I joined the James Lileks/Minneapolis Star-Tribune blogswarm a couple of days ago. If you remotely care about the topic, this lengthy and thoughtful essay from ABCNews.com’s Michael Malone is must reading.  Here’s a tasty nugget:

One of the reasons for this intense reaction is that for most of us in the rest of the world, the only thing we know about Minneapolis these days, and certainly about the Star-Tribune, is what we read in Lileks.com. In other words, James Lileks is far bigger than the newspaper that employs him, is its single most effective bastion against falling subscription revenues, and is its most powerful marketing and promotion tool.

To rip that platform out from underneath its single most important asset now makes the “Strib” the poster child for the astonishingly stupid and suicidal decisions made by newspapers in the 21st century.

Do read the whole thing.

I joined the James Lileks/Minneapolis Star-Tribune blogswarm a couple of days ago. If you remotely care about the topic, this lengthy and thoughtful essay from ABCNews.com’s Michael Malone is must reading.  Here’s a tasty nugget:

One of the reasons for this intense reaction is that for most of us in the rest of the world, the only thing we know about Minneapolis these days, and certainly about the Star-Tribune, is what we read in Lileks.com. In other words, James Lileks is far bigger than the newspaper that employs him, is its single most effective bastion against falling subscription revenues, and is its most powerful marketing and promotion tool.

To rip that platform out from underneath its single most important asset now makes the “Strib” the poster child for the astonishingly stupid and suicidal decisions made by newspapers in the 21st century.

Do read the whole thing.

The man who filled one of the most anticipated sequels in the history of film with cringe-inducing dialogue and Jar-Jar Binks, has called Spiderman 3, “silly.”

In related news, comedian Benny Hill described Victor Borge’s stuff as “lowbrow.” And the head of the White Star Line mocked the seaworthiness of Cunard’s ships.

The conservative blogosphere is on fire today. The spark was James Lilek’s announcement on his blog this morning that the new owners of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune are killing his column and reassigning him to cover hard news.

On my other blog, I have repeatedly referred to Lileks as “one of the most gifted writers in America.” I really think he is. And his daily blog, “The Bleat” is one of the oldest, most widely read, and influential in existence. James Lileks, dashing off a few thoughts about puttering around his house, is reliably better than 99% of the Pulitzer prize winners who pull down big salaries for the big city dailies.

But those big name columnists are uniformly liberal. And Lileks is a conservative, you see. Not an angry conservative mind you. In fact, James’ writing is consistently characterized by good humor, wit, and loads of self-deprecation. Which has earned him the respect and admiration of many prominent left-of-center folks as well—including many liberal readers of the very-liberal Star-Telegram Tribune.

For many of us who write for a living, James is discouragingly good.

So, just how outrageous and stupid is this move?

 Today, columnist Dave Barry (yes, that Dave Barry) blogged: “This is like the Miami Heat deciding to relieve Dwayne Wade of his basketball-playing obligations so he can keep stats.”

Hugh Hewitt described it this way: “Imagine The New Yorker asking E.B. White to manage the restaurant listings. Envision the Los Angeles Times dropping Jim Murrayfrom Sports and sending him to cover county government. Think about the San Francisco Chronicleassigning Herb Caen to the police blotter.  It is that level stupid.”

A sampling of other reactions:

American Thinker — “Death wish at the Star-Tribune”

Powerline — “Big Bang at the Star Tribune”

Captains Quarters — “Strib Manages to Make It Worse”

Vodkapundit — “Stupid, Stupid, Newspaper Creatures“

There are scores and scores more, but you get the idea.

Here’s the bright side. James can and will do a lot better than his old gig. His often very personal blog posts reveal him to be a guy who likes routine, avoids change, values safety and eschews risk. He’s a genius. But like a lot of geniuses, he is mildly neurotic. And his neuroses seem to be those that would tend to keep him anchored in a place that is way beneath his talents.

Thus, a truly idiotic move that will probably hasten the demise of a paper which deserves it’s impending rendezvous with Darwinism, will at the same time serve to blast James out of his nest and force an embrace of the pain of change. [End of amatuer psychoanalysis session.]

Lileks seemed to hint at this very thing in his post this morning. He wrote:

“To quote Dave Bowman in “2010”: something is going to happen.  Something wonderful.

That was before Jupiter became a new sun. Yes, I plan on collapsing into a giant ball of flaming gas. It’s worked for me before. “

All the best to you, James. Flame on!

Is it any mystery that huge swaths of our culture seem confused about who the bad guys are in the world today?

