Happy Days Are Here Again

America hates New York, reports the New Criterion blog, reports Roy at alicublog. Roy's reaction?

Thank fuck! I was really tired of them pretending not to.

Meanwhile, a commenter named "chuckling" - who appears to live somewhere in my own general vicinity - asks: are you talkin' to me?

I can understand why people hate New York. I hate it myself, but not for the BMA. That's one of the few things I actually like about this hellhole -- a stroll around Prospect Park, through the Botanic Garden, and a pass through the museum, especially if there's some anti-religious art or quasi-pornography, which there always is, and especially on a saturday night.

But Manhattan? All the animals come out there - ivy leaguers, skunk pussy Wellesley grads, stock brokers, tech dweebs, art directors, religious types, tourists in their white shorts, Walt fucking Disney, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. I think someone should just take this city and just... just flush it down the fuckin' toilet.

Here - indeed - is a man who would not take it anymore.

Labels: alicublog, New York

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:59 AM 2 comments

  Frum: Failing to Find the Funny

Roy at alicublog deconstructs David Frum's dismay over the Half Hour News Thingy. It's not just that the show is a crime against comedy, Roy points out. The larger problem is how Frum's complaint itself illustrates the ideologue's inability to distinguish between art and propaganda. The artist works for the sake of creating art (ego notwithstanding) - for instance, the comedian who does a comedy show because he wants to be funny.

But the propagandist ... wants results. In his black, rubber heart, he does not get the appeal of Madame Bovary or Lolita or The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. What action plan follows upon these? What agenda is advanced? What polling results will be affected? Whereas a well-crafted Swift Boat ad, or blog, or National Review column will make people do things -- vote, or fail to vote, or stay mad at the people you want them mad at, or stay worshipful of the people you want to remain unquestioned.

That is why David Frum -- whose soul, if he ever had one, must be fatally wearied by the lifelong application of his verbal talents to propaganda -- looks at this failed comedy show and thinks -- says! -- that the great failure there was not a failure to clear a grateful public's minds and lungs with laughter, nor a failure to provide them with a fresh angle from which to view their world, but a failure to "create a conservative institution with cultural power."

To him culture is not a spring that refreshes the spirit, but a storehouse of destructive power to be used against his enemies.

This, too, goes some way towards illuminating what Frum means when he refers to "Comedy Central's clever cultural sabotage." He's performing the kind of agent detection common among ideologues: something milder than the conspiratorial mindset, but still very much inclined to see premeditation and coordination where none exists. You see this all the time when reading conservative writings about liberals - and about society at large, since it's a mindset that assumes liberals have collaborated to infiltrate and "sabotage" American culture.

Thus, Comedy Central, rather than simply getting lucky when one of their obscure shows was taken over by a very funny host who was in touch with the zeitgeist, must in fact have set out - cleverly - to commit cultural sabotage on behalf of the vast liberal conspiracy.

I'm putting words into Frum's mouth at this point, but as Roy notes, Frum's own complaint is revealing enough. His mindset is just the same as those who created the Half Hour News Hour: it's the belief that the Daily Show was intended as liberal propaganda, and it must be countered with conservative propaganda. The reason Frum is upset isn't that he thinks the show was misconceived - just that it's missing its target, that it's failing as propaganda.

But propaganda is not art, except occasionally as kitsch. And it's never funny - except as an object of derision. In which sense, I have to admit, the HHNH is a laff riot.

Labels: alicublog, David Frum, Half Hour News Hour

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:47 AM 0 comments

  Along for the Conservative Crusades

Interesting post at alicublog prompted by Professor Bainbridge's dismissal, for all intents and purposes, of the concept of shareholder control over corporate governance. Roy tries to square this with the conservative insistence on the primacy of taxpayers over government - the constant carping over how "big government" is squandering your money. And it occurs to him:

[F]or conservatives, to paraphrase Vince Lombardi, money isn't everything, it's the only thing. They strongly identify with corporations, and therefore endorse whatever hauls in the most money for them and their leaders -- populism be damned. Government isn't nearly so important to them -- not a lot of profit to be seen there -- except as the object of a hostile takeover, after which it can be plundered and sold off for parts, toward which end a little pretense at populism is acceptable (See Revolution, Republican).

They're pretty obvious when they're propagandizing, but their true nature is never more clear than when they talk about the thing(s) they love.

I agree and I disagree. Social issues aside, I think there is an outwardly honest ideological dimension to economic conservatism. Conservative intellectuals really do believe that their ideas are meant to advance individual freedom and prosperity - it's not just propaganda. The problem, I think, is more to do with their failure to be honest with themselves. Their extremist Milton Friedmanism is utterly unsuited to actual governing, and when conservatives have held the reins of government, not only have they failed to shrink its size, they have failed to provide any of the ancillary benefits their policy ideas are supposed to generate for ordinary people.

As I've said repeatedly: economic conservatism does not provide a principle for governing, so it begets government without principles. I think that many of these conservative intellectuals would like to create a libertarian paradise, but their policy ideas, failing utterly to bring us any closer to such utopia, therefore serve only to clear the way for the raiders and the pillagers who follow the conservative standard they carry. The Crusades never had any hope of Christianizing the holy land, despite the fevered prayers of the true believers who promoted them - but they did provide a golden opportunity for those who mainly sought to rape, plunder, and destroy.

Labels: alicublog, economic conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:00 PM 0 comments

  Single Women: Sign of the End Times?

Roy at alicublog wonders just what it is about those single gals that bugs conservative blogger Lileks so much. Why should it be considered some kind of social crises per se that 51% of adult American women are now single?

Why are the private beliefs and behaviors of other citizens so annoying to Lileks? Probably because what was once said of the left wing is now demonstrably true of the right: for them, the personal is the political. The marriage habits and bedroom behaviors of others obsess them; they obsessively judge the political content of movies, TV shows, and so forth. I guess when your politics are shown to be disastrously inapt for the country, what else have you got left?

Of course, the personal was always political for many conservatives. A great deal of conservatism has related to moral judgments about the way people should live their lives - they should live their lives as conservatives believe people used to live their lives, in those virtuous days recalled in the mystic chords of memory.

The difference is that many modern conservatives, not content to tut-tut or to "protect" society from liberal social engineering, have taken it on themselves to try and actually reverse the river of history. The problem, for them, is that all they can achieve is some rather silly-looking splashing around.

Labels: alicublog, conservatives, feminism, James Lileks

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:24 PM 45 comments