Testin' ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4!

(( For a change, Mr. Bones, and probably just this once, I leave the piece the way it would have appeared if dispatched to Common Terror magazine as an ordinary gloss from the peanut gallery. Apart from the neoseñorito's ipsissima verba, that is, and my little editorial cartoon. As usual, I decided there is not much point in being rude to the faces of folks a hundred times more likely to notice incivility than to understand objections.

(( By the way, sir, have thee any idea who on Gore's green earth Ms. Wanda Sykes may be? ))


Attempting to enforce the rules of a neoörganisation that one does not belong to and would ridicule any invitation to join may be perfectly absurd, Mr. Bones, but clearly we must do something, now that it is "All is discovered. Fly at once!" time here at the Hard Left Café!

A certain Neocomrade P. Wehner has managed to figure out what Princess Neoterica and Her Singin’ Señoritos

are goin’ up against when they go up against ‘us’. Like the Gaul of C. Iulius Caesar, ‘we’ are a dark pullulatin’ mass of barbarity and squalor that may be divided into three parts for the analytical convenience of neoörganisms:

(1) For some of those with a liberal cast of mind, to oppose the policies of President Obama is treasonous and akin to bin Ladenism ... (2) the extraordinary double standard when it comes to the rhetoric of conservatives and liberals ... (3) Obama is the man who promised to cast aside what he has called the 'partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.' He was going to be the voice of civility and for high-minded public discourse.

Not havin’ quite got this _shtyk_ of his together (which is perhaps adequate grounds for excommunication from Club Neo all by itself), Señorito de Wehner does not aim any of its brickbats at ‘us’ quite directly or with perfect Kirkegaardian purity of heart:

(1) If some of ‘us’ cry treason every time our skin is e-scratched, yet to word it like that implies that another ‘some’ of us do not. _Omne tulit punctum_.

(3) Comrade POTUS is of course a single individual and no proper ‘us’ except of the merely verbal brand that one might encounter whilst taking tea with Mrs. Windsor at St. James. Probably this blast of the Wehnerian neotuba should be interpreted as comin’ from a crew of antidemocratic illiberals who recently bought into their Neocomrade Viceroy R. B. Cheney’s Omnicompetent Unitary Executive™ product. By OUE™ lights, it will be as great a waste of time to subtly distinguish between Barry XLIV O’Bama and ‘us’ -- _La Démocratie ('D' majuscule!) en Amérique_ -- as between the Oval Office (of George XLIII) and the United States of America.

Anyway, Mr. Bones, it is not as if thee and I have any desire to disassociate ourselves from the Guide of All Progressive Humanity. Like many of those folks who talk to pollsters other than their Neocomrade Dr. Rasmussen, we do not deny that Barry has been progressing in more or less the right direction.

That leaves Blast (2), which the señorito has worded somewhat evasively. If you work the passage out, sir, I believe you will find that in addition to confusin’ ‘us’ with our Leader, which is at least a very old and respectable error for monarchophile reactionaries to make, it simultaneously confuses ‘us’ with what is left of the intellectually respectable press. Though we may accept and even enjoy the honour of conflation with Comrade POTUS, to be taken for Walter Lippman or Walter Cronkite is entirely unacceptable. Maybe Walter Mitty will take P. Wehner up on his kind offer, but the rest of ‘us’ should just-say-no. "Every tub on its own bottom" is the applicable proverb when it comes to ‘our’ scribblers and scribbling.

Also applicable when it comes to *their* neoscribblers and neoscribblin’, naturally. Professor Kant’s immortal Goose-and-Gander Principle is not to be trifled with, Mr. Bones -- not by us, or by ‘us’, or by all of Neoteric Señoritostán marchin’ in lockstep. Not by anybody at all. Period. ¡JUST SAY NO! Exclamation point!

Meanwhile there is the bottom of the P. Wehner tub, which, as I said, is such as to make it remarkable that the rest of the up-market locksteppers should want to keep such a vessel in the garage. Thee and I listen daily to Wehner-worthy bilge from their Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh III, and from their Neocomrade the Duke of Sanseverino (when not suspended [1]), and, on occasion, even from their Neocomrade Dr. A. M. Weinstein-Savage [2]. We manage to listen to such colourful and characteristic turkeys without supposing any of them to be THE Voice of Universal Turkeydom. That is to say, we understand how to make distinctions among tubs and turkeys.

