Movable Snipe

To: Tim Cavanaugh
From: Nick Gillespie
Subject: Drunken Sailors and Moonbats

I'd say the only people happier than you and me that this is the end (my only friend, the end) are the last few readers who continue to mistake Jewcy for some sort of philo-Semitic porn site. I emerge from this exchange with you a) sadder than ever that I was ever born; b) even more sadder that you were ever born; and c) curious about when the target demo of this site will get the good news for modern man that they've been ransomed by, as Bob Dylan sung it so sweet and loud and true, "the man who came and died a criminal's death."

The Republican presidential debate was the big news last night—even bigger than the Richard Paul revelations you unearthed—and sadly I was too busy writing to you about blogs to even remember that it was on (full disclosure: I went to a T-ball game last night, then watched the Bulls-Pistons game got in the way, and around 11:30 p.m., there was also a really good Seinfeld on, the one where Elaine eats Mr. Peterman's antique piece of cake from the Edward VIII-Wallace Simpson wedding, so it's not like I wasn't prioritizing).

I give special credit to Glenn Greenwald for keeping his eye on his own white whale (the Bush administration's Lee Marvin-like "Who's Gonna Get Me a Beer?" attitude toward the Constitution, with civil liberties and due process playing the Michele Triola role) and ignoring the debate completely (though I'm a bit concerned that GG hasn't been heard of since 6:16 EST, especially after Mitt Romney's call for "double Guantanamo," whatever the fuck that is). The same goes for Noah Shachtman, who continues to report on the Pentagon's special new zit creams, "teeny tiny drones that can see like bugs, and hear like bats," and a bunch of other crap that is, however important, slightly less interesting than the old Edmund Scientific's catalog used to be. You know what the power of the blogosphere is, Tim? The right to ignore the news. Which, next to the rights to crack cocaine and freedom of/from religion might be the only one that matters.

Having said that, props to Swampland, which actually liveblogged the whole damn thing (though to be sure, only in a post-George Jetson world could watching something on TV be seen as akin to hard work; let's face it, in a world of Payless Shoe Source and footwear composed of all manmade materials, old-style shoe leather reporting is fading faster than Joe Klein's hairline). Not only that, but Time's Ana Marie Cox, late of Suck and Wonkette, actually managed to do something her MSM automaton colleagues consistently fail to do in their posts: inject some modicum of reality and/or attitude:

9:21 PM I have a bulletin for Senator McCain. You lost in 2006 because of the war. No, seriously, you did. Also? Retire the drunken sailor story. It dates you. And, really, you don't need to be dated.

She's right: The war (duh) was the major issue in the midterms. Fox News quoted McCain thus:

"We didn't lose the 2006 election because of the war in Iraq. We lost it because we in the Republican Party came to Washington to change government, and government changed us," McCain said. "We let spending go out of control. We spent money like a drunken sailor. Although I never knew a sailor - drunk or sober - with the imagination of my colleagues."

What, did McCain never hear about the Newport Sex Scandal while at Annapolis?

CNN (yeah yeah I know that they're commies) noted after the midterms that 57 percent of voters disapproved of the war (an equal percentage disapproved of Bush, but it's not clear how you separate the two); I doubt that many folks hated the Medicare prescription drug benefit (though it is loathsome for all sorts of reasons). I actually like the drunken sailor gag, if only because McCain comes from a long line of sea-loving alcoholics (and because I harbor an unseemly Ernest Borgnine/McHale's Navy fixation, which is second only to my Tovah Borgnine fixation). So I figure that McCain has earned the right to use "drunken sailor" until our boys come home from over here, there, and everywhere.

That said, there is something very weird going on in GOP political discourse when Ron Paul, the sole declared antiwar candidate, is hooted and hollered off the stage, even as he is a) the only Republican who is espousing something like traditional GOP foreign police; b) the only candidate vaguely in touch with the American people (latest polls show 55 percent of folks, an all-time high, saying we shouldn't have gone in the first place); and c) the runner-up in Fox News' own text message poll (Dr. No came in second only to Mitt Romney). If I gave a rat's ass about partisan politics, it would all be as frustrating as, well, the print edition of Time giving Ron Paul a C- and gratuitously calling him "Mr. Magoo." Indeed, if I gave a rat's ass about Mr. Magoo, arguably the most celebrated alum this side of Sister Souljah of your and mine alma mater, I'd be even more pissed.

And props to Kausfiles as well. Mickey apparently watched the debate but spared us all the tedium of a blow-by-blow analysis, instead compressing his take into the political equivalent of a haiku:

GOP Debate--kf Lazy Horse Race Blink Take**:

Win: Giuliani, McCain, Huckabee. ... Romney didn't come on strong--"double Guantanamo!"--until too late, therefore he loses relative momentum;

Lose: Paul, Tancredo, Gilmore

Not Much Impact: Hunter, Thompson, Brownback

**--In other words, a "winner" isn't someone whom I liked, but who I thought gained support among Republican primary voters who actually watched the thing. ... 7:37 P.M.

