Jack the Giant Slayer

To paraphrase one of my favorite bands, There Might Be Giants. But if There Are, They’re Kinda Dull and Really Badly Animated.

Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)

Directed by Bryan Singer

Screenplay by Darren Lemke and Christopher McQuarrie and Dan Studney; Story by Darren Lemke & David Dobkin

Okay, strap in, because there’s quite a bit of backstory to swallow before we can get to the crappy front story. Our hero Jack is a young boy who talks intimately to his action figure (c’mon, we all did it. When I was little nobody understood me but Cobra Commander), and has a Dead Mother® (this trope used by permission of the Walt Disney Corporation, all rights reserved). He lives with his father, and even though they’re medieval peasants who presumably share their tumbledown cottage with goats and pigs, they’re both spotlessly clean and have shiny, bouncy hair, suggesting that OCD is hereditary.  Anyway, Dad is a literate Dark Age dirt farmer, and he reads Jack a Dungeons & Dragons game module about some guys who pulled the old Tower of Babel bit, except with beans, and climbed up into the clouds only to discover it was occupied by giants who took a Mick Jaggery attitude toward cumulus squatters.

The giants climb down the beanstalk and discover that D&D gamers, while gamy, are good eating (I recommend washing and peeling them first to get rid of that faint taste of unwashed Han Shot First t-shirt). Fortunately, King Erik has read Lord of the Rings, and he melts down a dead giant’s heart and uses the reduction to create One Crown to rule them all, which forces the giants to do his bidding, and then with the remaining stock he makes a delicious consommé.

Okay, everybody up to speed?  Oh, and there’s a Little Princess in a castle whose mother reads her the same story, and apparently she likes to surreptitiously explore the royal catacombs and harass the corpses, so hopefully she’ll grow up to be Laura Croft. Okay, I think that’s it.  We’re good.  Cue the credits, and crank up Generic Soaring Fanfare, Opus 18 in D Minor…

10 YEARS LATER (according to the superimposed titles, and they’ve never lied to me before). Jack has grown up into the Beast from those X-Men movies, before he turned into a Furry, and then Kelsey Grammer.  Jack’s Dad is dead (ironically, excessive use of antibacterial soaps can reduce one’s natural resistance to disease), and Jack’s uncle is forcing him to sell a horse. Instead, he goes to the theater, where the title character from Willow is rehashing the prologue, so we get to enjoy that whole thing all over again. Princess Tomb Raider has graduated from peeping on her deceased ancestors to slumming with the groundlings, but she gets sexually harassed by three drunken blokes. Jack intervenes and gets his ass kicked, but he’s saved by Ewan McGregor (I can’t remember his character name, but he’s playing an older, bearded, mentor figure with a sword, so I’m just going to call him Obi-Wan).

Stanley Tucci is the resident Bad Guy Betrothed to the Princess, and steals the One Crown and the Magic Beans from King Erik’s grave, but gets bean-jacked by a monk! Stanley orders a police pursuit, so the monk offers the beans to Jack in exchange for his horse, giving a big speech about how legumes are destiny and will change the world, and how you shouldn’t get them wet because they’re kinda like Mogwais.

Princess Lara dresses up like a boy and rides out into a rainstorm so she can get lost and wind up at Jack’s cottage for some androgynous flirting. Unfortunately, all this humid sexuality makes the beans moist, and a stalk erupts through the roof, in what I can only assume is director Brian Singer’s recurring dream.  Jack falls out of the house, and Princess Lara gets carried away into the sky on the tip of the stalk, which isn't even symbolism, it's just flat-out bragging.

Lara’s father, King Ian McShane, orders Stanley, Obi-Wan, and Jack up the beanstalk to rescue his daughter, and kill some time with a lengthy climbing sequence.  It does drag on, but at least when they finally get to the computer-generated top we’re rewarded with long, stupefied reaction shots as our heroes stare in amazement at how fake it all looks.  Meanwhile, Stanley bean-jacks the remaining beans from Jack.

Okay, time for a walking sequence now, as Jack, Obi-Wan and company follow Princess Lara’s trail and discover she’s wandered deep into tunnels and forest, carving her initials everywhere she goes like Arne Saknussen. Eventually, Obi-Wan and one of his hench-wans get captured by a giant while Jack reclines on the bottom of a stream and holds his breath, because apparently nobody in this version of the Middle Ages had invented the “breathe through a reed” bit, their wizards and natural philosophers being too busy perfecting Neutragena.

Lara has also been snatched up and locked in a My Size birdcage at Giant HQ, where the eponymous creatures take turns leering into the 3-D camera. It’s hard to tell them apart; fortunately the giant generalissimo has an abrasive Scottish accent, and a smaller, louder, stupider head growing out of his shoulder, which I imagine is what it feels like to be Steve Doocy sitting next to Brian Kilmeade.

Stanley shows up with the One Crown, and drafts the giants into his scheme for world conquest. Meanwhile, it’s time for a Julia Child cooking show, except with a giant (but I repeat myself). Chef Nephilim is making Obi-Wans in a Blanket today, but Jack stabs him in the neck while he’s chopping parsley.

