31 March 2012

"just can’t afford you any more"

Dear Dr. Bones,

As Paddy and Eye said just yesterday, Don Ricardito de Fernández y Podhòretz can be lotsa fun.

You will appreciate that a Party neocomrade of the ‘Spaniard’ persuasion--careerismwise, not merely incidentally--has to keep in with the Squire of Simon Pajama an’ with the backwater media generally, a project which is bound to require large quantities of TB2P, "Talkin’ Bilge to Power." Don Ricardito knows how to spout an excellent class of bilge--¡Walter Russell Meade, for Pedro’s sake: definitely NOT ‘Wally Wombschool’!--and I infer with some confidence that the felllow-travellin’ señorito must be a pretty good judge of power-friendly bilge products as well.

Freelord Meade’s bilge is maybe not quite top-drawer, however, if you care to scrutinize minutely. At any rate, the whine would have been better if it had been aged longer. A Kiddiemaster who discovered the Meadean neodiscoveries thiry years ago would have shown far more merit an’ "intellectual bottom" than one who did so thirty minutes ago.

His freelordship may be a little touchy on the point, no doubt unconsciously: "[D]ream machines ... don’t sail serenely ... anymore," sneers Not-Wally, as if the fleet had been grounded just the other day, possibly on the occasion of the Crawford Crash. A little "strong reading" with the Neohaven sort of strength will turn that into "¡Don’t blame me for not seein’ it comin’!" Though of course we do not blame his freelordship in the slightest, we merely carp that to have foreseen would have been better still. [1]

Abandoning Mr. Olbermann, who crops up next, not altogether accountably, I fear, to the attention of music critics in the MacL@@han Tuba community, pajamaclad or decent, we may rush on to the Blakean idiocy that Don Ricardito erects upon the Tomb of Olbermann, namely that the Pundit’s Path to Personal Plunder, as of A. R. 1433-2012-5772 is, oddly enough, Don Ricardito’s own way: "¡Keep whight, an’ *especially* when when passin’!"

Now ‘whight’ is admittedly rather a blank


The Winter Palace (Larkin:19XX)
(( My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow ))

expression, a form that can be ___________ in a variety of ways. In context, though, Don Ricardito intends is clear enough. One can get rich quick an’ fast, maybe quickest an’ fastest of all, by scabbin’ for ScroogeBank, now richer than ever, specifically by singin’ the new hit tune, "Baby, I just can’t afford you any more." [2]

Hardly any bilge could be power-friendlier in Otherparty circles at the moment than that. Or at any rate, Paddy and Eye cannot think of a superior candidate. Let us know, please, Dr. Bones, if you can.

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[1] That canon of judgment needs to be caveated a little. Whight-wing, or indeed, any-wing, predictions that are bound to come to pass sooner or latter score no points. "The Roman Empire fell because it existed" is a fine example of such pointlessness, and also an example that we can probably smuggle past Fairembalance, the Fox goddess, as a mere harmless antique curio.


[2] The Fœtus Cult, "of whom to be despised ..." &c., may get a little wrathy about the way Paddy and Eye finally decided to word that one. Grown-ups domiciled outside Rio Limbaugh will understand that we deploy the four-letter B-word figuratively.

Though I doubt he slums as low as PJM, yet, if he did, the good Neocomrade Prof. Doc. Ch. A. Murray might object also: ¿Hath not Social Neoscientism ‘proved’ that the trouble is not that we cannot afford babies any more, only that we do not wish to be distracted by them from our many other luxuries and dissipations?

(( DIGRESSION. Ch. A. Murray havin’ proved all that, Don Ricardito de F. y P. might want to try to appropriate it a little for the (not Black but) Tan community. ¡‘Spaniards’, at least, have not lost their natural zoölogical affection for children!

(( The product requires a little additional refinement, though, insofar as one of course wants it to apply mostly, if not exclusively, to ‘Spaniards’ who vote Republicanine. And it would be possible to misjudge one’s mountin’ an’ fall off that horse on the other side, with a restriction of the class eulogized to such Republicanine ‘Spaniards’ as can really an’ truly afford their kiddies, scrupulously eschewin’ all such cost-cuttin’ abominations as public schools an’ hospitals an’ . . . .

(( Oh, well! One of the beauties of kibitzing for America’s Otherparty is that ’tis never the end of the world if one slacks off before having thought it all through. And, just between the Muses and you and me, sir, I doubt that this plan would work much better than the one that relies on the supposed innate religionismosity of ‘Spaniards’. There ws a time, not long past, when Karl, Firstlord Rove, an’ others were countin’ on that specuvestment for a good deal more R.O.I. than has eventuated. ¡Oh, well!

(( So it looks to me as if our slumberwear _señorito_ is maybe not doin’ quight so well as he seems to think, should it be really the case that "Baby, we just can’t afford you any more." That would translate, _¿no es verdád?_ into the Otherparty havin’ to expect adhesion by the Tans only of grounds of principle. The Otherparty could not offer crude economic incentives--"Just go out an’ BUY ourselves some Tans," as it were--without raisin’ serious questions, outside the monkey house, about the alleged General Unaffordability of Things. In fact "unaffordable" is a very relative concept, the Freelords an’ Kiddiemasters certainly could slosh the bucks around so as to make possible a moderate-sized campaign of Tan buyin’.

(( The really insuperable obstacle, as I guess off-hand, is that any such campaign large enough to make a difference in election outcomes would also be deplorably visible. Visible to, among others, several godxillion Tee Putty geezers, who certainly would not relish the idea that their just expectations from Medicare an’ the Ponzi Security Administration be reduced to facilitate the bribery of ‘Spaniards’. Already their ’turf’baggers fund them them to bark with some frequency that Tee Putty is not the exact same thing as the Party of Grant & Hoover. Sloshin’ the Fedguv bucks away from them so as to gain othervolks for the Otherparty will not be *politically* viable, I expect, until a large fraction of the Moocher Generation have kicked the mortal bucket down Hades Road. Granma Barbra Fritchee may be a Republicanine already, as Don José Indocumentado is not, yet ¿Is the venerable neocomradess so extremely devoted in here Otherpartisanship that she will agree to take a trough cut here an’ now that her Party may better flourish after she has departed?

(( I kinda doubt it. To expect such a prodigy is really not very different from expecting ‘Spaniards’ to rally ’round the banners of Goldwater & Atwater & ‘Mittens’ Romney without getting anythin’ from the trough at all. Neither scheme would even begin to actually work, so it seems plain that the G.O.P. Geniuses ought to rely (in vain) rather upon el altruismo de los extraños than upon the fidelity of geezers. That way, it will cost their freelordships a lot less to get the same (nil) results, which ought to be an important consideration even for those who think "Baby, I just can’t afford you any more" is mostly just so much pious viennasausage.

(( But Fehrnstrom knows best about Otherparty strategy. ))

29 March 2012

The Sonny Side of Government Regulation


Dear Dr. Bones,

Our old pal Her Son the Millionaire is not to be relied on for mere facts, but what interests me here

Massachusetts legislators recently proposed requiring doctors to accept government-controlled insurance rates as a condition of retaining their state medical licenses, regardless of whether or not the doctors lost money on each patient. (This has not yet been enacted into law.)

is not exactly factual. By Sonny’s own account, our MA’s boys have not voted it yet. Considering how overrun we are with quacks and quack-based profitarianism, I doubt it ever will be. General Coakley has noticed the two-tier payment plan, whereby Mass General gets reimbursed at the Sonny Hsieh or platinum-plated level, and our own humble joint down the street gets only about half as much (I believe it is) for exactly the same procedures. Or possibly for "exactly the same procedures." Galen knows best.