I'm jealous of the West Coast time differential. It not only makes it easier to watch Monday Night Football all the way to the end of the game, but you can watch presidential debates and then go out and drink for another six or seven hours.

Michelle Malkin liveblogged too, so more power (or maybe just Red Bull) to her, too (and the brave freedom fighters at Hot Air) even if she beat Ron Paul like he was Jose Padilla in (fully constitutional!) federal custody:

1003pm. Ron Paul buys the moonbat, blame-America line as the cause of global jihad. Goler: Are you suggesting that we invited the 9/11 attacks, sir?

That's not what Paul said, but never mind; you'd have to be a...a...a wingut or something to think that U.S. foreign policy ever has anything to do with how foreigners view the American government or people. I think it's just great that somebody actually uses the term moonbat without irony. It's like Gatsby calling people "old sport": funny and sad all at the same time. All that's missing is the swimming pool.

But here's the exit question, Tim (and I really hope never to speak to you again): Has political discourse become so Manichean that everything is black/white, right/left, up/down, stuffing/potatoes, is-Razzles-a-candy-or-a-gum? Whatever happened to the traditional America, where politics were tough but fair, and nobody hated each other or lied about each other's records or anything like that?

This is what your blogosphere has reduced us to: more voices and more choices. Worse still, it's more difficult than ever to avoid people yapping and offering up their opinions. Here's hoping that we can return to the mores of a more civilized era, when political rivals shot each other to death in Weehawken or likened each other to long-armed apes and then, at the end of the day, got together in the White House to booze it up on the taxpayers' dime.

To: Nick Gillespie
From: Tim Cavanaugh
Subject: Next Time, Let's You and I Pay To Do This

It's all about Glenn Greenwald, isn't it? While we lay waste our talents getting and spending on the Republican debate, only Dubba-G keeps fighting the good fight, devoting lengthy, sub-referenced, abundantly codiciled blog posts that capture the nation-sweeping excitement of the Comey testimony. He takes a slap at "the truly odious Joe Klein," and who can't feel the Greenwaldian tension? Beats there a heart so cold it doesn't thrill to the excitement of full-bore Klein hatred?

But wait: Here's Joe Klein himself, also hot on the trail of the Comey. And his fellow Swampland critter Karen Tumulty right there with him. So if they're all writing about the same dull topic, and also writing about each other, why does Jewcy need a couple of paunchy, self-pitying goys to do its blog snark about them? Why can't we just get down with the hot new "bag" of outsourcing journalism, and farm all this work out to some Anglophilic grad student in Bangalore?

I'll tell you why, Nick. Because in my day we didn't need all these "facts" and "figures" to clutter up our crystalline prose. By God, we got the news through sheer horse sense! We're not just a couple of wet-behind-the-ears linkalists, dammit! We're riding the high country of real reporting, and J. Jonah Jameson and Perry White and Tony Vincenzo are beet-red with aggravation at our high-spirited hijinks. And just to show you how hard it can be out there, try and read these sentences from our assigned beats this week, without putting your head into that set of shark's teeth I've got hanging on my rec-room wall.

Michelle Malkin:

The Hot Air team has broken out the popcorn.

Kausfiles:

(Yes, I'm extrapolating here from Pear's role in the 1995-6 welfare debates.)

Glenn Greenwald:

It is because the Beltway class is as corrupt and barren of integrity and judgment as they are.

Danger Room:

So Horiuchi is building a circuit that he hopes that can emulate how "interaural level differences" are processed "in the bat brainstem and midbrain."

Swampland:

Almost-candidate Chuck Hagel discusses "America's Role In The World" at the Center for National Policy in Washington.

ZZZZ! Wha—uh? Please don't cut my dick off, Mr. Hitler!

I think every one of those gems could be turned into a catchphrase every bit as good as "In the absence of weights, I am employing isometrics" or "I don't understand your hostility towards me" or "Bitch set me up."

Am I at 500 words yet?

Why aren't any of our targets writing about the Wolfowitz endgame? (Can somebody just shoot me now that I'm writing about the Wolfowitz endgame?) What about Prince Harry's royal draft dodge? Why are the media elites ignoring the story of the lamb panda? Who dares to speak for the surgical sponge left in Judge G. Blair Harry? How long can we continue to ignore the link between the sixth grade teacher attack prank and the eighth grade substitute teacher gay sex money shot? All I can say is, "What happens in Ms. Buford's class stays in Ms. Buford's class."

Yes, Nick, this crazy, mixed-up hill-of-beans world is too much for the citizen journalists who have made this week so regrettable for both of us. In this maelstrom of decay, you can trust Michelle Malkin, and it's on the shoulders of the diminutive firecracker that we must at last bestow the mantle of our blogger of the week, because she's the one who came up with this: "Forget about the candidates and the questions and the campaign. Call the wah-mbulance: Journalists are whining about the food and restrooms."