Back on Earth, the kidnapping of King Lovejoy’s daughter is taken as a signal to party down, and a Ren Fest breaks out at the bottom of the beanstalk.

Back in Giantopia, or Food Giant, or whatever the hell it’s called, Jack leads Obi-Wan and Lara outside. Then he kisses a boo-boo on her wrist, and says some inspirational bullshit that reminds her of her mother, which is generally the point in any date when you realize you’re not getting laid.

Hey, it’s been a few minutes, how about another walking scene? I doubt this movie did much for the stars' careers, but it certainly improved their cardiovascular conditioning.

Jack finds a sleeping giant guarding the beanstalk. He cunningly drops a beehive into its helmet, and if you’ve ever longed to see a crudely animated character from a Playstation game recreate that scene from The Wicker Man where Nicolas Cage screams, “Not the bees!”, then congratulations, you’ve just been fanserved.  Despite the title Jack the Giant Slayer, this giant actually commits suicide by jumping to his death, but I have a feeling Jack still reports it as a kill to the game warden in order to claim the fifty-dollar bounty. The giant lands on a group of praying monks and King Al Swearengen freaks out and orders the beanstalk to be cut down.

Oblivious to the deadly gardening going on below them, Jack and Princess Lara repeat the climbing sequence, except in reverse, but Obi-Wan stays behind in Cloudland Estates (a Planned Community for Active Giants), vowing to retrieve the One Crown and stop Stanley and his army of Brobdingnagian temps. The next day he wakes up beside the beanstalk, exactly where we left him, having gone nowhere and achieved nothing, so this film, although filled with contemptible nitwits, has given me at least one character to identify with.

Eventually Stanley trips over Obi-Wan, and then basically falls on his knife and dies, and again, I’m guessing Obi-Wan lists that on his resume as a kill – or at least as Stage Combat Experience.  But Giant General Double-Header plucks the One Crown off Stanley’s dead noggin and slips it onto his finger (where it obligingly glows like the One Ring) and now he’s Double-Header the First, King of the Giants.  Meanwhile, the beanstalk falls over, crushing the Renaissance Festival and half the castle, but Jack and Lara and Obi-Wan just ride it down like one of those Parachute Rides at the county fair, meaning they barely survive, and afterwards their pants are sticky and smell vaguely of malt liquor.

Okay, they’re back on terra firma, Lara and the King Lovejoy are heading home to the castle, Jack is heading back to his weirdly spotless farm, and this would be a perfect time to roll the end credits. Unfortunately, King Double-Header’s smaller, stupider head notices the bag of magic beans, so now there’s still 41 minutes to go. (And this is exactly why, although I never met a man I didn’t like, I almost always hate the mutated heads growing out of their shoulders. Pop it! Pop it!)

The giants cultivate some more beanstalks in a lavish special effects sequence that delivers all the chills and excitement of that Second Grade experiment where you stick toothpicks in a yam and suspend it in a glass of water.  They climb down and attack, so our heroes hide in the castle, while the King’s men and the giants have a prolonged tug-of-war over the drawbridge that fails as entertainment, but succeeds in making you glad you didn’t go to your company’s summer picnic.

Jack and Princess Lara run to light a beacon to summon aid from Gondor and Rohan, but giants, as we learned from the fairy tale, can burrow like gophers, and King Double-Header pops up out of the floor. Jack drops his remaining magic bean down the giant’s throat and a seed grows in his tummy, just the way it does in that old wives tale about where babies come from, and it rips his body into shreds, which is hard cheese, since they don’t even give him an episiotomy.

Everyone squares off for a big battle, giving the film one last, desperate chance to generate some thrills.  Instead, Jack saunters out wearing the One Crown, the giants immediately kneel down, and there’s a long awkward pause as our heroes exchange glances that seem to say, “Shouldn’t one of us have a line here?”  Cut to the future (or the present?) where Jack is wrapping up the tale while he and Princess Lara put their two children to bed. Okay then, I guess he was telling the story the whole.. Wait…No. Cut to the future again (the actual present) where a docent is showing off the One Crown to a tour group at the Tower of London.  Okay then. If I’d known it was going to be like this, I’d have gone to see the Changing of the Guard instead. 

An evil-looking schoolboy stares with evil intent at the crown, and even though I didn’t really give a crap about the movie’s villains, I find it in my heart to sincerely loathe this kid, since he’s trying to set up a sequel.

The end.

Post-Friday Beast Blogging: The "Cats of the Cheap Seats" Edition

RILEY:  Well...this could'a gone better.

MOONDOGGIE: (Sigh)  I guess next time I should just spend the money and get the Premiere Club Preferred Seating with Extra Leg Room.

Happy Birthday, Weird Dave! Eat a Firearms-Free Yankee Fan!

Anyone who's read our friend Weird Dave's comments over the years would have to agree that he has a rather droll sense of the absurd. So when it came time to go gift shopping for his birthday, I had to look no further than the work of Townhall "Tipsheet" blogger Cortney O'Brien, who saw the recent Sharknado sequel, not through 3-D glasses or even just a glass darkly, but through Kulturkampf! Brand X-Ray Spex (cuz she's a Kulturkampf BAMF!), and determined that beneath its urbane veneer, it's actually a feeding frenzy of pro-Second Amendment advocacy.