In any case, if a comparatively small number of Krankenhäuser cannot be kept in line, the chances of ever actually enforcing the above proposed outrage against the True Freedumb of thousands of free-lance (or Petty Biz) M. D.’s are slight. Dr. Poujade is safe enough, I betcha, especially if his bills are as unintelligible as the ones we just opened four of this morning. ¡O happy day!

On the philosophical or critical front, one wonders a little why Sonny does not go the whole hog an’ propose that quackery be dislicensed altogether. ¡Surely Caveat Emptor is a far more reliable blue shield an’ buckler than anything Taxachusetts or the evil Fedguv could ever offer! So then, ¿Why not a strict Jeffersonian Wall of Separation of Hospital and State?

Not a hard question, probably. Sonny likes the idea that Gen. Coakley and the gang keep his clients’ competition down to a reasonable level.

Like most Chambermaids of Commerce, Sonny’s devotion to the AEIdeology is a hit-or-miss affair. Though deregulation is indeed fort mauvais compared to demand-side regulation, steps taken by The Wicked State to assist unworthy consumer scum, yet SUPPLY-side regulation--steps, that is, prudently taken to ensure that "highly-trained [pill]cast specialists" are properly recognized an’ incentivatified--is better than either.

Pretty obvious once you think of thinking of it, that one is.

Happy days.

27 March 2012

"keepin' mockin' the r*ce baiters"


Dear Dr. Bones,

¡Amerika, du hast es [anders]!

Our holy Homeland™ is not particularly superhuman or ‘exceptional’ (as vulgar whightists prefer to bark up Wunnerful US) in most respects, yet think, sir, of our Kolorblind Kiddies, all those wretched victims of "Social Daltonism," so to christen their disease. In one respect, at least, there really is no place like Holy Home. Feel free to disagree, as long as you submit your reasons in detail.

To pick a far-fetched example at random, it seems unlikely that the traditionally freelordly Magyars really believe in the parity with themselves of Slovenes, and Slovaks, and Slavs and slavevolks generally, but they appear to have resorted to an oral rather than a visual strategy such as the Squire of Simon Pajama has adopted: rather than implausibly pretend not to SEE how superior they are in every respect that matters, those who inhabit Hungary-_quâ_-Magyar-State nowadays mostly just shut up about their own manifest self-wunnerfulness. No blindfolds for them, but gags.

This plan seems eminently reasonable to Paddy McTammany, admittedly from twelve thousand kilometres’ distance, inasmuch as (A) their freelordships must have noticed by now that genuine agreement from non-Magyar zimmiyyôt is harder to find, almost, than birds’ milk, and (B) more philosophically, that if Magyar self-wunnerfulness be in fact soundly based--as ¿What Mac- or O’ can seriously doubt that it is?--it will easily survive and flourish despite not being ballyhooed _urbi et orbi_ 24/7. [1] [2]

’Tis but a small figurative step from beautiful downtown Ballyhoo to the manor of Simon Pajama. With the good Squire, an’ ¡World’s Premiere YaleoDrama™ist!, not to ballyhoo would be tantamount to nonexistence. His freelordship would take a blindfold over a gag any day, an’ that without special reference to the present distressing subject.

This makes his freelordship a less than completely satisfactory satisfactory GUIDE of All Kolorblind Superhumanity. Those we are, as always, to assume the subjective sincerity of all the freelordly barkin’s an’ bellowin’s, however implausible or distasteful, nevertheless one cannot just ignore the fact that we have to do with a Media Mogul wannabe, a Neohaven-tainted specimen that would dearly (not to mention clearly) like to become the Walter Cronkite or Walter Lippmann of the non-mainstr-...of, that is, The Backwater Media™. Individual subjective sincerity, though almost certainly present, is perhaps not the aspect of his freelordship best featured in the shop window: ¡Erst kommt der Karrierismus, dann die Moral!

In that spirit, perhaps the Social Daltonism that really matters, that afflictin’ the rank-&-file Party base & vile, should be passed over for today, and his freelordship made an object of strictly literary criticism. One point of that sort is pretty obvious. The Squire scribbles on the botttom line

Racists still are pariahs, even if race baiters are everywhere. We should all remember that – and keeping mocking the race baiters until they go away. That, for good or ill, is our assignment. Whoever said it would be simple?

You must judge for yourself, Dr. Bones, but the present keyboard, he mocked, must be grateful for the free hint. I would never have guessed that The Squire considers himself to be engaged in mockin’ when He barks like this.

And the moral of that, I guess, would be something like "Foxcuckooland is a foreign country, they laugh from different things there."

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[1] Point (B) is maybe a tad sneaky. Paddy does have at least a little low interest in making a genuine thought experiment in Social Scientism, rather than a merely rhetorical one, by checking back after a few degenerations or centuries to see what Hungary-as-a-Magyar-State is like in (say) _Anno Religionismi_ 1601-2175-5935. ¿Will it have decayed to the sad condition, selfwunnerfulnesswise, that Bohemia-as-a-Czech-State seems always to have languished in? Or will things in fact work out as Dame Rhetorick leads me to suggest?

(( Speaking of rhetoric, I would have you mark, sir, that the convenience of the linguistic pairs "Bohemian/Czech" and "Magyar/Hungarian" does enter in to some extent. "Ruritania-as-a-Ruritanian State" affords but slender ammunition for the agitpropper, though the goodvolks out that way could--I fear I don’t know many details--easily be as besotted with their own self-wunnerfulness as Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie or Pajama Junction NJ.

(( A doer might do something similar with "Yamato/Japanese," but we have preferred in the present context to confine myself to persons of impeccable whighteousness in every sense of the whord. ))


[2] Fairembalance, the Fox Goddess, insists that I advise you that the original begettter here is not Paddy McTammany by any means, but rather the late James Mill, friend to Comrade Bentham. As I am sure you remember, Mr. Mill supposedly taught little Johnnie Stuart, among many other truths more universally acknowledged either then or now or both, that "There is no ‘Father Zeus’--but this is a family secret."

Thus Paddy is basically wondering whether the Begriff _Ungarn-als-Magyarstaat_ can flourish in the Secret Sector alone, on what amounts to an extended-family basis, believed heartily by all (who matter) yet hardly ever uttered aloud where the LBW, "Lesser Breeds Without," might perchance overhear and, if they be not of Irish provenance, maybe even take offense.



26 March 2012

Walsh For All and Three Against Walsh


Dear Dr. Bones,

It is a horrid thing, sir, to be without that intellectual bottom that the little lady from the Faculty Lounge was drooling about the other day. Worse still, to disapprove of, or maybe just instinctively abhor, the I. B. product, as this person appears--¡to her own organ’s peanut-gallery peanuts!--to disapprove or abhor:

SUNDAY, MAR 25, 2012 12:00 PM EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
All for none and none for all
Forty years of culture wars and racial battles wrecked the country and the GOP – but it’s not too late to change

BY JOAN WALSH

(...)

ELYDOG | Sunday, March 25, 2012 at 12:48 am

"Democrats love capitalism - after all, we saved it from itself twice, under Roosevelt and Obama." - Paraphrase of Walsh’s statement.

So folks, the next time you wonder why the Democratic Party supports capitalism - and the capitalists - and Obama bails them out, and politically supports the 1-10%, you’ll know why. After all, the Democratic Party is also OWNED by a wing of the capitalist class. And Ms. Walsh is a proud mouthpiece of theirs.

