Kabuki Village

Of vacuums and other giggles

The panels were interesting...always meaty and at times passionate and contentious and full from start to finish with thought provoking information.  But I will admit that I looked the most forward to the hour and a half evening event with Mark, Jonah and Rob Long.  They did not disappoint.

Though moderator Jim Geraghty made a valiant effort to reign in three very distinct and strong personalities, he quickly settled back like the rest of us to watch the action.  As comedy often is, there was an ADD feel to the evening.  The three of them jumped around from topic to topic with lightening speed, giving us all a mere nanosecond to recover from one guffaw before launching into another twisted tangent. Very little was spared their special treatment.

Confession time...I do love National Review.  It has been a consistent voice in my life for as long as I can remember.  My Quaker/East Coast grandmother (a Smithie no less) was all things left.  She sneered at conservatives in the way that only an East Coast elitist can.  But she loved Bill Buckley...hated what he said, but loved how he said it.  She respected his precise and flavored communication even if she rolled her eyes at his conclusions.  As a result, I spent many nights watching Firing Line while she yelled at the tv or threw her copy of NR on the coffee table with derision.  I can only imagine what she would think about how much Buckley would ultimately influence me (spinning in her grave...or rather her urn, does not even come close to the horror I am sure.)

Back to the confession...the first thing I open to in my NR when it arrives is Rob Long.  Why is that worthy of a confession?  I suppose because it is comedy/satire and not in the "officially" meaty category that most think of with NR.  But Long's style suits me...a little bit twisted, often just on the edge of taste and with a wickedly fabulous sense of tweak.  The snark factor just does it for me.  In some ways, it is like eating dessert first.  And in reality, it is as meaty as any column in the magazine and often, some of the most cutting and hard hitting analysis out there.  But clever Long does it with a smile and a chuckle.  Most of his victims are too focused on his grin to see the dagger being turned.

And an odd bonus for me...my children are perhaps more inundated with political conversation that many.  It is a constant theme in our home and my freelance writing ideas are often massaged around the dinner table.  Long's way of approaching important and critical political themes is presented in a way that I can express to my children.  Many of the themes and the truly wicked satire remain a bit sophisticated for them, but the overall approach and his ability to find things to laugh with (or often at) provide an important primer for understanding the complexities of political discourse.  And a reminder that all of this can and should be fun.

While many talk of the importance of having fun during what could be very uncomfortable times, Long has long embraced that mantra and shows no signs of slowing down. 

Go ahead...eat the dessert first once in a while...

ps...One drawback of the evening was Long's observance of the constant vacuuming by the HA crew....and I mean constant.  For the remainder of the trip I could not walk past a crewman vacuuming without giggling which I am sure seemed odd to them.  When I arrived home, I promptly put my vacuum in the corner.

 

 

Guess what?! I'm part of the "elite"!

While we were on the cruise, someone mentioned that Leno talked about the cruise and the conservative 'elites' traveling with the NR folks.

Sitting around the pool that day, many of us were both humbled and thrilled that while sailing international waters, we had been kicked up a notch on the social scale.  I know I had been waiting with bated breath for the day that I made the cut.  Equally excited to find a new moniker were a retired public bus driver, a secretary, a few stay at home moms and me...a freelancer and blogger.

If I had known that it was that easy to get the upgrade, perhaps I would have gone cruising long ago!

For a bit more check out Modern Conservative

Laugh, and the world laughs with you....and it is just more fun

When I bought Jonah Goldberg's book,  Liberal Fascism, months ago, it would have been much easier to buy it in suburbia.  But I waited...waited until I knew I would be in Manhattan for the day…a day when I could purchase it at the book store at Grand Central (making sure to ask the clerk where it was even though it was on a table in the center of the store...just because I knew it would drive the guy nuts) and could then carry it throughout my day of meetings.

Passive aggressive?  You betcha (h/t Gov. Palin);  and a whole lot of fun. Yes, yes, I would keep Freud very busy.

Like the other NR chaps, I had certainly read Jonah for ages and marveled at his talent and his ability to absolutely strip bullshit away from ridiculous arguments and eviscerate the opposition.

And he certainly displayed a similar laid back and approachable demeanor as his fellow speakers.  But Jonah, above all the others, was the most successful at doing one thing that I know we all needed….he reminded us all how much fun this should be…that we really are optimists above all else and hanging our heads in worry or defeat, while an option, was really just no damn fun.