"Ain't that just like a New Yorker? Brings a bat to a sharkfight."

Now, the results of her deep textural analysis may surprise some viewers, and perhaps even a few of the filmmakers -- particularly the sharks, who deny any political motivation for their involvement in the project, claiming the producers assured them the movie was just going to be a light, fun piece of super-bloody snuff porn -- because a cascade of homicidal cartilage seems like a curious basis for the argument that open carry laws to lead to less crime.  Typically, when confronted by a shark, you can't stand your ground; the best you can do is tread your water.  However, if a Great White travels by twister into your neighborhood, and the cops don't pull it over for Flying While Shark, then you're totally entitled to gun it down. Unless you live in New York...

I never thought I’d praise the filmmakers who brought us ‘Sharknado.’ But, according to the Twitterverse, ‘Sharknado 2: The Second One,’ which premiered Wednesday night on Syfy, took a much-needed jab at New York City’s anti-gun agenda.

As Birth of a Nation was to the Klan, so Sharknado 2: The Second One is to the NRA.  Anyway, I'm old fashioned, and prefer that a critic actually watch a movie before she begins to laboriously tease out its subtle themes like so many threads from a Persian carpet, but obviously Cortney was on Twitter, saw gun enthusiasts making their usual pre-verbal vocalizations and thought, "There's a free column!" Which, to be fair, is pretty much what I thought when I saw her post, because it's the Circle of Blog. And frankly, I'm in no position to make an informed counter-argument, since everything I know about the film I learned from Sheri's tweet on the subject:

To protect themselves from the sharks falling from the sky, the film's protagonists needed weapons.

Or a roof.

But, a character begrudgingly informed them, there were no gun shops in the city.

Try, if you can, to disregard the ridiculous plot and focus on the point: A machine gun would stop these sharks in their tracks a whole lot quicker than a chainsaw or a baseball bat.

"Hmmm...Shark tracks.  Two, three days old..."

Yes, you do have to step gingerly over a few ridiculous potholes in the plot to reach the film's meaty and not at all ridiculous philosophical center, and like Cortney I find this a bit sad.  One of the most important sociopolitical issues of the day -- the right of American citizens to shoot it out in the street with sharks -- is finally dramatized, and Hollywood doesn't treat it with the gravitas it deserves.

Still, awareness has been raised, and the issue is in the Zeitgeist now, rotating at speeds up to 318 mph and sucking up attention and cows, so I say, when life gives you Sharknado, you make Sharknade.

I don't mean to question Mr. Johanson's martial acumen -- he speaks with great authority, and I'm sure he's war-gamed out various scenarios involving an attack on an urban environment by fish (Scenario No 2A: Airborne Sharks Take Manhattan. Result: High Collateral Damage due to a decrease in pawn shop firearms sales; Scenario 8H: Volga River Sturgeons Parasail into Palm Beach in Red Dawn-style Sneak Attack: Result: Invaders gut Rush Limbaugh and harvest his roe; Scenario 4J: Stealth Insertion of Helium-Filled Puffer Fish into Boston. Result: Attacking force casualties are minimal, assuming the local PBS station can be captured in the first 30 minutes of fighting) -- but if tough local gun laws are the key to victory by the Shark-Stormfront axis, wouldn't Washington D.C. make an even more perfect target? I mean, it's like these sharks aren't even bothering to think strategically. On the other hand, there are a lot of no-fly zones in the capital, and while sharks are unafraid to kill and disembowel indiscriminately, even they don't want the FAA up in their shit.

It’s not just these fictional characters upset with the Empire State's anti-gun policies. Actual New Yorkers have taken to the streets to give these politicians apiece of their mind. Their message? “Hands off our guns”.

True, they're a small minority of New Yorkers, but if you add in their fictional allies, then it's almost a plurality.

Good to see Hollywood joining these freedom-loving New Yorkers and not being afraid to slam policies that aren’t working.

Well, they had to do something to make up for their failure to grant equal time to both sides of the fracking controversy in Arachnoquake.

Click here to read some of last night's best pro-gun, anti-shark tweets.

I can only presume these people will be shooting out their TV screens like Elvis during Shark Week.

Anyway, please join me in wishing our buddy Weird Dave a very happy birthday. And remember: Guns don't kill people. Airborne sharks with a high resistance to vertigo kill people.

The Crass Menagerie

Yesterday the RNC offered me the chance to express my longing for George W. Bush through the eloquent medium of the Beefy-T; and yet, apparently because I'm a jerk, I ignored Chief Operating Officer Sara Armstrong's entreaty and instead spent the money on one of those shirts with airbrushed boobs on it, since it basically sends the same message.

But the Republican National Committee is turning up the tough love, and today they brought in Co-Chair Sharon Day:

Scott, 

30 years ago, President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush were re-elected to the White House. 

Some of our country’s best years followed that moment.

I have to agree, mostly because I got laid a lot in the mid-Eighties, although at the time I attributed that less to Reagan and Bush and more to Bartles & Jaymes.