Which sucks, actually. So no, the blogger of the week is Mickey Kaus, because he compared either me or you to either Jimmy Stewart or the Duke. So he wins it.

But then again, where else but in Noah Shachtman's Boom Boom Room can we be reminded of the timeless lesson that you really can cook yourself to death in a tanning booth, just as you can die if your underwear's too tight or have your head eaten by a spider-infested bouffant? He calls it the Danger Palace, but he's making the world a safer place.

Then again, how can we not give the Palm to Karen Tumulty, who not only shares a name with New Brunswick, N.J.'s first and shittiest restaurant but wins all our hearts with a self-effacing "Just found the link. Blogging 101." And what of Glenn Greenwald, locked in an eternal struggle against his bizarro-universe counterpart Green Glennwald, a.k.a. John-Alberto Gonzales-Ashcroft?

And have we no sense of decency, at long last, if we don't join in the general disapprobation of John McCain's drunken sailor joke—perhaps the only thing on which all this week's bloggers agree?

Yes, Nick, they're all winners. To us, they're all our sons, and I guess they are, I guess they are! Everybody's a winner in what will undoubtedly be our last hurrah as the world's oldest boy band. And we're winners too! We are, we are! So why do I feel so bad?

Previous Movable Snipes:

Jonathan Ames and Amanda Marcotte
[Jewlicious, The News Blog, Gothamist, The Revealer, Maud Newton]

John Derbyshire and Daphne Merkin
[James Wolcott, Reason's Hit & Run, Design Observer, Kesher Talk, Matt Yglesias]

Michael Helke and Fiona Maazel
[3 Quarks Daily, Crooked Timber, Daniel Drezner, Nerve's The Scanner, The Elegant Variation ]

Spencer Ackerman and Melissa Lafsky
[Captain’s Quarters, Feministing, TNR's The Spine, Jossip, Wonkette]

more »

Long before there was Gawker, but a little after there was Wired, there was Suck. A smirking, ironic underground in the dotcom dystopia of the fin de siecle, Suck was an online politics and pop culture magazine read by those of us already too far into our teens to be billionaires, but too damned young to go back to print. Every day saw a short, witty essay published in a “snaking” column of text that never exceeded 200 pixels in width, and bylined by a too-clever-by-half pseudonym like Polly Esther or CGI Joe. And Terry Colon's accompanying art (see above and to the right) was simply the shrewdest thing in pastels.

You wanted a net mogul’s ego punctured, a politico’s horizon darkened, or a celebrity’s lipstick smeared – you knew where to point your browser between ’96 and ’01. (After the industry it took the piss out of became incontinent on Wall Street, Suck was bought out by Feed magazine, then fell into a state of permanent suspended animation. A little bit of Cisco Systems employee died in us all that day.)

The site's motto – “A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun” – may have been a paean to know-it-all Gen X cynicism, but make no mistake: the accomplishment was lasting and profound. Suck made the adolescent internet turn its head and cough.

So for this installment of Movable Snipe – “A blogroll, a week, and a deadly duel” – we’re proud to reunite two former Sucksters, Nick Gillespie (Mr. Mxyzptlk) and Tim Cavanaugh (BarTel D'Arcy).

Nick is the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine, which would have been Adam Smith’s favorite subscription if he were a member of Joy Division.

Tim, who’s now the web editor of the Los Angeles Times opinion page, actually invented Reason’s popular blog Hit & Run, a name he conveniently stole from a popular proto-blog feature at Suck. (Plagiarism’s the new scoop; remind me to forward you the Slate article.)

Their quarry for the next three days:

Swampland: Time’s collective corporate journalism blog, which I’ve found is best experienced as a drinking game. Every time Joe Klein reluctantly tugs his forelock before the almighty netroots, do a shot. Every time Wonkette emerita (and fellow Suck alumna) Ana Marie Cox wishes she could still make her mortgage payments on ass-fucking jokes, do two.

Unclaimed Territory: All right, I picked this one out of pure sadism. Lefty civil liberties lawyer Glenn Greenwald blogs at Salon, once the bete noir of the Sucksters. I don’t know if your browser does this, but that “smug cloud” from South Park always appears as pop-up in Firefox whenever I click on this blog.

Kausfiles: Will Slate’s in-house blogger finally have done with this whole charade and confess his Victor Mature-like man-love for Andrew Sullivan? More importantly, is Mickey furry enough to make it work?

Danger Room: Wired’s new defense and technology blog, marshaled by Jewcy friend Noah Shachtman. Noah recently broke the story about the Pentagon’s proposed kibosh on military blogs. We like him.

Michelle Malkin: Everyone’s favorite, internment camp-championing, link-happy vixen. Better looking than Ann Coulter, and Charlie’s favorite Angel (she’s good with knives).

–Michael Weiss

To: Tim Cavanaugh
From: Nick Gillespie
Subject: Elementary, My Dear Cavanaugh

So, Tim, we meet again, like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarity at Reichenbach Falls. Or maybe Sandler & Young at the Foxwoods Casino, together again for the last time. Is it too early in the week to start snorting Adderall? Or sticking needles in my eyes? Or how about in your eyes? In a land of blogs, the blind man may be king.