I mention it because, I caught the last half of a report on NPR about cadets at West Point and the Army’s intensified efforts to teach them ethics—particularly battlefield ethics.

Sadly, today’s combat soldier not only has to put his life on the line in an extraordinarily complex situation. He has to do it with the knowledge that every split-second decision he makes amid the enveloping fog of war may be second guessed by a hostile media, a preening Congress, or a Hollywood celebrity who once played the wife of a soldier in a movie and therefore has both expertise and moral authority.

Thus, as the NPR report pointed out, West Point is intensifying its efforts to help soldiers make sound moral decisions in the heat of conflict.

But one particular snippet of the NPR story really caught my ear. From the transcript: 

“I don’t know. I’ve always had a hard time with West Point trying to shove ethics down my throat,” said Tom Brejinski, a senior from Chicago. He says ethics are personal and subjective, and trying to teach a cadet the difference between right and wrong should not be the military’s role.

Of course, anyone who claims that ethics are “subjective and personal” has imbibed deeply of the spirit of this age—a conscience-dulling beverage that goes by the name “postmodernism.” It is a bracing thing to contemplate that we now have an entire generation of people entering adulthood who think like Cadet Brejinski.

Brjeniski and his fellow PoMos have been lied to by their teachers (the ranks of which were filled largely with unrepentant survivors of the sixties.) 

The hard truth is, moral laws are no more subjective and personal than the laws of physics. (Of course the wildy popular Matrix trilogy of movies was, in part, an indulgement of the fantasy that the laws of physcis are subjective and personal, as well. “There is no spoon.”)

But as a sage once said, “We don’t break God’s laws. We break ourselves upon them.” 

So here were are. A culture in which a desperate minority of us are saying, “Actually, dude, there is a spoon. And if you jab it in your eye, you’re liable to put it out and then you’ll be short one eye. Just FYI.” On the other side you have a seething postmodern sea of Cadet Brejinskis who view these confident claims as intolerance and “cramming it down our throats”; who have come to believe no one person’s version of truth has a superior claim to validity than another’s, no matter what Nature and Nature’s God seem to be shouting about it.

This then is the culture that, within hours of the collapse of the World Trade Center, offered us this pearl of wisdom:

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”*

I just saw a banner ad for a Crystal Cruises sailing. . .one of those “distinguished speakers” cruises. Your hosts for this particular spin around the Mediterranean? James Carville and Mary Matalin.

 One question. . . Just who, precisely, is the target market for this cruise?

 Trial lawyers perhaps? I just can’t imagine.

Political junkies who are conservative suspect Carville is the mutant spawn of a tryst between Satan and Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies. They view Matalin, at best, as a mercenary who can’t possibly believe in what she’s doing and remain married to The Mouth of the South.

At the same time many liberal idealogues now view Carville as a soul-free sellout for flacking for Hillary (whom they now hate for being slightly to the right of the Cindy Sheehan/Rosie O’Donnell/Michael Moore axis of lunacy. And they think Matalin is the embodiment of the Country Club Republican caricature that, in their fever-dreams, runs the world to the detriment of mankind and small cute animals.

(Yes, I’m sure both are nice people. And I suspect I would probably find talking football with James Carville over a hopsy beverage a pleasant experience.) But again, who is going to be excited about this marquis? I’m back to the trial lawyers. . .and maybe practicitioners of the world’s oldest profession—two groups uniquely suited to appreciate the gifts and expertise of this power couple.

Jonah Goldberg jumps on one of my favorite hobby horses and takes it for a fine ride today.  Topic? The lunacy of believing that getting more people involved in the political process will produce better government and better policy-making (when large numbers of people are, quite frankly, ignorant fools.) A snippet:

That the public mood is a poor compass for guiding the ship of state is an old lament. Here are two reasons why.

The first has to do with the laziness, spinelessness, and vanity of political elites. Citing polls as proof you’re on the right side of an argument is often a symptom of intellectual cowardice. If the crowd says two plus two equals seven, that’s no reason to invoke the authority of the crowd. But pundits and pols know that if they align themselves with the latest Gallup findings, they don’t have to defend their position on the merits because “the people” are always right. Such is the seductiveness of populism. It means never being wrong. “The people of Nebraska are for free silver, and I am for free silver,” proclaimed William Jennings Bryan. “I will look up the arguments later.”

Read the whole thing here.

Today Sherman Oakes, a spokesman for the Toilet Paper and Facial Tissue Manufacturers Association announced they would be taking Sheryl Crow to court for “gross and irresponsible misrepresentation of the utility of toilet paper and threatening the financial interests of America’s TP producers.”