 I remember watching with optimism as Reagan and Bush honorably protected my freedoms and defended my conservative values.

While I remember watching a lot of Airwolf. Frankly, I don't think either one of us has much to be proud about.

Together, President Reagan and Vice President Bush exemplified leadership.

They left a legacy of prosperity, opportunity and perseverance for Americans.

Oh, so that's what I stepped in. This all apparently predates the law that now requires political parties to carry plastic bags around to scoop up their Presidents' legacies.

So I am thrilled the RNC is taking the time this year to honor the legacy of Reagan and Bush by offering you a limited-edition vintage Reagan-Bush ’84 t-shirt.

Some say that an appeal to the senses  -- such as the taste of a little piece of madeleine -- is the key to recollection, while others maintain that memory is best unlocked by novelty undershirts. Regardless, the remembrance of things past remains a profound experience, whether the author is Proust or Zazzle.
But while Sharon's lyrical nostalgia is charming, it's only the Good Cop warm-up for RNC Treasurer Tony Parker's Bad Cop act.

Scott, 

Did you abandon the Republican Party?

"I've abandoned my party! I've abandoned my party!  I've abandoned my national committee!"

Chairman Priebus has written to you already this year asking you to contribute to the RNC and renew your membership. But we haven’t received your financial support yet this year.

I'm sorry, I've just been distracted by how much "Chairman Priebus" sounds like one of those fake, science fictiony titles, like "Commando Cody" or "Padishah Emperor Shaddam" or "Judge Wapner".

Your past support has shown us that you believe in the Republican Party and the conservative principles we stand for. 

Given that my past support has consisted entirely of stealing the content of your emails and using it for my own nefarious purposes while giving you nothing in return, I believe that I've not only studied the principles you stand for, I've mastered them, and am now ready to leave the monastery and walk the earth like Kung Fu.

 So we are giving you one more chance to renew your membership with the Republican National Committee.

I completely believe that this is my last chance to give you money, just as you should totally believe that I've already mailed you a huge check.

Right now you are handing the advantage over to Democrats. That’s exactly what President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid want you to do. With committed Republicans like you sitting out in 2014, the Democrats are able to continue their liberal rampage on conservative principles.

I'm not sitting it out, I just don't want to shoot my wad too early, so I'm waiting until the "liberal rampage" is upgraded to a "socialist stampede." But don't worry -- I've set up a Google alert.

2014 is our last chance to step in, step up

and shake it all about.

Don’t turn your back on the Republican Party

Relax, Tony. That's a lesson I learned a looong time ago.

I Really Need to File a Restraining Order Against Reince Preibus

We tend to mention a lot of right wing luminaries here on the blog, which is an unpleasant but unavoidable byproduct of our charter, and I long ago made my peace with it. Unfortunately, the ever-more cephalopodic nature of internet algorithms has led to a situation I did not foresee, and I now find myself faced with the necessity of committing civil disobedience to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

In a nutshell, I'm being stalked by the RNC.  Here's a look at my email inbox:

Sure, I could just flag all these as spam and be done with it, but most of the letters achieve such a desperate tone that I'm afraid any rejection might drive their authors to do something desperate. For instance, Sara Armstrong, Chief Operating Officer of the RNC is suffering from the delusion that George W. Bush was real, and not a ghost story told around campfires to frighten Cub Scouts. Fortunately, there's a cure for her condition -- robust T-shirt sales -- but thanks to Obamacare it doesn't come cheap.

Scott, 

Resolute and decisive.

I'll take "British Warship Names" for 200, Alex.

 That’s what I remember when I think of the leadership of President George W. Bush. He led our nation through some of the most challenging moments of our nation’s history.

I'll go even further. His leadership made even some of our nation's most mundane moments seem challenging.

He led.

Add an "i" to that sentence and I'll agree.

The President we have today thinks our country should “lead from behind” and has significantly diminished the United States’ standing in the world — and worse, he has made us less safe.

Worst of all, this President doesn't agree that quotation marks should no longer be used to indicate actual quotes, but instead be sprinkled randomly through a paragraph as decorative "Freedom Dimples."

I miss the leadership of President George W. Bush. And I miss him.

I'll say what I always do whenever someone starts mooning over their ex: "You're better off without him."

I had the privilege of serving in his White House, and I saw the character that he and his family provided our nation. I will be forever grateful for their service.

Hm, let's check Sara's bio, and see from what lofty perch she observed Bush momentously lead our nation through some of our nation's most challenging moments:

Deputy Chief of Staff Sara Armstrong Director of membership services at the RNC

Her duties including calling anyone who wants to cancel their membership and demanding, "Why is it that you're not wanting to have the No. 1-rated political party with 34% approval rating available?"

Worked at the White House from June 2002 to Jan. 2009. Special Assistant to the President

"Thanks honey, but next time make it two sugars."

 and Deputy Chief of Staff to First Lady Laura Bush

"Thanks hon, but next time skip the sugar and add two fingers of Old Crow."

Director of the Visitors Office;

She lovingly made out Jeff Gannon's press pass each day.

