I'm paraphrased by Rush Limbaugh.

On the show today:

A lot of people in the media and some left-wing bloggers are starting to scratch their heads about the inability of Obama and other members of the campaign and the regime to stop talking about how badly he did in the debate.  "Okay, you had a bad night. Forget it; move on.  Why keep talking about it?  Why keep reminding people how badly Obama did?"  Ann Althouse in Michigan has an interesting theory about this, and I'll paraphrase her.

Paraphrasing me all the way to Michigan.

She said, essentially, that the reason the campaign will not let go of how poorly Obama did is that they want everybody to think that's what happened.  It wasn't that Romney was good; it wasn't that Romney was anything special. The reason that debate happened the way it did is because Obama had an off night. Obama was the shock and surprise. Obama was off his game. Obama was pathetic. Obama was pitiful.

You keep repeating it over and over and over again because you don't want people to realize how great Romney was.  That's her theory, and I like it.  It's unique. It's great thinking.

Here's the post, de-paraphrased. I got Rush Limbaugh's "great thinking" stamp of approval, which might get me in trouble out here in the vicinity of Lake Michigan.

My post was also linked in James Taranto's Best of the Web today. He says:

Saying that Obama had a stinkeroo of a night is a way of avoiding the possibility that Romney is simply the better candidate.

If the remaining debates make the latter conclusion inescapable, watch lefties shift their focus to what a stinkeroo of a politician Obama turned out to be (now they tell us!). This, too, would entail a degree of wishful thinking. If Obama is undone, it will be not only because his political skills are lacking, but also because his record is poor.

And his record is poor because his ideas are bad. But as Matt Bai observes in the forthcoming issue of the New York Times magazine: "Political partisans will go to extraordinary lengths to blame the messenger rather than question the orthodoxies of their message."

Here's the Matt Bai piece, which I haven't read yet but will.

"The president’s view is one of a larger government... where government plays a larger and larger role, redistributes money..."

"I think... that’s the wrong course for America," said Mitt Romney today, trying to regain the offensive position as Democrats made what they could out of his "47%" remark. "We believe in free people and free enterprise, not redistribution."

Helping Romney in this effort to seize the narrative is Matt Drudge, headlining something Obama said in 1998 with the teaser "I actually believe in redistribution." But that video Drudge linked to only has 313 views! Wow. I'm surprised the click-through from Drudge is so extremely minimal.

And here's James Taranto, doing his part for Romney.

ADDED: I don't know why we're assuming that something Romney said to donors back in May was genuine. He might have been dishing out stock conservatism to extract money from rich folk. By the same token, Obama has said things to small groups to stroke them. There's an awful lot of crap that can be strewn in our path in this run-up to the election. But what can you do? Turn off the noise? Use everything useful, any which way you can? Run away screaming?

"In an interminable article on the president's fund-raising problems, The New Yorker's Jane Mayer puts it down in part to his aversion to schmoozing."

James Taranto quotes Mayer quoting a "a frustrated Obama fund-raiser":

"Unlike Republicans, they have no business interest being furthered by the donation — they just like to be involved. So it makes them more needy. It's like, 'If you're not going to deregulate my industry, or lower my taxes, can't I at least get a picture?'"

Taranto paraphrases: "[T]he claim is that whereas billionaires who support Romney are greedy and selfish, those who back Obama are altruistic — or, to the extent they have a selfish motive, it is a relatively benign one, a simple desire to be in the presence of the Dear Leader."

"A second Obama term could kill the Second Amendment."

Says James Taranto, inviting Obamans to make gun control a big campaign issue. The Supreme Court's recent cases finding an individual right to bear arms were decided by a 5-man majority, 2 of whom (Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy) are in their late 70s. Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who's 79) and Stephen Breyer (who's 73) dissented. We don't know whether any (or all!) of them will leave the Court in the next 4 years or whether the Court will revisit its Second Amendment jurisprudence, but the point is, if gun control becomes an issue, those who care about gun rights might be induced to get quite excited over Supreme Court appointments.

Now, it's my perception that the gun control issue has already played out. There had to be that clamor that we heard over the weekend, but it was a clamor without legs.

Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,

Their shoes were clean and neat —

And this was odd, because, you know,

They hadn't any feet.

Matt Taibbi "wants conservatives to conceal their views for fear of being seen as racist — to act as if they are guilty."

"But that would reinforce, not reduce, racial tension."

If white conservatives in the presence of black people act as if their worldview is a shameful secret, of course black people will think conservatism is racist. Which, of course, would suit lefties like Taibbi just fine.

Hands and heads, positioned by Drudge.

Let's analyze this. (Click to enlarge.)



In the first column, we see Barack Obama holding his head, as if he's got a headache.

The middle column shows 2 politicians, both governors, gesturing outward, not holding anything.

The third column shows a bear holding a slice of watermelon and George Bush holding a little African orphan, grasping his/her head.