West Coast Shill: Tim Cavanaugh has become what he used to passive-aggressively deploreBefore we get on to discussing a bunch of blogs that I literally need to be paid to read—life being too short on such pursuits even if we live to be 200—I want to underscore how sick and tired I am of being paired professionally with you, first at Suck, then at Reason, and then occasionally at your current perch, where you shill for big media and corporate interests. Suddenly I know how Eydie Gorme must have felt all those years, carrying a real sack of rotten potatoes around on the stage and trying to keep the smile going. You know better than anyone how lucky you were that the Los Angeles Times hired you just minutes before I was going to shitcan you at Reason for conduct unbecoming a libertarian (really, Tim, how can you not agree that Mother, Jugs & Speed makes a great case for privatizing emergency medical services?). But I do owe you for a remarkable piece of advice—"Never pass up an opportunity to have sex on TV with Gore Vidal"—that I look forward to using at some point in the future, preferably after the Rapture has begun. (Are we even allowed to make Rapture jokes at Jewcy? Writing for this site, I haven't felt this Catholic since Mark Foley stopped IM'ing me).

So I went over to Kausfiles as directed, for about the first time in about a decade (slight exaggeration) and was immediately discombobulated by the newest item, "To Wuss or Not To Wuss," in which Mickey Kaus rats out Andrew Sullivan as a hypocrite about using the term "wussy." Everything really did change on 9/11, Tim, and the stakes have never been higher. Mickey—who I know a bit and with whom, at least up until now, I have always been on very friendly and flattering terms, except for the time I likened Bloggingheads TV to a lost act from Waiting for Godot—always seems to narrating a soap opera whose storyline is absolutely impenetrable, like Dark Shadows without the implied vampire sex (and hence much less interesting). It seems that Sully got mad at Mickey for defending Ann Coulter for saying John Edwards is light in the loafers. And then Old Duke, the trusty dog, came barking like mad from the old coal mine on the edge of town, where Jimmy and Mike were trapped while playing hide-and-seek, blah, blah, blah. There's so much blogrolling going on at Kausfiles, you can't read the damn thing without getting splinters in your teeth (and while we're at it: Thanks, Mickey, for linking for a column about speeding-crazed and accident-prone politicians by Reason's own Radley Balko).

Whenever I read Kausfiles—and knowing that Kaus writes mostly from bee-yoo-tee-ful Southern California—I'm always reminded of those stories about German intellectuals hanging out in Santa Monica during the Holocaust. Despite the sunshine and the beach, Adorno, Mann, et al., just couldn't get the horror in Europe out of their minds. With Mickey, it's like the opposite. You can imagine him in a death camp somewhere, practically on his way to the showers, and he'd still be fervently debating some technical point about capital gains, or welfare reform, or the new grill on a Chrysler LeBaron: "Matthew Yglesias is trying to sucker me into blogging about a 'variety of education-related topics.'"

Conservative Watch-Babe: Michelle MalkinSpeaking of horrifying scenes of human carnage, let's truck on over to Michelle Malkin's blog. You know, nobody uses the terms "wingnut" and "moonbat" better than our finest diagnostician of Bush Derangement Syndrome (who once, long ago in a distant galaxy, wrote a great story for Reason about racial dynamics in the war on drugs). Really, she can sniff out BDS from farther away than Bill Frist could read Terri Schiavo's aura. But the fact is that Malkin's blog today is a snooze, with items about stuff like "John Doe legislation" that will protect folks who turn in suspicious-looking Arabs who turn out to be innocent. "Watch this bill closely," muses Malkin. "Keep an eye on who supports and who opposes it. This will tell you much." You can get that sort of vitriol from a Magic 8-Ball, Tiresias!

It's tough to believe that Malkin hasn't peaked after her riveting turn a couple of weeks ago as a cheerleader belting out "The Defeatocrats' Cheer" in living video. I haven't felt that sorry for someone in a cheerleading outfit—or been that sick to my stomach—since "Hey Mickey" went out of heavy rotation on MTV in 1982. Seriously, fuck the surge in Iraq: Just drop Malkin and Toni Basil on the Sunni Triangle and watch the fight go out of those insurgents faster than John Kerry got out of Vietnam.

Does anyone use italics in the blogosphere better than Glenn Greenwald? I don't think so, Tim, and I'm willing go to the mat on this. This guy gets it, you understand? In fact, sometimes he gets it with italics and bold. Just take a look at the long, indented paragraphs that run through his blog like, I don't know, stink on rice (where is that Adderall?). Greenwald is the author of The New York Times bestseller How Would a Patriot Act? (yeah, I stopped reading too after "Times bestseller") and the surefire forthcoming smash, Tragic Legacy, which will also savage George W. Bush. Finally, someone willing to take on an all-powerful president with approval ratings in the low 30s!