 Deputy Director of Correspondence for the First Lady

i.e., "Wrote Mrs. Bush's Thank You cards"

Correspondence Analyst

i.e., "Read the Thank You cards other people sent to Mrs. Bush." Presumably with the First Lady's permission, but judging by the six emails I've gotten from Sara over the last five days, asking if I've read the previous half dozen emails, she is a trifle nosy.  Anyway, bona fides established! On with today's pitch:

Tomorrow is President George W. Bush’s Birthday. It’s a moment that has reminded us of what leadership in the White House really looks like.

Because real leadership looks like a birthday party?  Whenever I feel uncertain about the direction our country is taking, I like to imagine President Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice sitting around a conference table in the Situation Room, wearing festive party hats and looking resolute.

Fortunately, Sara's wistful mood of regret can be assuaged by ordering this "I Miss W" tee:

The perfect compliment to a friend or loved one wearing an "I'm With Stupid" shirt.

Remembrance of Doghouse Rileys Past

One year ago today the blogosphere lost a unique voice, and World O' Crap lost a friend of many years standing -- Douglas Case, the Hoosier Sage, better known around the intertubz by his nom de net, Doghouse Riley.  In memorium, I went through the Wo'C archives --- at least, those that survived the Great Hack Attack of 2010 -- and collected just a few of the pearls he so generously strewed through our comment threads over the past decade...

Okay, I hate to take away from larger issues, such as “what sort of shenanigans are involved in someone hiring Meghan Cox Gurdon as a writer?” or “who is it imagines there’s an endless market for the sort of self-absorbed blatherings you can’t escape at a family gathering?”, and I’m not even going to mention that May 1 column where she asks why, if black people are flocking to Obama it isn’t the most natural thing in the world for white people to hope one of their own finally makes it to the Oval Office, except she frames it as the sort of question no obviously well-mannered white suburban columnist would dare ask, since, y’know, they all have the good sense to pretend not to be racist anymore. I’d just like to know how one “assembles” loaves of bread in the morning for baking in the evening, and who it is thinks a baguette should be soft. But I’m easily distracted.

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What is the deal with Ben Stein? 

Stein’s the Wayne Newton of American letters. He was resurrected during the brief, then-campy fashion for the hopelessly unfashionable about the time Disco died, and, like Newton, he somehow managed to overstay his welcome by a good half-century, becoming convinced of his own popularity into the bargain. He’s a cautionary tale about American culture–embraced for his role in a movie by its fans, who were to young to know, or care, what being a Nixon apologist actually entailed–as well as a living example of how people actually believed at one time that Ronald Reagan was just a gag we were pulling on ourselves, that we’d all have a good chuckle, then go home and forget all about it.

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O god I hate bar culture. 

And I apologize, sincerely, to those of you who don’t, because what you enjoy is the bonhomie, or the skills of a good mixologist, or maybe just the rank smell of desperation and the shedding of IQ points by those with few to spare, and that’s not what I hate. 

I hate the debasement of taste, the TGIFridayfication of perfectly decent spirits that came about when adults stopped drinking and marketers swooped in to secretly turn everyone into a 19-year-old in the guise of turning everyone into a 22-year-old. Flavored martinis! Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican St. Patrick’s Day! Mixed drinks named by a panel of morning zoo personalities! Gimme a Blow Job! Har har har. 

Oooh, and great news–Bacardi has managed to take the Mint Julep, a drink which once desecrated honest bourbon, and not just transpose it for their execrable product, but produce a special “rum” for the purpose, so pre-Korsakoff’s alcoholics can feel like connoisseurs! I swear to god, if we just put Bacardi’s marketers in charge of Iraq there’d be lines around the block at every recruiting station.
Same thing happened to decent pot smoking in the 70s, when the Thai stick and Primo Bud morons moved in. 

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Ironically, a provocateur is someone who "provokes trouble, causes dissension or the like; an agitator." 

Ironically, that's not what "agent provocateur" means.

Ironically, someone at something called "American Thinker" wrote that. 

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Well, I thought I said this yesterday, but Lileks’ material is no funnier than it should be, and since I’m five years older I can attest that by the time he turned up, the “Look, humorously anachronistic kitchen design!” bit had already died of old age, despite being cared for by people who did it much better. 

To me the problem is his borrowing on the other side of the equation: he adopted the “I’m a slightly goofy Everyman, which makes my tiniest notion a lot more sensible than those eggheads who thought up the metric system” newspaper columnist tone that others had already stolen and done better, and he applied it to material that requires a certain amount of real, not mock, self-deprecation. Your own kitchen is going to look like it’s wearing sleeve garters and a handlebar mustache before long. 

Kitsch is funny because of the uncritical acceptance of bad or indifferent commercial “aesthetic”. It’s really not possible to make fun of shag carpeting or June Cleaver’s green bean casserole and simultaneously celebrate the Clorox Rotating Toilet Wand, on sale this week at You Know Where.

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Humor, oh yeah. Why, just today Jonah uncorked “Disgruntled? Is anyone ever just ‘gruntled’?” I mean, how’s the Left supposed to compete with that? 