I have read some of the ugly posts about him and the hate-mail he posts.  The disappointing news to those of who think that nonsense gets under his skin, it doesn’t.  Not even a little.  He maintains such a positive attitude and flat out joy at what he is doing that I imagine the Patchouli smelling anti-social moonbat who sends a hate missive would be devastated to see just how grounded and happy he is.

Comedy night was when he shined brightest for me.  He was able to take his deep knowledge of all things political, and deliver commentary in a way that was both tangible and damn funny.  In a setting where Mark Steyn (funnier than Hell) and Rob Long (who is so good at this genre it is his gig) were in their element, Jonah proved to be spectacular.  As with Stephen, I wish that more people saw this side of the folks on our side of the aisle. 

We are shackled by an this image of a staid, serious old white guy or a twin-set wearing pearl twirling Upper East Sider or a redneck from the boonies.  Those are the options.  The rest of us, in fact the majority of us, somehow manage to be ignored by the MSM and the crazies on the left.  They can’t wrap their heads around us…can’t acknowledge that we are out there because, if they did, they might actually have to tackle substance…and issues and move beyond character attacks and their own perverse discrimination.  They can not stomach the diversity of our people, ideas, backgrounds and lifestyles.  They can't even face the fact  that we have fun, we laugh.  There has to be a reason that the majority of the email I get from angry lefties is almost always from men and almost always uses sexually explicit or pseudo-violent language...projection?  Inherent unhappiness or anger?  Lack of the ability to submit rational arguments and thus the need to default into aggressiveness? Who knows, who cares. 

One would think (hope) that the feminists these "men" cuddle with would kick their asses if they knew their love monkeys were using these approaches to try to intimidate a woman....of course, when the feminists finally address Clinton's abuse of women, I'll let you know.   In the meantime, I simply marvel at the hate and the anger and the Freudian implications.

As for Jonah?  He is a force to be reckoned with…a killer combination of intellect, wit and joie de vivre…and I for one look forward to laughing alongside him in the adventure ahead.

 

Because If We Don't Demonize You, People Might Look At Us A Bit More Closely

The Associated Press loves to use aggrandizing headlines and shock tactics to get people to read their particular brand of drivel and sway people toward their thinly veiled political platforms as a matter of standard operating procedure, so the following lead paragraph from a recent AP story did not shock me in the least…

McALLEN, Texas – Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on state charges involving federal prisons in a South Texas county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles under the outgoing prosecutor.

Now, the average reader in America would only get about that far and then start yammering on about how corrupt Cheney is and how Gonzales should be thrown in the clink with all of his peer criminals (you know, like murderers and rapists and conservatives) and have the key thrown away. The above average American, however, would choose to read further and try to discern just what the heck is going on here. I lump myself in with the latter group and therefore I read more of the story…

The indictment returned Monday has not yet been signed by the presiding judge, and no action can be taken until that happens.

Ah. So, they haven’t really been indicted because the judge hasn’t signed the order and most likely he probably won’t because most likely he is not a grandstanding local DA with political aspirations. So the local DA gets a wild hair and puts in a request to indict and, even without an authorizing signature on the order, the AP jumps on it like a hero on a grenade… no, more like junkie on a packet of heroin.

But still, I’ve got an inquisitive nature and I long for justice as much as the next guy, so if there really are bad goings-on at the hands of our current VP and our former US Attorney General I want to know about it and I want it dealt with accordingly, so I read on…

Guerra said the prison-related charges against Cheney and Gonzales are a national issue and experts from across the country testified to the grand jury.

A “national issue”?!? Wow, that sounds really important now! I better keep reading and find out what all this “national issue” business is…

Cheney is charged with engaging in an organized criminal activity related to the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees because of his link to the prison companies.

Okay, you lost me there. So because Dick Cheney has investments in a company which holds interests in other companies that administer jails in a various states, then Cheney himself is personally responsible for assaults on detainees because of a “link to prison companies”? What they hell are they talking about?!? He’s at least four places removed from any wrongdoing and they want to nail him to the wll for federal MISDOMEANOR charges? Gimme a break! Talk about guilt by association! I guess guilt by association is only off the table when the ties are much closer, when the ties are with known terrorists (Ayers? Is there a “Bill Ayers” in the house?), and Barack Obama is the target of those allegations.