“The is could wipe us out,” Oakes told reporters. “We don’t like the idea of clogging up the courts with this kind of thing but we don’t feel we have any options. We’re not flush with cash like rock stars are.”

Apparently the TPFTMA has retained the services of the same attorney that sued Oprah Winfrey on behalf of the Texas Beef Producers back in 1996. 

If the horror at Va Tech had not happened yesterday, would the media still be talking about Imus today?

I suspect so.

Sorry, it’s taken two weeks to get this post finished and published. (Nothing like the immediacy of the blog medium!) 

I declared for Chris Sligh pretty early in this year’s American Idol competition. Like a lot of Americans, I really liked his wise-acre vibe and, of course, his singing style. I really became a fan when I saw a YouTube video of Chris and his band. It was flipping awesome.

 Thus, I was puzzled when Chris abruptly seemed to have had his personality surgically removed after sassing Simon Cowell in Episode 11—something for which Chris apologized the following night. From that night forward, Chris’s heart just didn’t seem to be in it.

As it turns out, it wasn’t. In an interview with his hometown newspaper immediately after being voted off the show last week, Sligh revealed that he considered quitting the competition after Episode 11. Why? Because of the flood of vicious hatemail he received after saying the word “teletubbies” to Simon:

“Sligh said he held back on the dry humor for a couple of weeks because of the hate mail. “Some people said they wished I would die,” Sligh said. “When I got the hate mail I went, ‘Whoa, what the crap?’ It was just horrible, horrible things people wrote to me.”

Let’s pause and contemplate that for a moment. . .

A little longer, please. . .

 Okay, that’s enough. Basically, we find ourselves living in a day in which significant numbers of people feel free to email a young guy in a musical game show and wish him a painful death. I’m with Chris. . .”What the crap?”

Of course our national epidemic of seething, freely-expressed rage is the theme of a much-discussed, important new book by Peter Wood called A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now.

That brings me to Glenn Greenwald—liberal writer/blogger for online magazine, Salon. A post by Cliff May on National Review’s blog, “The Corner” mentioned an online dispute/exchange May was having with Greenwald over the issue over public opinion about the war in Iraq. Here’s an excerpt:

“I’ve been deluged by e-mails all day calling me a liar and other nasty names. That’s because Glenn Greenwald over at Salon decided to sic his readers on me. Why? Because of the item I posted here yesterday asking Corner readers if there is evidence to support the left’s talking point that a majority of Americans now want out of Iraq – whatever the consequences.”

I read May’s and Greenwald’s relevant posts. What struck me about them was not the merits of their arguments but rather the stark contrast in tone and substance between the two.

The May post that got Greenwald so riled up was itself calmly worded, fact-oriented and even expressed an openness to seeing additional evidence. Greenwalds response (link above) was a tour-de-force in sarcasm, derision, straw man dismemberment and general red-herringry.

So I emailed Greenwald and pointed that out.  I didn’t comment on the substance of the argument. (Although, no surprise, I found may much more persuasive.) I only mentioned my observations about the differences in tone and style. I didn’t for a moment imagine that Greenwald gave a rip about what I thought. But he had encouraged his readers to give Cliff May an earful so I thought I might give him some thoughtful feedback instead.

But what should I find in my Inbox but a response from Greenwald. Before you read it, keep in mind that my email message didn’t address the substance of the debate he was having with May (about whether or not the public opinion polls indicate that the majority of the American people favor pulling out of Iraq no matter what the conseqences for America or her allies.) I just criticized Greenwald for substituting strident sarcasm for reasoned argument.

So what was Greenwald’s rebuttal? He wrote:

Absolutely.  Americans really love the war in Iraq – and Bush, too.  They want more war in Iraq, actually.  That’s because they are conservative, just like the Democrats they voted for.

They’re so conservative that they threw Republicans out of office for not being conservative enough.  They elected Democrats because they hoped the war in Iraq would continue longer.

Even when polls show the opposite, most Americans really agree with you – sometimes, it’s secret.  But it’s always the case that your views are the ones which most Americans believe.  It can’t be any other way.

Ahh. Okay then. I stand refuted. 

Now I don’t think for a moment that mighty Glenn Greewald sat down and pecked that out on his keyboard just for little ol’ me. I think he copy-and-pasted that bile into every critical email he received regardless of the points or content. It just so happens that his response illustrated my point better than anything I could have possibly written.

We have entered a era of startling meanness in our public discourse. And if it feels like the most vicious and vitriolic spewage comes from people of the left, it is because it does. And if you haven’t noticed, you’re not paying attention.