As to Joan commenting that indirectly Thomas Frank is some kind of "Marxist’ and that it is ’condescending’ to think white workers might vote against their own material interests sometimes (a Marxist idea...) - I’d have to say if you’re unemployed, and you are also against abortion, and you think that abortion is the key issue in society, then you ARE voting against your own material interests. That is the purpose of the ’culture wars’ - to direct people away from their material interests and towards moralistic issues that the capitalists can manipulate. And Joan, the good Catholic liberal, plays into that.

And this is the face of progressivism?

Mike V | Sunday, March 25, 2012 at 12:59 am

Yup, Walsh said what we should be patently obvious--Democrats are in bed with the corporate ruling class just as much as Republicans are. That is why Obama has surrounded himself with corporate executives like Bill Daly and Wall Street lobbyists like Broderick Johnson.

Walsh’s "progressivism" has always been rooted in attacks against true left wing insurgencies against the corporate-backed duopoly of Democrats and Republicans. She has always been a shill for corporate capitalism and the Democrats who have been tools of corporate capitalists. She epitomizes so much of what is wrong about modern liberalism. She is nothing but an apologist for corporate liberal politicians like Obama. The idea that there are elements in society that have a vested interest in acquiring more wealth and economic power for themselves, or that those who are excluded from the plutocracy might actually have interests of their own in conflict with those who exploit, is clearly not consistent with Walsh’s fairy tale vision of the world.

I’d say the second anaylsis is basically correct, as well as in agreement with the fundamental correctness of the previous poster, BUT . . .

... well, ’tis only *basically* correct. The superstructure needs a lot of work if the whole iceberg is ever to progress anywhere.

Both comrades make the mistake of picking on Citizenness Walsh personally. Of course she is no more than a sign of her unhappy times, only another feeble straw swept up in the hurricane of Decline. Walsh did not turn the wind tunnel on, she isn’t even blowing particularly hard, though it does go without saying that she should leave intellectually/ethically grown-up stuff like ‘Marxist’ and ‘condescending’ to somebody competent like Comrade Frank of KA.

To look on the bright side, here is what promises to be a textbook case: six, or twelve, or twenty years from now when Citizenness Walsh explicitly renounces all leftist infantilism, sinking into the arms of the TopPercenters with a sigh as she realizes that reaction ain’t *really* half so nasty [*] as it used to be painted by herself, among others, ‘ELYDOG’ and "Mike V" and Paddy McTammany will be able to holler "¡We saw it coming!" That won’t do a thing about the Hurricane, of course, but by then I daresay we’ll be happy just to think about something other than clouds and wind speed for a moment or two.

Happy days.
--Paddy

___
[*] A lot will depend, nastinesswise, on exactly where one happens to be sitting on the deck of the ‘Neotitanic’


_E il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare_
(( E il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare ))

when the big crunch comes. An "editor at large" of _Salon_ ought to be OK, yet one cannot altogether count on credentials, not cum vix justa sit secura.

In the case of Citizenness Walsh, one must hope so, for a deep-rooted aversion to all nastiness is 99% of why she cannot analyze straight. Becomingly ladylike and uninformed notions of ‘Marxism’ make it out a very icky business, no doubt, in her eyes. And everybooby knows that it is not NICE to ‘condescend’.


25 March 2012

"Oh, the old cloth coat, she ain't what she used to be ...."


Dear Dr. Bones,

You must report for yourself, naturally, but the reason why Paddy and I prefer slumming here at Pajama Junction NJ to Classier locales full of (for example) weekly neostandardisers an’ monthly criterionmongers is mostly the prosopography. [0]


respectabiggle
(( ‘respectabiggle’ ))


This seasonably chilly neosabbath morning, for example, cultivated despite and the Muses and thou and I are treated to "a freelance writer and homeschool dad for ... six children [who] also blogs."

’Tis a fine pajamatesque touch, by the way, or conceivably a subtle refinement of YaleoDrama™ic neo-art, that we should be advised at the bottom of the neospecimen’s bloggin’ that it "also blogs." Good to know for sure, at any rate, that we are not encountering the Oracles of Father Duane merely because the Face Police suddenly decided to leak them at the behest of an Employin’ Corporation. Though I suppose the Rev. does not actually possess an E. C. [1] It seems to me a little less than cloth-coat-Republicanine ‘respectable’ not to have an E. C. to nestle comfy under the whight wing of. I mean, if the Slackers ever decided to infiltrate the seried ranks of the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom, L.L.C., wouldn’t we very likely pretend to be "free-lance"? That sounds a lot whighter than ‘unemployed’ does, to this tin ear, at least.

Alternatively, suppose the youngest of the brat pack is forty-seven, an’ their dear Papà is already collectin’ swill from the Ponzi Security Administration (contingencies which the product blurb does not quight rule out): well, ‘retired’ is better than ‘unemployed,’ but definitely not in the same Class with "free-lance," respectabigglewise. [2]

Happy days.

______
[0] For those of them from Rio Limbaugh, I guess that would be "the goodvolks you run into." Or better on stilts: "ABSOLUTELY the goodvolks you run into."

___
[1] Everything can be turned into a can of worms if one scrutinizes it closely enough. I trust that it does not matter for I.R.S. confiscation purposes, or to get a loan from ScroogeBank, whether some particular scribble was the fruit of freelance writin’ or only of (therapeutic self-)bloggery. A very thin line there, I presume, and one not really visible at all from as far off as 02139.

Q. ¿Does the Squire of Simon Pajama actually *pay* for such stuff?

A. ¿How should Eye know? The doin’s of the Secret Sector are, oddly enough, secret.

Q. I was wondering whether his freelordship was just sorry for the sick kids.

A. That’s SIX kidds. Six children, rather, an’ all of ’em to be presumed viable until proven otherwise.

___
[3] Wingnutettes an’ wingnuts bein’ what they are, worst- (or at least bad-) -case analysis is always advisable. Nevertheless, the Rev. Duane *could* be just gettin’ ’round to incorporatin’ himself one of these days. Sort of like that Joe the Wurzelbacher fellow whight-wingers used to bark about all the time. Once transmogrified into an LLC, the neospecimen can pose as a Hero of PettyBiz--a ¡Philanthropic Creator of Jobs!--ever after at no additional expense, even if the only salaried position actually in sight anywhere is its own. As we saw in our catechism segment, the great beauty of the Secret Sector is that hardly anythin’ at all is "actually in sight anywhere." Or won’t be after Mittens gets in.

From the standpoint of agitprop criticism, our chief concern now as always, I don’t think you can plausibly disagree that ‘Incorporated’ is at least as superior to "free-lance," as the latter is to ‘unemployed’. But let me know, please, Dr. Bones, if you want to give denial a spin.

For that matter, Father Duane could be a traditional _rentier_, relyin’ on "independent means" such as one finds mentioned (but never in gorey detail) in Victorian novels. Or one of those specifically Homeland™ic breed of neogentleman who have forgotten their [double-entry bookkeepin’].


24 March 2012

"Rush is the Reason"


Dear Dr. Bones,

’Tis memorandumb time again, sir. _¡Habemus reum confitentem!_: "Every time I make that drive, I arrive in Los Angeles smarter than I was when I left home and Rush is the reason. He’s just that good."