Let’s just suppose for a second the sort of fourth handle accountability that they’re talking about isn’t off the table. Let’s say that you should be culpable for the actions of people tangentially related to you in government or in business. If that were the case, then Bill Clinton would be personally culpable for mass murder due to the bungled handling of the Branch Davidian fiasco in Waco, Texas at the hands of federal agents under the command of Janet “torch the town” Reno. Barack Obama would be personally responsible for all of the ACORN voter registration fraud because he has not only worked for but benefitted from and has served as benefactor for ACORN. But we all know that that isn’t going to happen.

In today’s us vs. them society where the liberally dominated media defines what is fact and what is fiction, there is scant little hope for any actual justice anymore. The best we can hope for is that eventually the hysteria and derangement syndrome that surrounds the current administration will die down and people will start looking past the hype and start actually dialing in on the facts.

We need to move past the recent “hope hype” and get down to the only real hope that America has anymore… the hope that people will start reading past the first paragraph.

But We Elected Obama… They Have To Like Us Now, Right?

Apparently not.

CAIRO, Egypt – Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites.

Well now that wasn’t very nice. What kind of people are these anyway?!?

The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. policies. Ayman al-Zawahri said in the message, which appeared on militant Web sites, that Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X, the 1960s African-American rights leader.

Well, that would be the first guy that thought he was the opposite of Malcolm X.

"America has put on a new face, but its heart full of hate, mind drowning in greed, and spirit which spreads evil, murder, repression and despotism continue to be the same as always," the deputy of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden said.

So much for your “kumbaya platform” hippies. Apparently everybody hates us regardless of whether Bush is president or not. Maybe this is what it takes for you to figure that out.

He said Obama's plan to shift troops to Afghanistan is doomed to failure, because Afghans will resist.

The Afghans will resist? Um, the Afghans actually like us. It’s the Taliban and Al-Qaeda that might resist… and they’ll only do so until we kill them… again.

"Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them," he said.

He must mean that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the “'food' of [our] soldiers to be delicious” because I’ve been there and the only dogs I remember seeing were the ones that we adopted and fed well (who, by the way, became VERY loyal to us) and the starving ones that the locals abused when we patrolled outside the wire. Oh, and whenever the Taliban would get set to hit us, all of the dogs around them started to howl in warning. Even the dogs on our side, scumbag.

So, a quick re-cap: Al-Qaeda still doesn’t like us despite the audacity of hype, we’ve still got the best soldiers in the world, we’re well supplied, well fed, and armed to the teeth… and we’ve suborned your dogs.

Bring it.

Where are moose and squirrel???

Dinner with Jonah deserves its own entry and I will do it justice.  He was a true joy to talk to and his participation in the comedy night???  Hilarious!

But first, I need to mention what was an unexpected pleasure during the night we had Jonah at our table....the sudden appearance of (the dark and too funny to be called brooding even if he tried) Russian born caricaturist Roman Genn.  He joined our table for dinner and though I was certainly aware of his work (having seen numerous covers over the years) I must admit I had not really given the art, or the artist, the thought it deserved.

There is no doubt that the writing at National Review is top rate.  To capture complex thoughts in a pithy manner that is digestible for the masses takes the talent that Steyn, Spruiell, Goldberg and others display with such seeming ease.  But I would expect no less from those who are linked to Bill Buckley.  He was a lover of language, precise to an almost mind boggling degree.  He would expect no less of his cohorts.

But to take complex concepts and make them tangible, and often biting and uncomfortable, using images and no words is even more amazing.  The covers that stood out for me, Arafat looking truly hideous, the Clintons in all their infamy....tell a viewer more than 1000 words could.

Like the others, Roman was no less charming.  He did let me wax on and on about a cover I adored years ago (me with no idea how long he had actually been at it for NR) in a way that proved to be a little embarrassing.

My political junkie family has always loved political cartoons.  My grandparent's house was lined with framed pictures of original Punch covers, each more ironic and twisted than the next.  After explaining our strange addiction to this art form, I blathered on and on about "the best cover ever".  A drawing of Donald Rumsfeld posed as Betty Grable.  I loved it.  It was brilliant and captured the tone of the day perfectly.  I suppose that the fact that I have always harbored a crush on Rummy is also in play here.

After letting me gush, he finally said simply, "That was me."  Yes...I felt more than a little like a dork.  Thankfully, he was gracious and I was lucky enough to be able to hear much of his life story....which is fascinating.  I will be bothering him until he agrees to a full interview.