Of course the real difficulty in dealing with the Pantloadian wit (I have to admit that before this hour I was innocent of anyone ever referring to Steyn as “funny” in the comedy sense) is that it only becomes humor after its delusions of seriousness have been utterly demolished. It’s like telling the waiter that was the worst onion soup you’d ever tasted, and having him reply, “It was zabligione! It was zabligione!” and run sobbing into the kitchen. 

Anyway, I’m sure gonna miss these guys when they’re gone, and like Mark Twain, I think I’ll ask for a piece of the rope as a souvenir.

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Roll call of Republican Presidential speechwriters since 1968: Bill Safir(e), Pat Buchanan, John McLaughlin, Ben Stein, Peggy Noonan, Tony Snow, David Frum, Marc Thiessen, Gerson.

I b'lieve that's all I have to say.

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Another prime example of the results of spending all your time seeking the approval (and donations) of people who already agree with you, as Tabor appears to imagine he’s constructed a trap out of a couple of willful misapprehensions of Darwin, like it doesn’t occur to him that if it hasn’t worked in 150 years it’s unlikely one more column will do the trick. Hail to thee, rapidly aging Young Jessie Helms! Nobody you talk to knows any better, and anybody who knows any better takes one look and laughs. 

a radical piece of legislation which would go beyond Roe versus Wade in declaring abortion to be a fundamental right, such as the right to free speech. 

But that’s exactly what it is. Precedent is law; Court decisions are Constitutional law. Your right to be read a Miranda warning, say, or your right not to be forced to pray in public school, are as “fundamental” as any in the Bill of Rights. (I happen to think this is partly a shortcoming of rights advocates continuing the argument over abortion as it was pre-Roe, and partly, maybe mostly, the result of how the argument has been scripted in the Press for thirty-five years, as though these “moral” arguments are somehow the crux of the matter.) 

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My own hope this holiday season is that some day acts of love will become so common that the world will take little notice. 

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 Y’know, I hear the chicks really dig a guy in uniform.

Here’s the thing: I’ve made my peace, in a manner of speaking, with the anti-fluoridationists and the unrepentant racists and the penis substitutionists and the simpering jackboot lickers in the years since I first saw an Impeach Earl Warren billboard; such people are actually out there, despite everything common sense would tell us. But I’m goddamned if I can figure out the “damned feminists keep me from getting laid” routine, especially when coupled with “and the threat of child support” since a) the Right keeps insisting we’re a “center-right” country, which would at least raise the question of mathematical probability, not to mention the fact that I can walk through any mall in town and see dozens of women obviously unspoiled by political philosophy, not to mention that on certain sides of town I’d be hard-pressed to see anything but; and b) I thought these guys were the Personal Responsibility crowd. I guess that only goes for the responsibility to make sure the gummint keeps queers from marryin’. 

I mean, all else aside, who exactly do you think you’re kiddin’,dude? 

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Aragon: What’s here? the portrait of a blinking idiot. 

Good Lord, is Ross even aware that several of his sentences have broken loose and are beating the shit out of his helpless premise? “Bush was right about Social Security”? Tell me, which was he more right about: that letting people stake their entire Social Security claim in the stock market, circa 2006, was a foolproof small-government ticket to a worry-free retirement, or that we couldn’t possibly wait to solve a theoretical problem which was yet thirty-forty years away, because waiting would force the government to inject massive amounts of cash into the system on short notice, which we all know would violate the sound fiscal principles Republicans stand for?

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 On Ann Coulter modeling mink:

Yeah, there’s nothing like evoking a more glamorous, genteel era by being as patently offensive as you possibly can. 

And really, what else screams “I’m feminine, dammit!” like a couple pounds of makeup and the pelts of a few wily minks you outsmarted? 

Attach a few live ones to her. That’s a calendar I’ll buy.

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On Jonah Goldberg:

See, this is why, when I’m in the mood for scrambled history I turn to David Brooks: the calories are just as empty, but there’s less lard and he rarely tries to garnish it with hacked-up bits of FDR.For chrissakes, “Wilson was the first progressive president?” What, TR and Taft don’t count because they were Republicans? Does he imagine his audience didn’t finish junior high? Okay, so that’s justified. But, sheesh, “pathetic” is something for him to aspire to. 

Honestly, the Times owes that Gelernter hack an apology.

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On Ben Shapiro:

Y’know, now I stop to think about it, it’s been a joy to watch Benji grow from ersatz teen brainiac to college witling right through to premature senility and rumored joblessness. And to realize, in the bargain, that he had six or seven years there to simply come to his senses and figure out how to behave like a normal person, and chose, instead, to be the only person in America, probably apart from his parents, who believed the Ben Shapiro Myth. Or cared. 

Look at that drivel. It’s the product of about as fine an education one’s parents can buy in this country. “Knowing who Jimmie Johnson is” is the best he can do?

I’m from the motorsports capital of the universe. I like motorsports. I even watch NASCAR on occasion, not that it really qualifies; if you start talkin’ that Authentic NASCAR shit around here it won’t be long before somebody offers to help you pull your head out of your ass. 

And Benji’s from California, birthplace of drag racing, and a state with its own stock car and open wheel traditions. You’d think if he was so all-fuckin’ real folks an’ all he might reference his own traditions instead of that Counterfeit Confederacy crap. 