So you see, sir, ’tis just as I told you: there really *DO* exist kiddie selfservatives who like bein’ read bedtime stories durin’ the siesta hour. [0]

To be sure, Bozo here is by way of bein’ a Kiddiemaster himself, and it has been obvious for a long long time that the good Dr. Limbaugh does a whole lot of "show prep" for lesser exponents of whighteousness. ¡Almost as swipeable from as their Drudge is their Rush! [1] Most wingnutettes an’ wingnuts, however, don’t have any shows to prepare, so I fear this is unlikely to prove the Key to ALL Limblovian mythologies. [2]

Bozo is clearly not so far above his audience that he is likely to lose touch. "By the time Rush was done, the AP label was exposed as what it is: a symbol of disreputable reportage skewed to support a statist point of view. Literally, I’ll never look at the AP slug the same way again."

For grown-ups capable of criticism, the Limbaugh rush feels a little different. Well before Himself is done--not done for the day, even, but only done prancin’ on some particular hobby-horse--one has started to wonder why Himself must now repeat everythin’ six or seven times instead of only two or three as He used to back in the glory days.[3]

I incline to think this sad decline is mostly the kiddies’ fault--loosely speaking, for of course they mostly did not freedumb themselves down, poor sweet puppies that they are--rather than that of Himself.

Ah, well: "A dittopan is a terrible thing to lose."

Happy days.
--JHM

P.S. Kiddiemaster Klavan offers Paddy a fine opening to repeat a funny that really does seem more and more _à propos_ evey day: "This is the dawnin’ of the ¡Age of Breitbartius!, ¡¡Age-of-Breitbartius!!, ¡¡¡ Bright BAAAR Tee Yuss !!!



___
[0] His freelordship affords at least a little incidental support for your own thesis that bein’ cooped up inside a murder vehicle makes one more susceptible to the Whight Plague.

Nevertheless, the time difficulty remains, sir: most of the self-complacent obesities listenin’ in 1200-1500 hours Eastern must either be (A) rippin’ off their Employin’ Corporations, or else (B) themselves members of the Slacker classes.


[1] "Excuse me, Freelord Hayek, but do you absolutely insist on the title being The Rush to Drudgery? Our marketing people have asked me to suggest The Call to Thralldom. . . . (( "Or ¿How about A Cravin’ for Klavin’?," jested the pilot. ))


[2] At long intervals, Himself does suggest that Master Wally Wombschool might trot it all out at Thanksgivin’ dinner or the like, an’ refutate what’s left of sanity and decency in the family. However, for every occasion like that, there are several thousand on which Himself takes a more realistic view of Wombschool Minor, that "rank amateur" who is by no means "a highly trained broadcast specialist."

As part of the general fall-off in quality, Himself has lately taken not only to readin’ aloud to the Family Values Circle like a Victorian papà, but to assurin’ Master Wally an’ (the lovely, but agitprop-talentless) Cindy from Wasilla that He is only kiddin’ when He barks like that, that actually He has the highest respet for His marks an’ dupes. Thus freedumbin’-down marches on: in the good old days, dupes an’ marks used to be bestembright enough to understand the underlyin’ E.I.B. _shtyk_ without havin’ it explained continually. As the kiddies grow obeser an’ the potatoe couches groan beneath ’em, mental activity has fallen off. Or perhaps the dittopans have not changed, but look diminished because of (call it) Dryden’s disease:

Not so the [Ditto heads], who, tired and done,
Stretch’d on their decks like weary oxen lie:
Faint sweats all down their mighty members run;
Vast bulks which little souls but ill supply.


__
[3] It cannot be denied, though, that very few critical grown-ups listen to Himself bark. The only sensible remarks on the subject I ever saw come from a Lieberal or Demoncrat were from Comrade Fallows almost twenty years ago, noticing, as I had noticed, that Himself had switched in 1992 from free-lance selfservatism to bein’ a flat-out shill for America’s Otherparty. Since then, the Fœtus Cult (&c. &c.) has been strictly subordinated to scabbin’ for ScroogeBank. Yet one never hears anybody intellectually respectable notice so plain a thing as that Dr. Limbaugh has never to this day managed to really *understand* the AEIdeology. Himself can tell Master Wally an’ Ms. Cindy which team to root for, but as to WHY . . . .

23 March 2012

Daughter of Mnemosyne meets "the typical"


Dear Dr. Bones,


Our Ms. Clio
(( Our Ms. Clio ))


One really ought to have seen this humanoid event coming: despite all wombschoolin’ an’ freedumbin’-down by Foxcuckooland’s Finest, some wingnutette (or, as the case may be, wingnut) recounts one of our Ms. Clio’s anecdotes more or less accurately: say the Immaculation (© ® ™ & Pat. Pend.)) of St. Rutherfraud. To make up for her deviation, however, to propitiate the ghost of Their Ford for takin’ pains over mere bunk, Freedame Quelequechose tacks on a sort of diclaimer, a chunk of pious viennasausage about "the typical history book" getting it not quiht whight. Maybe not whight at all.

Her freeladyship’s preferred account, though, turns out to be indistinguishable, _primâ facie_, from what Paddy McTammany remembers being taught fifty years ago and has been occasionally reminded of subsequently.

’Twere bootless to worry whether one improbably happens oneself to have learned everything out of atypical textbooks--¡take that, Samuel Eliot Morrison!

No, one must pick up this shtyk by the other end, using the handle afforded by that fatuous self-complacency that is _de rigeur_ at Hooverville an’ Rio Limbaugh. ¡Move over, Lake Woebegone!--no freedame or freegent, not even cute little Master Narcissus Dexter bawlin’ in its crib over there behind the potatoe couch, can have had anythin’ to do with any product no Classier than ‘typical’.

As you know, few things are more alien, not to say ‘repulsive’, to the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom (L.L.C.) than that silly obsolete nonsense about geese and ganders. ¿Hath not Buckley Minor thundered out the refutation ¡Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi¡? ¡Of course he hath!

So, then: whenever it looks superficially as if the DV&SW (LLC) are doin’ the same thing as lesser breeds without do, the neocomradologist can almost certainly dismiss the possibility that it actually *is* the same thing. Maybe with breathin’ that is the case, but advance even slightly from the strictly zoölogical, and the student will find that Narky Dexter supposes the most commonplace performances are utterly different when *he* (or, up to a point, a Party neocomrade[ss]) performs ’em. Take bleedin’ when pricked: obviously it can be no ordinary or ‘typical’ blood that Freevolks shed.[1] Naturally, though, you won’t find a word about the difference in any lame-stream medical textbook.

As with bleedin’ blood, so with knowin’ knowledge, whether it be knowledge of Rutherford XIX or of anythin’ else whatever: I would exaggerate a little, maybe, were I to claim that (true) propositions simply ain’t knowledge at all when Freevolks know ’em, but ¡For sure, they ain’t none of your no-’count trailer-trash *typical* knowledge!

"Richard loves Richard; that is," ¡Nothin' EYE do is ‘typical’!

Happy days.
--JHM

_____
[1] Outside the confines of Foxcuckooland, not manyvolks are aware that Freeblood contains a host of clean-cut, up-standin’ redstate corpuscles entirely lackin’ in your merely typical citizen or subject. Because Purity of Heart, limpieza del corazón, is the _sine quâ non _ for observation, they have thus far successfully eluded all the reductionist microscopes of Nat Sigh and St. Charles of Darwin. Presumably they always will.