The only downside to hanging out with him?  His failure to say "Where are moose and squirrel" at my request.

If you do one thing for me, visit his website and wallow in his talent....he does with an artist's eye what Buckley did with a pen.

Ship of Cools

Yes it is true.  For an entire week, I spent my days on Holland America’s Eurodam with 700 folks on the National Review Cruise.  Speakers included the amazing Mark Steyn, Byron York, Stephen Spruiell, Deroy Murdock, John O’Sullivan, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and Roman Genn, the brilliant artist for the magazine.  It will take several postings for me to capture all of my thoughts and all of the fun so bear with.

A critical and typically classwarfarish article came out last year about the 2007 cruise that refered to a ship of fools...I assure you, it was a ship of cools....

In no particular order, I want to discuss the speakers.  Mark Steyn…..sigh…..what can be said about that man that can truly do him justice?  On the panels, he was the perfect mix of intellectual brilliance and wit that we all know and admire.  In person, he was a real person.  If anyone could have behaved as a prima donna, he would fit the bill. 

But he was far from that.  Despite the fact that everywhere he went he was trailed by a small group of ever changing admirers, he was charming. While many may have thought Mitt and Fred were the “stars”, it was clearly Mark who was top on every list.

I had the pleasure of sitting with a small group after dinner that included Mark.  He was witty, clever and so damn funny my sides almost hurt.  But more than that, he did not devolve into the “Mark Steyn” show.  He asked everyone for their opinions, asked about their lives, and talked about as much of any of us.  He could have indulged in a two hour monologue and we would have all been thrilled.  Instead, he proved himself to be a classy man and a regular Joe….if by regular Joe you mean a man with a mind that is almost unparalleled and a wit that shines and yet has the charm the girls from 20-90 and leave them drooling.

It is always strange to meet folks you look up to and have read for ages.  It is hard to imagine they could possibly live up to the lofty throne we put them on.  In this case, Steyn surpassed any of my expectations.

One of the highlights of the week was a panel with Steyn, Jonah Goldberg and Rob Long…..more on that later .

Spreading the love

Anyone who has had the joy of conversing with lefties at a Manhattan cocktail party, or has braved the streets during an anti-anything but them event, knows the dirty little secret about the id, ego and superego of the left...they are an unhappy, angry and violent lot.  Me thinks that, despite their fascination with sex, a whole lot of them are gotten far too little of it...what else could cause them such bleak and and virulent rantings?

Despite their unpaid staff in the MSM, despite the McCain campaign's flacid response to a cornucopia of easy targets on the left (Raines, Rezko, Fannie and Freddie, Michelle, yadda, yadda..) Obama poll numbers are dismal...it is making them insane, redundant I know...

They are so freaked out, bloggers who dare to expose Obama and his cast of cuckoo town are under attack: visits at home by the Secret Service, suspicious packages mailed to homes, attempts to crash websites and blogs. 

When they cry "fascist!  Nazi!  Jack-booted thugs!" at the right, it makes me laugh...it so easily trips off their tongues because it is their own methodology. 

I am tempted to yammer here, but one picture sums up the intellectual relevancy of the left and their inherent classiness far better than my words...

David Zucker and An American Carol

Some of you may know that there is a new movie coming out this weekend that strongly supports the troops, strongly supports America, and strongly rips apart Michael Moor-ish types (and don’t try to correct me of the spelling there folks… I’m well aware). The movie is called An American Carol and it’s a great satire film in the tradition of “The Naked Gun”, “Scary Movie”, and “Airplane” about the left’s constant and irritating habit of badmouthing the military, religion, and pretty much anything American. It’s in that particular style of satire because the director of those movies, David Zucker, is the same man who directed An American Carol.

I got to participate in a virtual press conference with David Zucker this evening and it was awesome. He’s a self professed liberal convert who turned conservative after watching the left’s reactions to 9-11. He got frustrated with the “what did we do to bring this upon ourselves” mindset of liberal America and decided that, as a country, it was time to put on big-boy pants and man up.

David joined a lunch club called the Sons of Abraham which, despite his Jewish faith actually refers to Abe Lincoln, that was chock full of the handful (maybe 10%) of Hollywood actors, producers, etc that were conservative. He met John Voigt at one of these lunches and asked him to look over the script for “An American Carol” and after reading only 50 pages John was in. In one part of the movie, he rips the Michael Moore allegory a new one by taking him to task about the “ashes of 3,000 Americans [at ground zero]”. I would spend good money to see this movie just to see that line.