I like the fact that Greenwald attacks Fred Thompson, who really ought to be the next Breath Assure pitchman once his presidential bid goes South (which ought to happen as soon as the Tennessean enters the race). Greenwald also attacks a bunch of "real journalists" (e.g. Joe Klein, Jonathan Alter, and John Yoo—yes, that John Yoo) who attack bloggers. More power to him, and to me. Though not to you, Tim, as part of the corporate media. Beyond the italics, though, the most striking thing about Greenwald's Salon blog is that you don't have to sit through the 20-second ad to read the content. Which really had become the best part of Salon, don't you agree?

Sifting Through Pointless Campaign Marginalia So You Don't Have To: Time's Jay CarneyThat stink filling the room isn't simply my own decaying prose, Tim—I'm about to head over to Time mag's Swampland, "a blog about politics in the nation's capital." Only a gigantic journalistic behemoth such as Mr. Luce's mag could marshal the resources required to deliver Jay Carney's laser-like insight into a new 5-minute "testimonial" video by Bill Clinton about his better half that's posted at Hillary's official website. "The question, of course" writes Carney, "Is the video effective? Or does it backfire? Will Bill's fluid and persuasive delivery remind people that Hillary's not nearly so good a politician as her husband? Or will having the ultimate political salesman making the pitch on her behalf be a net benefit? Having watched it a few times, it feels to me like a net plus for Hillary. But I could be wrong."

Goddamnit, Tim, why can't you and I write prose like this? Does this guy eat dilithium crystals for breakfast?

Seriously, journalists everywhere—and especially at your misbegotten rag, which can only do 20 percent ROI, so it's understandable why your billionaire owner has to start cutting the fat—are always bitching about how penny-pinchers are shutting down foreign bureaus. Read a couple of items into Swampland—"That's Hagelian!" reads one groaner by Joe Klein—and you'll be complaining that Time hasn't shut down enough of its domestic bureaus yet.

Wired's Danger Room is a better big-media blog (based on two five-minute reads today). It's written by Noah Shachtman and it covers "what's next in national security." I'm not sure I care all that much about the general topic but, oddly enough, the blog has a more interesting range than most of the others we've been told to read over the next couple of days. Certainly the graphics and headlines are fun and the content is informative, if only because it actually aggregates news rather than simple bloviation.

Who wouldn't find a post about government researchers working to help dogs track down terrorists based on their body odor? But maybe that just appeals to me because of the years I spent working with you.

–Nick

From: Tim Cavanaugh
To: Nick Gillespie
Subject: Reality is a Crutch for People Who Can't Handle Drugs

Nick, I thought I was taking the Art Garfunkel part in this particular reunion, but it's clear now that I had the wrong twosome: I'm obviously the Simon figure while your cavalcade of hilarity is every bit as boffo and painful to watch as the deathless physical comedy of Chevy Chase in the "Call Me Al" video. Here's hoping we can extend the suffering of the readers for some time before they figure out they've been had.

Taking your blog picks in reverse order (my efforts to find a squeegee man to fill in on this assignment having fallen through), I'd have to concur on Wired's Danger Room, which is as much a future-of-policing blog as a future-of-national-security blog. Crammed in with all the reporting on fighter drones and hand phasers and plasma UFOs there's this tidbit about a cop so wimpy he panicked and called 911 after feeding his wife some pot brownies. This is exactly the sort of "bad trip" or "bummer" we were warned about by luminaries ranging from Sonny Bono to Bro and Dude; and it's proof, as if we needed any more, that reality is just a crutch for people who can't handle drugs. The good news is that when the boys in blue are on the verge of going into a hallucinatory mind-spiral from being "baked" on the "chronic," they'll be able to knock themselves into a coma with new sonic blasters. Or they could just open up a sonic riot-control barrage on a bunch of demonstrators waving U.S. flags.

Blog!: Yep, we've got oneThe best I can say of Time Mag's Swampland is here's the link – and when will our do-nothing Congress outlaw the tired use of "swamp" imagery for everything related to D.C.? It's like the old law that everything about the Middle East has to be called "On shifting sands" or "Lines in the sand" or "House of Saud built on sand" or "Like sands through an hourglass." MSM blogs are, I think, going to end up among such curiosities of history as the Monkees or the rappin' Selective Service ads from the eighties. Blogging while holding to the standards of a family publication is like taking a shower with a raincoat on. You've got two competing value propositions: the broadcast model of thrice-edited, quadruply-censored content fit for millions of viewers and the unbuttoned, sisters-doin'-it-for-themselves, narrowcast quality of the blogs. The two may just be an impossible fit, and barring a timely pot-brownie infusion from some panicky cop, I don't see any way for a big-magazine blog to be ba-a-ad (you know the kids today say "bad" when they mean "good") in a way that will ever catch fire. The tell here is probably that the most-emailed story currently on the site is "Oral Sex Can Add to HPV Cancer Risk." How can Karen Tumulty can compete with that? Then again, maybe we've just caught Swampland on an off day; Lord knows the very name "Joe Klein" usually inspires me to the highest flights of sleep.