17 March 2012

Problems of Kiddie Management, Part CCCXVIII


Dear Dr. Bones,


Pulse of an Irishman
(( ¡O Lá Slásta! ))


’Ammâ ba‘da, "but seriously,"

Feelings are being projected onto Romney, angry feelings. And these feelings are heightened by the fact that the ideological differences between the three leading candidates are relatively minor. The importance of personality has been increased out of all proportion.

In this regard, Romney is disliked, even despised by some, because he is “an elite.” But in reality all the candidates are elites (_sic_). No real outsiders are running for president this time and never have been — with the lone exception of Herman Cain. Indeed, every person whose name is bandied about as a possible candidate in a brokered convention is also an elite.

Elites (generals, governors, senators, an occasional congressman) are, finally, those who almost always obtain high office in our society. Is this a good thing? Arguments can be made on both sides, but something has to be said in favor of experience when it comes to managing a country as big and powerful as the United States of America at a time of tremendous international instability and economic crisis.

Is Mitt Romney the man to do this? Again, arguments can be made on both sides. But enough of the Romney Derangement Syndrome. Hating Mitt Romney is not only useless. It’s self-destructive.

The Squire of Simon Pajama might want to adopt Comrade Brecht’s famous advice to the Neoprussian régime in 1953: simply dissolve his freelordship’s current e-peasantry an’ [col]lect another. There exists rather a large pool of wombscholars an’ freedumbnuts available just at present, quite a nmber of whom could correctly distinguish ‘Mittens’ Romney from the late Lefty Bronshteyn. After somebooby had told the kiddies a little about the latter [1], that is.

Simon Pajama bein’ a secret-sector e-demesne, we who stand outside the money house can only guess what the exact terms an’ conditions may be. Still, Comrade Holmes might have stationed Dr. Baker outside the gates of a literal equivalent, on some demonstrably taxpayer-funded thoroughfare in case Himself should call in the _Polizei_, and have him note down who goes in to the Big Lord, and what comes out that is not actually tarpaulin-draped. Playing my own analogical Tonto, then, allow me to report that Simon Pajama does not appear to have any *publicly* visible means of support. That is to say, the ’dumbnuts are not charged admission, nor are they forced to avert their chaste an’ kolourblind eyes from gaudy billboards or other advertisin’ matter. The Big Lord does not even sell Tee shirts (&c.) to the Tee Putty, which is a pretty amazin’ form of remissness in a supposed buddy of the AEIdeology.[2] [3]

You will have guessed I am leading up to wondering ¿who pays? for all those whight pajamas. Though of immense kulchural potential, one must doubt that his freelordship’s incomparable YaleoDra™a actually rakes in many _sh’qálîm_.

So, then, the obvious guess is that Simon Pajama is fiscally upheld by the kindness of Venerable Funders, like so many other whightist institutions, from the Catoholics of the Koch Siblin’s [3] down to the nethermost bottom of the barrel, a couple of cuts below PJM.




___
[1] ’Scholars & ’dumbnuts with a taste for old-fashioned--so-called ‘Victorian’--self-improvement may want to start their Trotsky Studies somewhere else rather than with the first prose sample from Big LEW, "the Learnèd Elders of Wiki," Paddy ever spotted that begins with a double-barrel warning that it "may need abbreviation" and "may contain ... excessively long citations or extracts." (( This is mad: surely Slavic souls do much better to while away their short whight nights with an encyclopædia rather than take to adult beverages. ))

_
[2] It saddens one o find that even generally decent political adults huckster silly bric-à-brac nowadays.

_
[3] If one bakers around persistently, Dr. Bones, eventually one will uncover his freelordship’s "About Us" page, http://j.mp/wIf0nN, which transparently explains the financin’ of it all as follows: "What began as an online blog site in 2005 has grown into the must-read website you are visiting today."

"¿What," he exclaimed, "Could possibly be transparenter than that?"

_
[4] The Catoholic beggin’ bowl is placed front an’ center. The very first thing on the webpage (for readers of a non-Seemighty language) after the institutional I.D. is "SUPPORT CATO." Like Love, the Koch Siblin’s are evidently not quite enough.

16 March 2012

A Tomcat May Look at a Drama Queen


Dear Dr. Bones,

To borrow an analysis, sorta, from the good Prof. Dr. Freud: with this pajamaclad patient, phraseology is destiny.

His freelordship’s title an’ then the preliminary assistance to the prose-challenged


Betty Crocker, Drama Queen
(( Betty Crocker spots a cockroach on her angels’ food cake ))


ought to be a sufficient tip-off that the *real* problem with Whight-Wing Populism in Minnesota, as viewed from Château Hudson, anyway, and conceivably even _simpliciter_, is that there are a great deal too many shemales involved in it.

Paddy and I don’t know anything much about Woebegone Country, but perhaps one does not have to do much more than recall the well-chronicled adventures of the late Freelord Bachmanness, husband to Goodwife Marcus, and multiply by a couple of orders of magnitude.

As often happens, the patient is most interesting in its occasional lucid spells, when there is no queen bee in its bonnet an’ it can regale us with a backwoods version of "It is the dawning of the age of Breitbartius, Age of Breitbartius, Bright-BAAAAAAAAAAAAR-tee-yus!" There is (delightfully) no particular connection between "judicial reform" an’ "non-consensual audio recordings of meetings with legislators," or of either with the Monstruous Regiment.[2]

It (the Hudson neospecimen) is great only as an evidential anecdote, when it reflects, it is a child. ¡"Anti-activism", forsooth!

St. Sigmund of Vienna would presumably consider it a victim of its own _Unbewußte_. Were it in touch with its own deep hormonal foundations [3], aware that what its freelordship basically wants is for the Daughters of Virtue to be seen rather than heard from--an’ especially to leave all the political heavy liftin’ to the Sons of Wisdom, it would certainly never scribble a piece like this that makes what is really goin’ on in the Hudsonian dittopan so embarrassin’ly transparent.

And the moral of that is: you can’t properly cover something up if you are unwilling to look at it.

Happy days.

___
[1] When the other crutch drops, it turns out to be one of those pseudocartoons that would not exist without prose support.


Specimen Uncartoon
(( Specimen Uncartoon ))

Still, with prose like "¡Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home!" to work from, betcha no gendered analyst will complain much about the quality as graphic art.

__
[2] Betty Crocker (plus possibly Dr. Marcus) would probably object to that nifty hack-buggin’ scheme because that doesn’t seem like a nice way for goodvolks to behave. This brand of ‘nice’ I take to be almost all Class snobbery, very little to do with which hormones the hormone-basers go in for personally.

__
[3] Paddy and Eye just invented, or rather discovered, "hormonal foundations" over to here. There was not all that much left to do, really, once St. Elizabeth of Warrenbuffett had pointed out the


Vast Vistas of Intellectual Foundation
Vast Vistas of 'Intellectual Foundation'

that open before us.

(( I imagine Freelord Hudson pestered at Tee Putty covens by Her Beatitude’s invisible elder sister Prudence, who went North an’ Republicanine from OK rather than eastwards to Beltway City and Boston. ))

14 March 2012

Well Said, Massa Speaker!


Dear Dr. Bones,

The generally erratic (to be polite) Don Neutrino de Gringo [1] got it quight whight for once:


The Mass. Miracle
(( The Mass. Miracle ))


If you’re a front runner and coming in third, you are not much of a front runner

Happy days.



___
[1] His freelordship is, I think, pretty much his own Party base-’n’-vile’s notion of what a proper G.O.P. Genius™ ought to look like. Which of course means that the señorito perfesser is a serious pain in the horse’s anatomy to the goodvolks who own an’ run, an’ have always owned an’ run, America’s Otherparty.