David Zucker supports the military, supports religion, and supports the concept that America is a force for good in the world. When asked about religion, especially Christianity, and its influence in America he posed this question, “if you were in a bad part of town at night and a group of 20 guys was walking toward you, would you feel better knowing that they just came out of a Christian study class?” His answer was “yes” and I would have to agree with him despite my more agnostic leanings.

I also got to talk to CJ from “A Soldier’s Perspective”. He’s got a good blog and from the short conversation we had, it seems to me that we agree that this is a worthwhile movie.

Anyway, the movie opens this weekend and we really should support it as much as possible. If we want to let Hollywood know where we stand and what we support, then we need to support movies that support us. Let them know that we’re tired of movies that bash the military. Let them know that ripping apart the way we live is not entertainment for everyone… it only entertains the few elitists that actually enjoy watching their country and its people suffer in order to try to prove their points.

So, see An American Carol… if you don’t, the terrorists have already won. (And yeah, I know it’s a shameless plug… but how many times in my lifetime will I get to see Michael Moore ripped apart this soundly?)

Leftist Tripe, Double Standards, And Child Abuse

Do you know who Jill Greenberg is? Neither did I until this morning when I read an article about how she was hired by Atlantic Monthly to do a cover shoot of John McCain for their magazine. Greenberg is a photographer and has done may cover shots, so nothing seems out of place yet. The issue here is that, like many on the far left, she is completely devoid of any ethics and an utter hypocrite. Greenberg is a Bush hater from jump street and a Republican hater from way back in the day and she lets that personal, political opinion bleed into her work. In the recent photography session with McCain, Greenberg admitted to placing a strobe on the ground to make McCain look “sinister” and on her web site she photo-shopped those pictures so that McCain appeared as if he had fangs and placed captions such as “bloodthirsty warmonger” under those pictures. Atlantic Monthly was less than pleased with her behavior and has made a press release stating that displeasure using the words “highly unprofessional”. Her response? “"…it was maybe somewhat irresponsible for [The Atlantic] to hire me." I suppose she’s right. I mean, if I were a patient in a San Francisco emergency room and I let it be known that I harbored some moderately conservative views, I should naturally bear all of the responsibility if the surgeon gave less than the full measure of his efforts to save my life… after all, I should know better than to trust a liberal to save a moderate because that would be “somewhat irresponsible” now wouldn’t it? Sorry, but ethics should not be confined to the medical and legal professions.

Since we are talking about Ms. Greenberg’s high horse, let’s talk about some of her other Bush bashing. Now, I am no stranger to having fun at the President’s expense… any of them. But I also realize that there are ethical limits as to how far one should go to show their disdain for a particular political figure. For example, it is okay to take a picture of a crying baby and place a caption under that picture with some political quip such as “Jr reacting to George Bush”. It is not okay, however, to make a dozen babies cry by giving them candy and then taking it away from them and ergo forcing them to cry so you can take several pictures of several crying babies to make your point. Causing children to suffer for your politics is a big steaming pile of leftist crap. Thank god nobody hired her to do a photo shoot of children exploited by child pornography. Apparently it is perfectly fine to torture children to get your photo op or to purposely alter images to suit your political bias when you’re supposed to be acting impartially, but call the ACLU if you decide to make a political statement at a political rally and use a caricature of an opposition candidate. The Democrats are up in arms over a box of waffles with Obama on them claiming that the representation of Obama is a racist stereotype. What, exactly, is stereotyped in the box below? Is it the picture of Obama? Well, it does look like him. Would they prefer that he was represented as white? Are waffles stereotypical beyond the obvious jab at his party affiliation? Is it the hat? Well, there are already photographs of him wearing a similar if not identical hat. But yes, it is the hat that has people up in arms. Apparently a Muslim hat is racist… but you can slap a cowboy hat on a picture of GW and it’s just good old fashioned American fun, right?
By the way, she’s a feature “artist” at The New Republic if that answers any questions for ya’. Oh, and she loves bears so you can bet that she hates Sarah Palin doubly due to her take on polar bears and their status as “good eatin”. Oh, and her website is called manipulation.com.

Manipulation indeed.