That is to say, the outer columns feature hands (or paws) holding something, and in 2 of the 3 pictures, what is held is a black person's head, and in the other what is held is watermelon.

Analyze the Drudgetaposition.
	Drudge was intentionally joking about race, though of course it's deniable.
	Drudge should have noticed this accidental allusion and avoided it.
	Althouse is seeing something that isn't there and should have refrained from talking about race.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED:

.@annalthouse You forgot to mention that the governors are pointing up, which is code for "uppity." althouse.blogspot.com/2012/07/hands-…
— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) July 7, 2012

Tweeting with Taranto.

@jamestaranto That was a rounded-off number, kinda like saying you've got 25 more years to do affirmative action.

— Ann Althouse (@annalthouse) July 2, 2012

Laughing rats.

Via James Taranto, who tweaks the scientists as having "lonely lives" (since they are resorting to tickling rats). But I think it means something, if animals laugh — if they play and have fun — and it's not all survival instinct.

Note that the rats don't just laugh, they latch on to The Hand as a playmate and chase it around, eager to engage it in more fun times.

White people "are privileged, and that's unfair."

Via James Taranto, who calls it "bizarre" and "reminiscent of that hilarious 'Dear Woman' video we noted last year, in which a succession of wimpy dudes apologize to humanity's distaff half for the putative predations of 'the unconscious masculine.' In one way the 'Un-Fair' video is even weirder: The pallid persons' proclamations of privilege are literally written upon their skin, in what one hopes is water-soluble ink."

Possibly because I read that before I watched the "unfair" video, I thought the new ad had a relatively light touch and made its point well. "Dear Woman," by contrast, hilariously backfires. If you have 8+ minutes and need a laugh this morning, check it out. (If you don't have that much time, just watch for 20 seconds. I bet you'll be laughing.)



Anyway, Taranto has a lot more to say about racial politics. Feel free to discuss, in addition to the relative effectiveness of the 2 videos, whether it's good for American society to push white people to become conscious of the way their race gives them privileges. (Obviously, for one thing, you can't deliver that message solely to white people. If the message goes out, it is also received by nonwhite people, who must hear that they are continually at a disadvantage.)

James Taranto theorizes that Elizabeth Warren "downplayed her alleged Indian roots after coming to Harvard to avoid the stigma of 'affirmative action.'"

Now, he's bouncing off something I said:

As Althouse points out, early in her career, "minority status" would have been useful to her advancement. But once she was on the tenure track at an Ivy League law school, she had more or less reached the pinnacle of academia. At that point, if people thought of her as white, they would assume she got the job entirely on the merits, without benefit of racial preferences.

What I said was — guessing — "Being on the list of minority law professors served her interest in advancement, but the claim was weak and potentially embarrassing, so it was deleted . . . after she achieved what was the ultimate advancement (to Harvard Law School)." I didn't specify what I thought was "potentially embarrassing," and Taranto's theory in fact never crossed my mind. He goes on:

Not all minority professors could pull that off. If Warren were black, for instance, everyone would know it, and there would be no way of escaping the stereotype. Because she is--or can pass for--white, she was in a position to have the best of both worlds, advancing through affirmative action, then enjoying the white privilege of appearing to have gotten ahead solely on the merits.

What I thought was "potentially embarrassing" was that people might begin to ask if she really was Native American, and she might not be able to verify her status. (She is not an enrolled member of a tribe, which is something students coming to her as a mentor might ask about, perhaps in a challenging way.)

From my perspective — as a lawprof with 25+ years of experience — I do not think the lawprofs who are members of minority groups go around feeling stigmatized. But I do think it would be embarrassing if you were recruited because you were perceived as a member of a minority group that you in fact did not belong to. Harvard was under a lot of pressure at that time to do something about the lack of racial diversity on the faculty, and I'm skeptical of the claim that Warren's minority status never came up during the hiring process. Well, it's not really even a claim. It's just a statement of inability to "recall" that it did.

"If the packers couldn't beat the lions in 1937, they certainly won't be able to now."

"A Democratic court-packing scheme, whether proffered this summer or in a hypothetical second Obama term, would be laughed right out of the Capitol."

"The first proposition is that the health care law is constitutional."

"The second is that the court could strike it down anyway.... The law is a completely valid exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause power, and all the conservative longing for the good old days of the pre-New Deal courts won't put us back in those days as if by magic. Nor does it amount to much of an argument. So that brings us to the really interesting question: Will the Court's five conservatives strike it down regardless?"

Dahlia Lithwick asserts and ponders, and James Taranto rankles.

About that Romney line: "He's a nice guy, but he's in over his head."