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I’m mad about the Em Ess Em inquisition of “Joe” “the” “Plumber” (I don’t even trust Republican articles or conjunctions anymore) m’self: they pillory the man just because he was so convinced of the correctness of his own view, which, needless to add, was the wrong one, that he felt required to make shit up to prove its superiority. That clearly amounts to punishing him just for being a Republican (see Palin, S.; Goldberg, J.).

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Sheesh, does this stuff go through some central lab where they test for accuracy and excise anything that qualifies? How difficult is it, really, to understand the concept of treason? It’s the only crime defined in the Constitution, fer chrissakes. There’s a famous precedent that no one could be tried for treason after the Civil War because the United States never recognized the CSA. The Rosenbergs were executed for espionage. 

And, in Ethel’s case at least, wrongly, on ginned-up evidence which still could not rise above “paltry”, and while withholding evidence that would have exonerated her (as well as exposing our spying on our ally in WWII, and without Presidential approval). 

Of course it’s long been recognized by anyone paying attention that these most American of Americans turn out to have little knowledge of, and zero respect for, her actual laws, or, for that matter, her actual citizens. But their salient feature–aside from their numbers and political clout having thus far prevented them from becoming a subcategory in the clinical diagnosis of psychopathy–is their willingness, even preference, for lying even when the facts might make their case.

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If Jesus hadn't wanted you to be scorned he'd'a given you better arguments.

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Malkinses is the rock-thrower from the tenth row of the mob, the eighth person to attack the prostrate victim, so she kicks a little harder to make up for being a physical coward. 

That’s merely commonplace. What’s remarkable is that she, like Goldberg, rapidly approaches forty years of age with no sign of having ever progressed beyond her high-school Reaganism, of having ever learned to construct an argument or evaluate one; in fact, it’s what both have been rewarded for all their adult lives. And it shows. If the Malkinses’ vileness or Goldberg’s stupidity ever required rebuttal that day is past. Today it is sufficient to simply point at them. And warn the children.

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On trolls:

I knew there was something I missed about junior high school. And this isn’t it.

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On Kyle-Anne Shiver:

This very positive force [fear] that innately urges all human beings to guard themselves from disasters, big and small, is one of the strongest protections we all have 

So, yours wasn’t working throughout the Bush administration, or did you just switch it off? 

There are probably not too many Americans over the age of 50, who do not remember the black power moment at the Olympics of 1968 and the fear those raised fists could evoke in the shadow of American cities inflamed by riots and uncontrolled violence. 

Yes, because who among us is not a cosseted white suburbanite who’s been nursing racial fears for five decades? 

(I have to give Kyle-Anne some props for using “inflame” to mean “set fire to”, but then I’m a big fan of Late Middle English, and anything that speeds its return I deme quemeful.) 

(Of course the violence which actually inflamed inner cities in 1968, as we use the term nowadays, was the violence that separated Martin Luther King from his previous ability to use oxygen.)I also remember that those fists were attached to names–Tommie Smith and John Carlos–and that non-scary white Australian silver medalist Peter Norman (whose name I had to look up) wore a patch signifying his support. And I remember the real reaction–beyond people like Kyle-Anne, whose boot-shaking had, no doubt, been a more or less permanent condition since the mid-50s–was, in fact, what we seem to do best: an easy suburban outrage unburdened by fact or understanding. And I remember that Avery Brundage, the IOC president and one of the slimiest bastards ever to not rule an Axis power in WWII, threatened to throw the entire US Olympic team out if the two weren’t expelled. 

And, of course, it turned out that America need not have worried; Ronald Reagan would soon make People’s Park safe again, and in four years George Foreman would begin the conversion of the Olympics to a quadrennial flagasm. 

And Tommie Smith and John Carlos, like Jim Hines (100m) and Lee Evans (400) would spend a good portion of their lives giving back to their communities.

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And Andy McCarthy–a former Assistant US Attorney–wants to get to the bottom of a story which does not just include, but hinges on the idea that one’s parent, even if a natural-born citizen, must also be at least 21 years old if the other parent is a foreign national? 

I’ve said it before: if you really expect me to jump on the Obama bandwagon the first thing you have to do is convince me this country is worth saving.

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On Orson Scott Card:

Oh well, thought I. I’ve already seen Prince Caspian and there’s nothing else remotely interesting in the theaters. 

Th’ fuck? The man’s sixty years old. Does he not have air conditioning or something? 

I mean, I can’t remember saying that any time after my 21st birthday, and that was before videocassettes and cable television.

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Jesus, you should pardon the expression, Rod Dreher’s religiosity is somehow more transparently pathetic than Doug Giles’ carnival hucksterism. Though it is nice to see that whack-job Protestant fascism and Mainstream Methodism Roman Catholicism“Orthodoxy”, or whatever Rod’s cult du jour is at present, can find common ground in their deep, dark longings.

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I like to spend at least half of any Andy Garcia movie trying to figure out what movie he thought he was making.