When J Street cries “McCarthyism”


Dear Dr. Bones,

Paddy and I would be happy enough not to see McC*rthyism get the neo- treatment. ’Tis a word that always leaps off the page at us for, I presume, the same reason a certain distinguished Hyperzionist (whose name and other more detailed distinctions I have long since misfiled) complained of continually gettin’ distracted by irrelevent rubbish about jewelry.[0]

From the broader Mac-and-O perspective, ‘McCarthyism’ is a pretty stiff test of the theory that any publicity is good publicity. Imagine how the present resplendently freemighty lord, Jasnie Wolnomocny Pan, would feel if resurrected in a century or two an’ brought back to find "radoshchina" in the latest OED defined as ... lemme see ... ah, here it is: "words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim, or even a refutation has been communicated." [1]

Happy days. (¡Only two more shopping days!)
--McC


__]
[0] Paddy is not troubled so much by the Jay Street homophony, though he says he *does* sometimes feels about rice the way thin-skinned Greatest Demographics™ feel about diamonds an’ rubies an’ zirconia &c. &c.


[1] I suspect Big LEW’s Anglophone scribbler learned about ‘self-referentiality’ in an Eng. Lit. course and is still working the bugs out of his hang of it.

10 March 2012

A Jewel in the Head of the Toad Party


Dear Dr. Bones,

Party Neocomrade (seventh grade) R. X. Shibley is only another pajama-draped discontinuity in the atmosphere, though of course you should put the name in dossier #318(b) all the same. Just in case.

What matters here, though, is the Freelord Prof. Doc. of Landsburg, who -- alone among recorded wingnutettes an’ wingnuts -- has "defended in economic terms Limbaugh’s (obviously joking) suggestion."

The critical nullity of the PNC7-RXS mechanism is proclaimed by how one cannot be absolutely sure after any finite number of rereadings that it does not suppose that *any* account of the economic consequences of Dr. Limbaugh would be obvious jokin’. Or that Von Landsburg himself was only jokin’, as if the seminar rooms of an imported-from-Prussia graduate school admitted of levity.

Very properly, his freelordship reserves all his more cheerful thoughts for the trailer-trash modern medium of das Blogtum, which, as we know, is invariably a locus of "therapy, not journalism." Since Von Landsburg can’t be cheerful in School, he maybe goes overboard a bit at recesss, what with those freelordly an’ kiddiemagisterial "contraceptive sponges."

But reflect carefully please, O Bones, about what is due from us to


Fairembalance, the Fox Godess
(( Fairembalance, the Fox Godess ))

in cases like this. Paddy McTammany, for one, cannot pretend with a straight face either (A) that "contraceptive sponges" is not a rigorously inferrable economic-rhetorical consequence of Dr. Limbaugh [1], or (B) that Perfesser Von Landsburg blogs in pretty much Paddy’s own blithe and autotherapeutic spirit. [2]


Happy days.

___
[1] A supposer could, I guess, suppose that it is not so much a ‘consequence’ as a sort of loner or wildcard CliffsNote™ -- not a new "Variation on a Theme by the Witch Doctor of Democracy," but only, as it were, a transposition from Rush Minor into some other key. (At Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie, neosolmization must undoubtedly run somethin’ like "Dough, Rush, ¡ME!, ¿Fa?, ¿Sol?, ¿La?, Tee, Putty." To which I respond, _¡Sancte Iohannes!_

[2] His perfesserial freelordship conceives self-bloggin’ is so Paddy-like a spirit that one might even raise small points of technique. For example, HFL clearly shares our own notion that BLOCKQUOTE is far from adequate to set off one’s swipes from the rest of one’s baloney.

The Landsburger bologna is not worthy of its frame, though: I mean, it is pretty silly to announce (above the box) "the worst imaginable argument" an’ then (below the box) get reduced to the feebleness of evaluatin’ this incomparably awful no harsher than "might be true ... but [¿]so what?" Perhaps his freelordship ought to take Miss Alice’s sage advice an’ try to imagine six worst arguments every mornin’ before sittin’ down to his _Wurst und Speck und_ cornflakes.

Still, I believe Firstlord Dr. Limbaugh pretty much said "It is cheaper to foot the bill for contraception than to to foot the bill for childbirth." Certainly Himself informed us--far, far too many times for this keyboard’s taste--that pregnancy is a disease. Indeed, unless Dr. Alzheimer is at it again, Himself formulated the contents of the _boîte landburgesque_ far better than the perfesser does, pointin’ out that contaception/babykillin’ spares the sponges not merely "the bill for childbirth" here an’ now, but the tuition bills from Wingsdale College or Wombschool Normal University fifteen or twenty years hence. ¡Talk about a "gift that keeps on giving"!

But I see I had better examine the horse’s own anatomy a little. ... Hmmm...

Rush Limbaugh’s website, RushLimbaugh.com, reportedly no longer contains transcripts of his misogynistic attacks on Georgetown University Law school student Sandra Fluke -- comments that have been widely condemned and that are now causing companies to exclude their advertising from his show. Politico reported that Limbaugh’s website "seems to have been scrubbed clean of some of his notorious comments."

Reportedly--observedly, actually, 03/10/2012 05:36--his firstlordship’s hired hands have jimmied the search engine so that anythin’ with a fluke or a sandra in it matches all manner of hirephantical drool an’ Peruna way back into February that is nothin’ to the point.

Though nifty in a nerdish way, this plan strikes Paddy as "Baroque Reactionary" programming style: instead of just quitely shuttin’ the barn door now that the mare has got out, Ms. O’Gyny orders a maze built in the barnyard to distract attention. Not for the first time WhightGuard behavior puts Paddy in mind of the Fowler brothers’ marvelous machine for converting clean knives into dirty one.

Nearer the center of the ever-immortal Herrnstein-Murray ©u®ve™, the one for common sense, nobooby would think of usin’ a lead balloon to cover up an outstandin’ sore thumb.

Sang the learnèd bard,

Wheresoe’er I turn my view,
All is shiny neo-new.
Endless labour on the site,
¡Endless labour to look whight!
Phrases Rush hath squirrel’d away
To put Libs in disarray,
Tricked by camouflage an’ nutty
Wads of Limbaugh-Lipton Putty (®).



09 March 2012

Young diverse economically ambitious self-esteem artists


Young diverse economically ambitious men and women characterize the progressive movement. The Internet is their voice.


Thus one of those gentlemen who dwell above the clouds, in the shadow of the Palace of Public Television atop the Great Blue Hill.

Meanwhile, down in the Cities of the Plain, the latest Gatling gun has in fact somehow fallen into the hands of the younger Natives, who are ... contemptuous of their own Alzheimer’s-challenged:

Klan-watchers ... suspect that the nation’s oldest domestic terrorist organization is indeed struggling to keep pace with other racist hate groups. Young racists tend to think of the Klan as their grandfathers’ hate group, and of its members as rural, uneducated, and technologically unsophisticated. The Klan doesn’t seem to have used the web and social media as well as its competitors.


I take these ‘competitors’ to be--not the Blue Blazers, nor the League of Women Voters, nor "the Democrat Party," not anybody else the least bit like that, but rather--the sort of goodvolks who caused the writer at _Salon_ to exclaim "(Note: this link, like others in this article, leads to an extremist website.)"

So sing along with Geezer Paddy, youngsters: "This is the dawning of the Age of Breitbartius, Age of Breitbartius [*] . . . ."

