The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Buckleyesque
Notes on a Rhetorical Method

“Philip’s perspective typifies the tautological nature of intellectual consensus . . .” — God and Man at The American Spectator While I was proofreading that little essay just now, Mrs. Other McCain asked me, “What are you grinning at?” She knows me too well, and recognized the mischievous smile of a man who is up to […]

Mistress, Actress, Heroine

by Smitty (via Insty) Amidst an excellent review of Nikki Haley’s campaign to govern South Carolina, Walter Shapiro says, emphasis mine: Haley, in her first statewide campaign, has proven a master of boomerang politics – making every attack seem like a vindication of her conservative populist outrage. Shouldn’t that be “a mistress”? I don’t mean […]

Popular Children’s Book Condemned in Belgium for — Wait for It — Raaaaacism!

A new lesson in the bizarre nature of Europe’s “human rights” laws: Belgium’s courts are investigating whether Tintin’s 1931 Congolese adventures, when the country was a Belgian colony, portrays black Africans in a racist way . . . Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, a Brussels-based Congolese man, has spent the last three years pursuing Tintin’s copyright holders […]

My Fellow Redneck, Seema Jilani

The experience of being a Muslim after 9/11 evidently aroused her to the prejudice experienced by those of us guilty of being Southern after 1861: Oddly, the same people who disparage us also have love affairs with our culture. They ridicule us and then profess their love for Nina Simone, Austin, Johnny Cash or Louisiana’s […]

The Pill at 50: Unhappy Un-Birthday

The 50th anniversary of The Pill — oral contraceptives were first marketed in May 1960 — has resulted in a good deal of thoughtless journalism. Gail Collins spins a wondrous myth of The Pill as the pharmaceutical sunshine of a sexual-scientific enlightenment.  The Associated Press calls The Pill “America’s favorite birth control method,” which is not true: Female Sterilization is the […]

OMG! Calling Michelle Malkin! Kindergarten Girls Gone Wild?

RicketyClick responded to National Offend a Feminist Week by asking where’s the feminist outrage over this video of little girls in skimpy outfits dancing to Beyonce’s “Single Lady.” Any attempt to describe this creepazoid video fails due to the inadequacy of language. A few of the more printable YouTube comments: “The parents should be hanged by their thumbs.” “Holy s—. What the […]

Your ‘Ferris Bueller’ Theory Sucks

Professor Ann Althouse loves the “meta” suggestion that Ferris is just a fantasy figure of Cameron’s imagination, a theory that doesn’t work unless Ferris is also imagined by his sister, his parents, etc. Ferris is the fortunate extrovert whose exploits take on a larger-than-life significance to luckless introverts who admire and/or envy his lack of social inhibition. The careless ease with […]

Progress On The Long March Through The Institutions

by Smitty Gramsci counseled his side to begin a “long march through the institutions,” by which he meant the capture of the cinema, theater, schools, universities, seminaries, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and courts. Look at what Gramsci’s intellectual offspring have achieved: “a supposed example of the nation fighting the war for commercial purposes.” Follow up […]

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