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Those that trumpet immigration, diversity and change are the last ones to judge such matters, however, because they tend to be cultural relativists whose moral foundation is even vaguer than the slogans they disgorge. 

Before I came to this I was afraid Selwyn had lost his Thesaurus. Or just worn it out. 

It is sobering to consider how great the odds that Young Selwyn Duke, at some point or other, received passing grades in both American History and English Composition.

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feeling the vice grip of a gasping economy. 

And like the man said, extremism in defense of economy is no vise.

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But isn’t homosexuality like race? No. Race has nothing to do with behavior

Y'know, Doc, I realize that we eradicated racism in this country too long ago for you to remember it (and many thanks, again, to all you white Southern evangelicals who made it possible), but the fact is that institutionalized racism was never about skin color, either, to hear the racists tell it, but the collection of behaviors--shiftlessness, promiscuity, lack of mental agility, inability to tell one's place, the tendency to ogle white women--which skin color just happened to predict with near 100% accuracy.

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1) No one has ever topped the two James Whale Frankensteins.  

2) Nothing to do with Halloween, but the most chilling moment in the whole genre is in the ice goddess segment of Kobayashi's Kwaidan, when the woodsman decides to tell his wife the story he swore never to tell, and her sewing stitch freezes in mid-air. 

3) Who ever sat through the first Halloween let alone the tenth? Talk about playing tennis with the net down. For a long time my life's goal was to yank the key out of that Casiotone and make John Carpenter swallow it sideways.

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1) If that's John Carradine at sixty I'm in much better shape than I realized. 

2) What I remember about Billy the Kid vs. Dracula was that it was one of the few bad movies I couldn't sit through, no matter what I had on board, and that it co-starred caffein pitchlady and marriage counsellor Mrs. Olson, before she lost her American accent.

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most days he is able to conquer the puzzles in The New York Times in ink. 

Big deal. I'm pretty sure I could beat the snot out of Will Shortz with my bare hands. 

As for the rest of this warmed-over claptrap--I'm pretty sure that bit about "more Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act" was stuck into the mythos at some point the way Rand McNally invents bogus cities to catch anyone plagiarizing its maps--I guess "growing up in Waco in the 50s and 60s" exempts one from knowing anything about the 1948 election, or Truman desegregating the armed forces, but what's the excuse for missing the fact that the minuscule Republican party in the South until 1964 consisted mostly of blacks who could vote? The fight over seating its delegates happened right there on th' teevee an' ever'thing.

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there is no legal reason why a nation at war must try to apprehend an enemy instead of shooting at him first. 

Sure there is, as everyone knows, including Yoo; shooting an incapacitated enemy combatant, or an unarmed and unresisting one, or one who has already surrendered, is murder. The man's as blithely unconcerned with black letter law as he is with human life. (The former may sound trivial compared to the latter, but consider that he earns his living at the law, whereas his status as human is subject to considerable doubt.) I wonder if he speeds up to run over jaywalkers. Just kiddin'. I'm convinced he does.

The killing of Yamamoto--which Yoo turns into one of those Bill Bennett Moral Tales for Children as Told By the Personally Depraved--is, in fact, proof that the matter used to be taken seriously; the intention was considered so borderline, so questionable, that the operation was undertaken only after it was submitted to the President for approval. And that's the killing of the commander of the Japanese naval forces during what was essentially a naval war (and, as you point out, a declared one at that), not the designated Second in Command of the Week whose threat to the United States consisted of mouthing off. 

And as long as we're on the subject we'll just note that the operation--a remarkable, split-second action in the face of severe risks--was carried out by uniformed members of the United States military at the direction of one of our greatest Presidents. Compare the near-random act of some CIA spook playing a video game and defended by a psychopath publicly masturbating to torture porn.

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Casting his vote in the 2011 Miss Wingnut Pageant:

First, like most of the above I miss the imaginary Golden Age of America, though unlike them it's not a fictional amalgam of Parson Weems, Ozzie and Harriet, and 19th century labor practices I pine for, but the very real, if artificially rosy, days of my own youth. Back then you couldn't have come up with this many identifiable wingnuts in toto, let alone after winnowing the likes of Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez, John Derbyshire, and Victor Davis Drusus Saigonius Hanson. Hell, in those days we had to scramble come up with more than three categories (Lyin' Red Baiter: Barry Goldwater vs. Dick Nixon; Angry Nun: Carl McIntire vs. Billy James Hargis; and Miss Anti-Fluoridation, which was the exclusive province of William Fuhbuckley after he threw all the other contestants out). Same thing every year, and, frankly, better times.

I guess I just wasn't meant for a time when wingnuts like Lileks and Genn would come up through a sort of farm system, like Texas' Miss America Corporation, and employ high-priced hair stylists and fashion consultants. It's like watching a bike race where everybody's coked to the gills on human growth hormone, except in this case it doesn't make anyone faster, or stronger, or, god knows, better looking, just tone deaf enough to continue.

So, Cal Thomas, the last surviving artifact of an optimistic time when we could say, "If we can just hold out until Cal Thomas dies of ugliness and impacted mucus this shit'll be over."

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Fascism: it’s not as much fun as it sounds.

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R.I.P., Doghouse.