Truly Glenn Greenwald has gone an italic too far. Italicizing blockquoted text is like taking a shower with a raincoat on while wearing a belt and suspenders: Just do one or the other. Or else, go the whole nine yards and italicize, blockquote, boldface, underline and just to be one the safe side put everything into MS Word "Symbol" font. This passage from Greenwald, for example:

Αφτερ αλλ, τηε ονλψ τηινγ Λιββψ διδ ωασ χομμιτ περϕυρψ, οβστρυχτ ϕυστιχε ανδ μακε φαλσε στατεμεντσ το τηε ΦΒΙ ανδ τηε Γρανδ ϑυρψ.

This is a classic example of why straightup Reps-and-Dems pitches go past me: It's not that I think Scooter Libby should get pardoned; I just can't get exercised by the idea that the rule of law will collapse in ruins if that happens. I do like that Greenwald caricature, which I hope brought lunch money to some art student on the boardwalk.

Which brings me to Michelle Malkin's blog, which bears the elliptical epigraph (blurb? dedication? copyright info?) "Firecracker." With a tag like that, cheerleading is, as you've noted, inevitable. For my money, it's Malkin's three-inch vertical jump that really makes the Defeatocrat video a human tragedy, but as always, my heart is torn. Malkin, like many obsessives, is actually pretty useful when she's on about her favorite topic: Islamist crazies of various sorts. I was reading her blog with interest last week after the Fort Dix Six mini-story. As a matter of personal history, Malkin and I both bear the shame of South Jersey upbringings, but she attended Holy Spirit High School while I went to seed at Atlantic City High. So she was well placed to cover last week's vaguely planned terror attack on that undead military base, while I could only look on longingly, reminded again that if my parents hadn't been so stingy with the tuition dollars she might be Michelle Cavanaugh right now, and on date night I'd be allowed to wear the cheerleader outfit. But I digress. No-one dast blame the only person left who considers the Aqua Teen Hunger Force twosome a threat to society.

Of such roads untaken are our lives made, Nick. On second thought, it seems you and I are neither Sandler and Young nor Simon and Chase, but rather Rocky Sullivan and Father Jerry—one fast enough to escape into a life of piety, the other condemned to the penal system, but both, ultimately, institutionalized. If only I hadn't taken that pot brownie before the SATs; if only you had just said no to the brown acid they were passing around at the Us Festival, then neither of us would have to be reading Kausfiles at this unhappy hour. As always, I can't actually understand what Mickey Kaus is writing about, but I'm sure it must be incisive. It's interesting to see him scrambling in the following passage:

Sullivan responds by re-dragging out his charge that I have a "long record of homophobia" because I wrote a piece 24 years ago defending a famous/infamous sign at an L.A. bar called Barney's Beanery--a piece I almost immediately rethought and regretted, and that Sullivan surely knows I publicly repudiated years ago, the issue having surfaced in a recent blog back-and-forth. Like I said, "any weapon to hand." Also, intellectual dishonesty.** ...

I've never seen Kaus fazed into unironic umbrage like this. Well actually I saw him pretty fazed just a couple weeks ago at a bookstore, but that's because I was accompanied by my two-year-old kid and Kaus was clearly horrified at the idea of being in an enclosed space with a germ-ridden human child. But I'm suspicious of one detail in that 24-year-old story--the reference to Mickey "moping in my beer." It's my understanding that Mickey is strictly a near-beer guy. Does he have some boozing, hell-raising past that never gets discussed? Pass the pot brownies and let me think about it...

– Tim

Continue reading... "Leave Jerry Falwell to Heaven: I Mourn for Richard Paul!"

Previous Movable Snipes:

Jonathan Ames and Amanda Marcotte
[Jewlicious, The News Blog, Gothamist, The Revealer, Maud Newton]

John Derbyshire and Daphne Merkin
[James Wolcott, Reason's Hit & Run, Design Observer, Kesher Talk, Matt Yglesias]

Michael Helke and Fiona Maazel
[3 Quarks Daily, Crooked Timber, Daniel Drezner, Nerve's The Scanner, The Elegant Variation ]

Spencer Ackerman and Melissa Lafsky
[Captain’s Quarters, Feministing, TNR's The Spine, Jossip, Wonkette]

more »

To: Jonathan Ames
From: Amanda Marcotte
Subject: John Waters, Eco-Prigs, Pregger Fundamentalists, and Camille Paglia

Dear Jonathan,

I’ve been enjoying the more light-hearted tone of this exchange, so it saddened me to see that the first three of our assigned blogs had depressing content at the top of the page. Jewlicious’s top story was about two Palestinian kids who lost their mother when she killed herself and five others in a suicide bombing. The new content at The News Blog is all about Steve Gilliard’s continuing surgery issues. Gothamist has a terrible murder at the top. All of this is too fresh for a writer to really be irreverent about it.