(( HISTORICAL ADDENDUMB. A similar fatuous self-complacency obtained for a couple of years in certain circles after Exmas Day 1991, when the Lenin-Gorbachev Racket terminated prejudicially. "Young diverse economically ambitious" Xerox-machinists had overthrown Bolshevism, so now we must needs all live happily ever after. Of course we didn’t actually get Be‘ûlâ Land on that occasion, only Franky von Fukuyama tryin’ to persuade us that we did. ))


Happy days.


___
[1] The New York Times Company’s second-string whight-winger says it better than Paddy can:

For Breitbart, that legacy is the media landscape that greets those same hipsters and professionals whenever they settle into their local coffee shop and fire up their laptop or iPhone. Breitbart’s politics were right-wing, but his digital media achievements were entirely bipartisan.



05 March 2012

Adducin’ the ‘evolutionary advantage’


Dear Dr. Bones,

"Wilson seems determined to explain the moral sense entirely in materialistic terms."

Ah, ¡if only the late misguided had sat at the feet of the Bow-Tie of All Regressive Humanity to learn about the spiritualistic bases of morality!

Paddy had been intending to mock Roger, zeroth Freelord Neckwear in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, for the decidedly automphaloscopic notion that pajamaclad "readers might be interested in" a few kiddiemagisterial "reflections on this eminently thoughtful social scientist," but, well, maybe not so fast. If Wally Wombschool an’ Cindy from Wasilla struggle manfully through the Thoughtfulness, so hard to distinguish from icky School, they can scoop up a little pay dirt in the general vicinity of his freelordship’s ¡Spiritualisme d’abord! riff. On both sides of it, actually:


Since Wilson is himself a social scientist, it is perhaps only natural that he should turn to the social sciences to support his arguments. He informs us early on that “science supplies more support for the ‘ancient’ view of human nature than is commonly recognized.” Maybe so. But it is not at all clear what we gain by learning that being (say) trustworthy “may have an evolutionary advantage.” Wilson seems determined to explain the moral sense entirely in materialistic terms. His performance is something of a tour de force. And perhaps attempting to explain morality solely in naturalistic terms will appeal to readers smitten with the prestige of science. But by neglecting what we might call the spiritual sources of morality one is also in danger of neglecting—how to put it?—what makes morality moral. Somehow adducing the “evolutionary advantage” for telling the truth doesn’t quite wash.


Neckwear does not much care even for Nat. Sci., let alone for Soc. -- and this uncarin’, I think, is an ideoproduct for which there may be a significant market for out there in Televisionland. True, the Tee Putty tots are certainly not goin’ta ditch Science for his freelordship’s own neoshibbolethic brand of Feelosophy [1], but ¿so what? They don’t have to ditch Science *for anythin’, they can just ditch it _simpliciter_. One more thing Master Wally need not worry his whight-haired little dittopan about. Two more things, in fact, since Neckwear is plainly out to do a hit job on "evolutionary advantage" specifically.

Wally an’ Cindy have already (in many of their embodiments) disposed of that one wholesale, by decidin’ that Evolution is just another hoax perpetrated chiefly by the non-backwater media. Neckware cannot, as I conjecture, yet go along with such a radical simplification: "subscribership advantage," as it were, dictates that his freelordship not *openly* break off diplomatic relations with St. Charles of Darwin. Easy to see from these presents which way the slippery slope of self-faction is carrying poor Neckware, but it will be quite a while before he fetches up at the bottom, so do not hold your breath, sir.

And now, that’s enough necking.

More seriously, I suppose I told you how the one plausible facsimile of a Titan of Industry Paddy ever could talk to about such things--good ol’ Jake--once accidentally read something scribbled by Mr. Wilson of H*rv*rd, as the late misguided then was, and took offense, and took his offense out on me, as having been hatched at 02138. He thought the man was somewhere left of Comrade Trotsky, which I recall thinking utterly absurd, though I confined myself to pointing out that common notoriety made J. Q. Wilson out a sound reactionary. Unfortunately I have entirely forgotten what the particular social scientism was that ticked Jake off so bad.

As far as chronology goes, it *coud* have been the "broken windows" _shtyk_. Paddy did not remember that nifty gimmick either, though, before the whight-wing eulogy machine got cranked up the other day. I’m afraid J. Q. was never much more to Paddy than a sort of Tonto to Mr. Banfield’s Lone Ranger.

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[*] 2 years (20 issues) $88.00 (US)

04 March 2012

Bozo Gets Bulldozed, or, ¿What Went Wrong?


Dear Dr. Bones,

As Comrade Omar said on a famous occasion: "If any man worshiped Muhammad, Muhammad is

What?? Rush Limbaugh actually apologized!!

Controversial broadcaster Rush Limbaugh said he “sincerely” apologizes for calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” because she spoke out on birth control.
By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer / March 3, 2012

dead. But if any worships Father Zeus, ¡lo, HE is alive and well!"

Bozo, who we have agreed is personally untainted by religionism of any sort, is not likely to take his little set-back in that spirit, of course. But I point out to you, sir, that in principle he could: "Though he slay me, yet Lord Mammon (¡live forever!) nevertheless retains my total support."

There are limits even to "in principle," naturally. I think "Those who live by the Market will die by the Market" would not be appropriate, despite looking a great deal like the other soundbark. The trouble with that formulation is that Dr. Limbaugh has never managed to sound to the prsent keyboard as if he actually *understands* marketarianism. It is entirely unnecessary that he do so for purposes of workin’ up the wrath of the Tee Putty. All that is required of Wally Wombschool an’ Cindy from Wasilla is that they know which team to holler for, an end much easier to attain if one prescinds from explainin’ the supposed "intellectual foundation" underlyin’. That would be not bein’ permitted to root for the Georgetown Jesuits (or whatever that crew call their kiddiegamesters) without a sound mastery of the _Summa contra Gentiles_. "¡Rah, rah, Ratzinger! / Luther was a loser, sir" -- that’s the valid ticket, broadcastin’-excellence-wise.

Neither the kiddies on the field, nor the kiddies in the stands, nor the well-pompommed kiddies conductin’ the noise machine in between have any professional use for Big Tommy A. I suppose they ought to be able to recognize the name of M. d’Aquino an’ be quite clear that he was not an abhominable Prod, but everythin’ beyond that is supererogatory. Maybe even counterproductive. Betcha many a young Papish has mislaid her milk faith [1] by impertinently lookin’ into the SCG and other specialists-only literature.

But seriously, strike "Aquinas" and insert the johnhancock of some approved Secret-Sectorian Messiah. Freddy, Freelord of Hayek, would do nicely, especially since the Muses and you and I have all actually worked through Die Verfassung der Freiheit. So, for that matter, has Dr. Limbaugh, probably, in the sense of havin’ passed the freelordly gaze over (almost) every sentence on (almost) every page. In the sense of bein’ able to recite on poor Freddy half adequately, though, .... Well, I already said what I think on that front.

Freelord Freddy, though, is too high-falutin’ an’ _zwischeneuropäisch_ to have much direct bearin’ on the Witch Doctor of Democracy’s latest. With Freddy, the Hellword [2] is always used in that kiddie-confoundin’ continental or ‘classical’ sense, one that assumes a framework inside which the crude question "¿Should mattress moguls be able to buy apologies (or ‘apologies’) from the likes of Dr. Limbaugh?" can hardly arise.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I just gave away my own view on what crude question it is that has arisen, and that without even asking for your own views. ¡Tusk, tusk!

