes), movie reviewing now has its own Doug Feith,* a blogger who goes by the handle “Dirty Harry,” which is rather sad, considering how far Clint Eastwood himself has evolved beyond such bullet-chewing vigilantism. It’s like being a fifty year old who recreates scenes from Red Dawn in the backyard, reliving those glorious imaginary guerrilla days of adolescence while fending off a coronary. Unsurprisingly, the movie sophistication of the Dirty Harry’s Place is not the sterling highest; once you’re reduced to rallying around Jon Voight, you might as well turn in your 3-D glasses and plastic raygun. The latest flapdoodlery over liberal message-mongering in mainstream entertainment involves an incompetent president (played by Fred Willard) using the phrase “Stay the course” in the upcoming Pixar extravaganza Wall-E. With a sigh of woe and lamentation, Dirty Harry whimpers, “Have we lost Pixar? Have we lost the wonderful studio who brought us The Incredibles and Ratatouille to Bush Derangement Syndrome?”

One thing about the original Dirty Harry, he never whimpered. He sneered with a lip-curl worthy of Elvis before the Army shaved his head.

After it’s pointed out that “Stay the course” was actually a Bush 41 catchphrase made popular by Dana Carvey on SNL, one commenter posts,

Yes it was, and Dana Carvey made quite a career using it while portraying Bush 41 on Saturday Night Live.

Of course, that doesn?t mean the scriptwriter or editor couldn?t be holding a grudge over Dukakis losing from 20 years ago [my italics] or against the Bushes in general, and just the general plot synopsis shows a story more likely to come from the mind of someone who is at the very least sympathetic to the worst-case scenario environmentalism that has humans in general either pollution, or overpopulating or global warming civilization to death. Certainly compared to the settings for all of the previous Pixar features ?Wall-E? qualifies as having the most depressing starting point, even if the first section of the movie is the most successful one.

This shows you the lengths to which cultural conservatives will go to ferret out chimeras of liberal brainwashing. The notion that anyone anywhere in the creative community would be harboring a Sicilian grudge over the Dukakis campaign shows how desperate righty film fans are to find something to get Wyatt Earped about whenever they creep out of their cocoons. I guess they’ll be boycotting Will Smith’s Hancock next, not that anyone will notice.

*a.k.a. The Stupidest Fucking Guy on the Face of the Earth