Pro-Divorce: Trash auteur John WatersAnd I really cherish irreverence. Last night, one of my major heroes of irreverence, John Waters, was on “The Daily Show” promoting his new show on Court TV about spouses who murder each other. I rarely turn on the TV to do anything but play video games when left to my own devices, but I may have to watch this show. The favored description for Waters’ output is that it’s “life-affirming”, and I whole-heartedly agree. It’s hard to see initially why a show that revels in spousal murder could be considered life-affirming, but as Waters said on “The Daily Show” last night, he really considers the show to be “pro-divorce”, which demonstrates why having a healthy sense of irreverence is an important feature of a truly life-affirming worldview.

You mentioned in your last letter that your only real political issue is the environment. Environmentalists (like feminists) have this rather unfair reputation of being overly reverent, sanctimonious types, and in my experience that’s simply not true. One would almost suspect that some conservatives in a think tank somewhere created this stereotype of environmentalists in an effort to get people to dislike them and therefore dislike their cause. There’s some truth to the idea that there’s some environmentalists who are prigs, but that’s probably true of any political movement you join. Even the movement to legalize drugs has its share of prigs, which is hard to believe if you consider that they are organized around the idea that everyone should chill out and get stoned legally once in awhile.

Environmentalists often have an irreverent streak, once you get to know them. It’s hard to avoid irreverence when the theory underpinning your work is that humans are, as you put it, a uniquely destructive animal, especially since environmentalists are trying to save the planet in part to save the lives of this uniquely destructive species. You get a sense of humor about that contradiction or you lose your mind and start wearing hemp in a self-punishing way, as the modern equivalent of the hairshirt.

Permanently Pregnant: One happy Quiverfull familyThe Revealer has no new posts up at the time I’m filing this letter. It’s too bad, because the blog is all about religion, so that means that 95% of their stories are about people doing illogical, ridiculous things. The other day, Kathryn Joyce of The Revealer emailed me and reminded me about this piece she wrote for The Nation about religious people doing ridiculous things. In this case, it’s about a bunch of white Protestants who have got it in their heads that God gets off on watching white men keep their wives permanently pregnant. They call themselves the Quiverfull movement, and yes, they spell it that way and it’s grating.

Which isn’t to say that most religious people are especially ridiculous. In fact, the definition of “mainstream” religion in my book is that the people who follow it understand the importance of keeping the ridiculous nature of religion under control.

Maud Newton hasn’t updated either, but she’s on route to Austin, so her ability to rip herself from her blog for a day is understandable. In her sidebar, I did catch a link to this column, a satire by John Warner of Camille Paglia’s writing that’s almost too accurate to be funny. That’s almost—it’s actually pretty damn funny, especially since the premise is that Paglia is coming out of retirement for the 5,000th time in order to comment on the cultural and political importance of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, after almost losing her will to live after Anna Nicole Smith died. If you’ve managed to avoid Paglia’s writing so far, this column won’t make a good deal of sense to you, but if you’ve ever suffered even a paragraph of it in the past, this column will offer a humorous solace.

Sincerely,

Amanda

P.S. I do hope you enjoy your stay in Austin. Bring bug spray and a bottle of allergy pills. We try to pretend that we aren’t living in an area that’s one step up from a bog, but with global warming making steady inroads, that lie is getting harder to tell ourselves.

 

To: Amanda Marcotte
From: Jonathan Ames
Subject: Sad News, Showtime, Greenpeace, and My All-Around Nutty Friends

Dear Amanda,

In response to your first paragraph, I went to the Jewlicious story, and then I scrolled through The News Blog, and then went to Gothamist, and I feel sick. This is why I don’t read blogs. It’s like the treatment for the guy (Malcolm McDowell) in Clockwork Orange.

So I can’t make any intelligent commentary about children who have lost their mother and yet who are guided to think that she is in heaven for killing Jews. It’s tragic from every angle.

More Wrong: Conservatives like Newt GingrichI skimmed/scanned The News Blog and read something about some conservative think tank/meeting, and there was part of a quote from Newt Gingrich somewhat blaming the residents of the 9th ward in New Orleans for not being smart enough to flee, and the whole thing seemed like a real absurd and gross gathering (Ann Coulter was there, I take it). My general stance in life is: “I’m wrong and you’re wrong.” But conservatives do seem to be more wrong.

And about the triple-murder at Gothamist – last night I was walking through Manhattan after being in something called “The Rejection Show,” and there were all these ambulances and police cars and circling helicopters by St. Vincent’s Hospital (Seventh Avenue and Greenwich Street), this was around 9:50 p.m., and I asked someone what was going on and they said that some cops had been shot. And it was March 14th and mild and balmy and everyone was happy with the weather, except we should have nights like this in May, not March. And there does seem to be more violence in NYC lately. Don’t know what to attribute it to. And the two cops who were killed were unarmed auxiliary policemen…

On a lighter note… about the Rejection Show: it’s put together by this guy Jon Friedman, who must be Jewish and so it’s good to mention him here on Jewcy, and he features acts who in some way address a rejection in their life, often a rejection in the entertainment field, though it can just be a general rejection. I showed a clip from my rejected TV pilot, “What’s Not to Love?”