One such traditional distinction of ours places _Common Terror_ magazine (along with _The Wall Street Jingo_ and _The Weekly Standard_ and ... and, well, that is about the whole roster, actually) a few cuts above the BigParty / AEIdeological gutter.

Princess Neoterica and the señoritos entertain such exuberant notions of their own cultural and tertiary-educational superiority that it is always a pleasure to laugh at them. But the only reason there is a joke to laugh at is that the first five percent or so of CTM/TWS/WSJ self-superioritisin’ is warrantable. A much smaller percentage of warrantability exists now than when their Hate-’68 Movement™ first got under weigh, and their decline seems to be continuin’ and possibly even acceleratin’. Nevertheless, for the moment and for the immediately visible future, jingoes and weekly standardisers and common terrorisers do remain distinguishable from the _hoi polloi_ at Wingnut City and Hooverville.

Accordingly, the higher neoörganisms have a certain _ton_ to keep up, and I put it to thee, Mr. Bones, that this P. Wehner creature that they have unearthed somewhere [3] is an obstacle to proper upkeepin’ of _ton_ and self-superiority. A shade too crude and Limbaugh-like is Neocomrade P. Wehner. Maybe even a shade and a half.

If the hypothesis of a steadily ongoin’ decay in _Common Terror_ and _Weekly Standard_ circles be correct, this sort of not entirely indefensible boo-boo at the bottom margin might have been predicted in advance. A decade ago, P. Wehner's candidacy for membership in Club Neo would have been blackballed.

Looking the other direction, Mr. Bones, it would be easy enough to spoof that ten years from now the toney neoörganisms will be reduced to pesterin’ strangers on the street and at airports to sign up. Like Jehovah's Witnesses.

Balance and fairness forbid one to make any such prediction, sir, for there are a number of hedges around Castle Podhóretz that would have to fall before the autoelect neoörganisms are reduced to pretendin’ that their Princess Neoterica and her Singin’ Señoritos are only Tom and Dick and Harriet and Louise. [4] When common terrorisers venture on really *popular* populism, Mr. Bones, they do it so badly that nobody could possibly mistake them for regular guys. [5]

Happy days.

(( For what it is worth, Mr. Bones, and I do no claim it to be worth much, the fact that I feel no faintest inclination to contradict the tripartite proposition of P. Wehner, or otherwise discuss it materially, may be an indication of the comparative inferiority of the specimen. If the señorito sincerely believes what it scribbles, then it is a j*rk indistinguishable from the radio-active neoörganisms mentioned. If it does not believe, then it is guilty of mendacity rather than of aggravated mediocrity. There is no reason why decent political grown-ups should care which charge is provable: "Heads we win, tails they lose." ))

___
[1] http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2009/05/08/severin_furor_has_sponsors_pulling_ads/

[2] http://michaelsavage.wnd.com/


[3] In the cyclone cellar down at Rancho Crawford, it looks like:

http://www.politico.com/arena/bio/peter_wehner.html

"Peter Wehner, former Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. "

But God knows best.


[4] "The rich are different than you and me."


[5] It will not hurt to repeat that with _Common Terror_ magazine, one has to do with a sort of "adjective in the optative mood," as one might speak of "a noun in the past tense" with ‘dinosaur’ or "Marduk worshipper." The higher neoörganisms of our holy Homeland *wish* that their own condition of bein’ self-terrorized of all those many, many nasties on their various enemies lists were a statistically common condition, but they do not suppose that it actually is.

This pathology has no particular connection with what is objectively ‘common’ in the eyes of a mathematician or actuary.

It should not be necessary to add that of course there is also no connection with ‘common’ in the pejorative sense of ‘vulgar’. Indeed, I just said that above by implication when pointing out how foolish they look when they suddenly start pretendin’ to be fans of Neocomrade Governess S. Heath-Paling of AK and her playmates.