The cat being out of the bag, though, let us flog the Bozo of E-i-B with it a little. What his freelordship ought to do, thinks Paddy McTammany, is take a lesson from His Grace of Cambrai, _Anno Religionismi_ 1109-1698-5458,

(...) [I]l prenait la défense de Madame Guyon (celle-ci avait fini par être presque considérée comme une ennemie publique, au point qu’elle avait été arrêtée en 1698). Fénelon se soumit avec humilité et abjura publiquement ses erreurs.

or, as the scamp brother to St. Jack put it, Fénelon "played his opponent [Bossuet] off the field" with submission and abjuration and humility. ¡’Twas a signal triumph for the Poor Mouth, that human event!

To be sure, the heathen Dr. Limbaugh has no M. de Rome to cringe before. This, however, is not an obstacle worthy of mention, for all Bozo has to do is cringe before Mlle. de la Main Invisible herself, which is much less humiliatin’ for all concerned. [3]

Once down on his kneepads, Dr. Limbaugh ought to choose his exact words of ‘apology’ (or apology) with some care. More care than a bozoe is capable of, in all probability. Be that as it may, what Paddy would do, if he ever painted myself into such a corner, is stress that the Mattress Moguls possess every whight to push goodvolks like Party Neocomrade R. H. Limbaugh-- hired-hand agitproppers, that is--around as they please. That is what "Freedumb of Enterprise" means.

What F. of E. does *not* entail is that the hired hand actually believe whatever pious viennasausage his Employin’ Corporation(s) may choose to compel him to bark. Subjective sincerity is entirely another story. [6]

Yet this story is not, however, one that Bozo can tell in the immediate vicinity of the genuflection event. His freelordship would simply be stealin’ from the Mattress Moguls if he made it unmistakable to the meanest intelligence that the *only* cause of this freelordly an’ kiddiemagisterial _mea culpa_ was that the Slumberlords _et al._ sent out their thugs to twist his arm.

The thing to do, then, it seems to me, is to ‘apologize’ a little to the meretricious ‘maid’, but go on as quickly as seems decent--decent by standards generally obtaining *outside* the immediate Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie heteropolitan area--to apologize to the Mattress Moguls. And to Al. That _mea culpa_ Bozo can really believe in, though I doubt Bozo actually does. In theory, though, an’ accordin’ to the AEIdeology, not even the self-celebrated Dr. Limbaugh can claim perfect freedumb to inconvenience his Employin’ Corporation’s advertisers whenever the fit takes him. Unless some clause actually says so in the pertinent employment or advertising contracts, that is, naturally. Such a specification is extremely unlikely, but not altogether impossible. [4]

As a showbiz _shtyk_, apology to the Slumberlords for all the trouble that Bozo has undeniably caused them could easily merge seamlessly into recommendin’ their wunnerful products to the attention of Master Wally an’ Mizz Cindy. His freelordship is already a dab hand at that ploy, though to be sure it’s a little easier with LifeLock (©) , or Wingsdale College, or the Heritagitarian baloney factory than it would be with mattresses. Wally Wombschool might begin to suspect he is bein’ practiced on if Bozo suddenly starts barkin’ ’bout the urgent need to get a good night’s rest before marchin’ forth whight an’ early to put down Obamacare.[5]

Happy days.

--JHM

_____
[1] Rhymes with "milk teeth." Signifies _fides non formata_. More or less.


[2] ‘L*b*r*l’ and various derived forms.


[3] The psychobabble part here is in La Rouchefoucauld, I think it is, somewhere, only starring Father Zeus rather than the transparent damsel. (The pet G@@gle is not having a good day.)


[4] All Paddy’s above advice is inoperative if such a contract exists. In that case, Bozo should almost certainly disclose the terms an’ then insist on ’em. _¡Fiat justitia, ruat cælum!_, ¡that’s the ticket!


[5] Allow me, Dr. Bones, to wish you and yours a splendid--nay, a Riefenstahl-worthy--March Forth Day. And many happy returns.

[6] Though just an accident, it is a happy accident that the proverb for goodvolks like Bozo runs "He who pays the piper, calls the tune." With strictly instrumental music, I mean, the question of whether the piper "believes in" what she has been funded to pipe does not come up.


01 March 2012

"Mittens Beats Yale, 29-29"


Dear Dr. Bones,

As you know, sir, Party Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh fairly frequently succumbs to barkin' fits against ‘slackers’.

It is fun, though improbable, to suppose that this

MikeArnold

good piece. mitt romney has my voice and my vote to be our next commander in chief. i'm not thrilled about the LBO part of big bidness but, romney who has and comes from a good family knows his way around a balance sheet and can tell adebit from a credit which is sorely needed if we as a people and nation are to get back on our feet. look, i'm not expecting a miracle from our next president. there can't be with 10s of millions of people unemployed,underemployed and judging by whats coming out of the athens of americas public school system, totally unemployable. i want a person who will lead this country, not a party or special interests and that person is not the totally divisive fraud currently sitting or squatting in the oval office.that also holds true for his good buddy currently residing in our governors chair who has hos own presidential perspirations. romney can lead. he showed it here big time in removing matt amowhatever after the tunnel tragedy. he showed it in telling billy bulger he wasn't fit to lead our own STATE U and both he and then lt. governor healy showed it in spades when they told the corrupt and coopted state legislatue to stick it when they tried like hades to gut the long overdue bill which thanks to romney and healey became MELANIES LAW. like is wroe at the top-good piece and much needed ma.

Posted 5 hours ago ((03/01/2012 07:29)) Reply Link Abusive

is the sort of thing that so displeases an' aggrieves Himself.

Perry Mason or Mr. Dershowitz of H*rv*rd could always maintain, I guess, that not upper-casin' even the pronoun of the First Person Singular is the outward sign of a profound and gracious inward humility, but . . .


But seriously, . . . .

Notice what our little whight-winged laddy *does* capitalize. ¿Did you and the Muses have to pause at that blessèd and mysterious ‘LBO’, by the way? In the language of mortals that would be "leveraged buy-out," strictly speaking, though with Slacker I betcha it does not signify anythin' more precise or technical than


Baincappin' in progress
(( 0. Baincapping in progress ))


appears in Figure Zero above.[2]

Though he wanders around an' thrashes a little in his slovenliness, yet, if one attend to the matter and overlook the slovvin’, Slacker would make a better twistorialist for 'Mittens' Romney than the J-School fruits an' frathouse babes whose job it is. The latter look at a Solomonically split decision--fifteen convention delegates for empty-suit reaction, fifteen convention delegates for tinfoil-hat whightism--an' somehow detect "a narrow but critical victory in Michigan."

So, then, ’twas a 15-15 win for their guy in yet another unhomely environment. But ¿what am I saying, "their guy"? His Vacuity is in fact only "the guy whom the friendly funders an' fiundin' friendlies of their Employin’ Corporation-- the "_Herald_ Angels," if you absolutely must--prefer.

The JSF-FHB [1] contingent may really be innocent victims of bad schoolin’ as Slacker suggests

Happy days.

--JHM


___
[1] "Journalism-school fruit-and/or-fraternity-house-babe" calls out desperately for abbrevation, ¿don’t you think? Or think of it as Paddy doubling down on Slacker's precious LBO.

[2] Were Slacker were a couple of orders of magnitude more bestembright than Father Zeus prefers him, the apparent slovvin’ could all be a spoof starrin’ LBO. Designed, obviously, to inculcate the salutary moral that ¡Only CAPITALISM merits capitalization!