The Book Before the Not-a-Series: Jonathan's bestsellerIn the clip, I box a naked guy in a hotel room (pre-Borat). I made this pilot in late 2004 for Showtime, but it wasn’t picked up for a series. But the people in the audience really enjoyed the clip, and I recently had a screening of the pilot at this nightclub in New York, Mo Pitkin’s, and that audience really liked it as well. Granted, it’s something of a hometown crowd playing it for these NY audiences, but it’s fun that it gets a good reaction.

Instead of my show becoming a series, Showtime went for a series based on the movie Barbershop, but I think it only lasted one season. If I knew how YouTube worked, I guess I could put my pilot up on YouTube, and then people could watch it. But what’s the point of that? Then again what’s the point of anything I do? Not much point. Oh, wait, my usual rationale – I’m a clown and the world has always needed clowns.

About the environment: you said that environmentalists are often stereotyped, most likely by conservatives, as ‘sanctimonious prigs’; well, if anyone could be/should be sanctimonious it’s an environmentalist – wanting to drink clean water and breathe clean air and not cause the extinction of millions of species is definitely something you can get on your high horse about. That said, it is just conservative propaganda to label environmentalists in a negative way, just as they falsely put forth that environmental actions are bad for economies, when usually it’s just the opposite – new environmental technologies will create more jobs, sustainable environmental practices (like green approaches to logging) will insure jobs down the road.

A few years ago, I spent two weeks on a Greenpeace boat in Alaska. They were up there because Bush was repealing the roadless rule and America’s beautiful rainforest, the Tsongas, was and is in danger, along with all the salmon, whales, eagles, bears, and everything else that is up there that needs the rainforest, including the human beings who survive off of fishing and hunting. It was the usual mess.

Harper's Ferry: Jonathan loves GreenpeaceI was on the boat, covering this trip for Harper’s, and I loved being with the Greenpeacers. To me, they are true 21st century bohemians – people living on the edge; people living out their ideals. I was very inspired. But then I couldn’t write the article. It was so meaningful to me that I had my first case of writer’s block. It really broke my heart that I failed. Anyway, check out www.greenpeace.org. I wish someone from Greenpeace would come clean up my apartment. I wish my mother would come clean up apartment. It’s really toxic in here, but I’m becoming a more and more insane bachelor as I get older.

About bohemians: in this modern world, modern economy, it’s hard for people to just live for art and survive, especially in New York. I would like to acknowledge three of my friends in New York, who despite the insane rents, still manage to live here and make wild and beautiful things: Dean Haspiel, Patrick Bucklew, and Reverend Jen.

Dean is an illustrator, cartoonist, and all-around nut, and we’re collaborating on a graphic novel for DC Comics, The Alcoholic, which will come out in 2008. I wrote the thing and Dean is doing the artwork and bringing my words to life. I finished writing it in January and Dean has started in on the artwork.

Patrick is a painter, sculptor, performance artist and all-around nut. We’ve collaborated on a lot of things together. If you go to his website, there might be some disturbing images, but also a lot of beautiful paintings.

Reverend Jen is a writer, performer, performance artist and all-around nut. She has a troll museum in her apartment.

Anyway. I’ve been reading this book, Perfume, the last few days and I’m loving it. I’m at this point in the novel where the protagonist is living in a cave in a mountain for seven years. I’d like to do that. Just hide and sleep forever and yet not die.

You mentioned Camille Paglia, because of a link to a satire on her, and no I haven’t read Camille Paglia, or Ann Coulter for that matter, but I have watched UFC fights and they’re quite brutal and thrilling and horrible. I probably shouldn’t enjoy them, and if I saw the exact nature of the brain-injuries that these guys suffer, I probably wouldn’t enjoy the fights, in the same way that it’s hard to enjoy meat once you’ve seen an animal slaughtered.

Well, this hasn’t been the cheeriest of entries. Oh, yesterday you described what RSS is and my head began to spin, like the girl The Exorcist. That’s sort of a religious note and for more religious notes one can go to The Revealer (I think we’re supposed to mention each blog.)

So do come to this Spaulding Gray play in Austin and we can meet in person, if you like.

All the best and none of the worst,

Jonathan Ames

Previous Movable Snipes:

John Derbyshire and Daphne Merkin
[James Wolcott, Reason's Hit & Run, Design Observer, Kesher Talk, Matt Yglesias]

Michael Helke and Fiona Maazel
[3 Quarks Daily, Crooked Timber, Daniel Drezner, Nerve's The Scanner, The Elegant Variation ]

Spencer Ackerman and Melissa Lafsky
[Captain’s Quarters, Feministing, TNR's The Spine, Jossip, Wonkette]

 

more »