James Taranto says:

"He's a nice guy, but . . ." is exquisitely condescending. It's probably not true: Obama strikes us as a petulant narcissist. But calling someone a "nice guy" is rarely a genuine compliment, and it never is when conjoined by "but." As any man who has ever been rejected by a woman knows, describing someone as "a nice guy, but . . ." is another way of saying he's ineffectual. That is exactly the point Romney is making about Obama.

First of all: Obama is not our boyfriend. He/we sometimes act like he is. I've had a blog tag "Obama the Boyfriend" for a long time.  There's this longstanding notion that everyone likes Obama, that he's just soooo likable.

Remember back in January 2008, when Hillary Clinton was asked to deal with her shocking likability deficit next to The Most Likable Man in the World?



But anyway, Taranto's right about what Romney is saying, especially since Romney comes right out and says it: He's in over his head. But the "nice guy" part is, I think, really the ritual of acknowledging that we all [almost all!] like Obama. This ritual goes back to 2008. Remember how John McCain refrained from any sort of personal attack on Obama. Wasn't that the central aspect of Sarah Palin's "going rogue" — that she wanted to light into Obama?

This reminds me of something I heard Rush Limbaugh say on his show yesterday. He was reading from this article by National Review's Jim Geraghty — "Do Wavering Obama Voters Think the Man They Voted for Is Naïve?" Geraghty said (boldface added):

Not long ago, our great deputy managing editor Kevin Williamson noted: "The most acute division on the right -- the one that will give Mitt Romney the most trouble -- is not between moderates and hard-core right-wingers, between electability-minded pragmatists and ideologues, or between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment. It is between those Republicans who disagree with Barack Obama, believing his policies to be mistaken, and those who hate Barack Obama, believing him to be wicked. Mitt Romney is the candidate of the former, but is regarded with suspicion, or worse, by the latter the latter..."

Rush adds "It's not about 'hate,' but I'll get to that in a minute.

"[T]he latter are after something more: a national repudiation of President Obama, of his governmental overreach, and of managerial progressivism mainly as practiced by Democrats but also as practiced by Republicans." 

Rush goes on, circling in on Romney:

We don't hate Obama; we despise what he's doing to the country!  And, yeah, it does require a massive turnaround.  And it does require a massive repudiation of his policies....

And this is one of the problems that people on my side have with Romney. They don't think Romney or the Republican establishment cares that much about repudiating what Obama has done. They just want to beat him. They just want back in control....

Anyway, [Geraghty's] piece is all about how do you persuade these Obama voters to vote for the Republican next time.  Because, "Generally speaking, people hate admitting they made a mistake -- particularly over a decision that is culturally regarded as important as one’s presidential choice." This was a presidential election, and it was the first black president, and a lot of people are gonna be emotionally attached to that as the right thing to have done regardless. Because that says I'm a big person.  I'm an open-minded person.  So persuading that group of people that they made a mistake, that's a toughie.

By the way, I'm one of those people. I voted for Obama. Limbaugh is trying to understand people like me. Is the McCain/Romney he's-a-nice-guy pose better than a Palin/Santorum straightforward attack — when it comes to convincing people who feel whatever it is we feel toward Obama the Boyfriend?

These emotional attachments are tough, tough things.

Sayeth Rush:

So "a lot of Obama voters must be persuaded that they made the wrong choice in 2008, and that it isn't their fault... Those who voted for Obama won't call him stupid, and certainly don't accept that he's evil. But they have seen grandiose promises on the stimulus fail to materialize, Obamacare touted as the answer to all their health care needs and turn out to be nothing of the sort, pledges of amazing imminent advances in alternative energy, and so on," and none of it has happened.....

Here's what we're up against.  A lot of people thought Obama was smartest president ever 'cause that's what they were told.  There had been nobody like him before! He was the Great Unifier.  The rest of the world was gonna love us...

Where you had a lot of people who thought they were making history voting for the first black to run for the presidency, by the same token, these people don't want to admit that the first black president's a failure.  They don't have the guts to say it. They don't want to think it. They don't want to believe it. Because of the racial component.  So then intervention is called for, and these voters are going to need a trip back to Realville.  It's going to be very tricky convincing them that they did all this but it wasn't their fault....

But I do know that persuasion often does not happen by getting in somebody's face and wagging a finger at 'em, telling them they're wrong....

So... Romney's the best choice?

"If we're seeking to persuade Obama voters that it's okay to vote for someone else this time, perhaps we need to reinforce that notion that he just doesn't quite understand how things work in the real world -- that he understands the theories of job creation, but not the practice. He talks about a future of algae-powered cars while rejecting pipelines." Basically, we have to kind of convince people we've got somebody here that just isn't up to the job. That may be why Romney's saying what he's saying.  You know, Romney's making a big point of saying (paraphrased), "Look, he's a nice guy, just in over his head."  This is practically the same thing.  So there's probably some oppo research going around and some focus group research saying this is how you have to go about it."

Funny. Limbaugh refrains from endorsing a candidate, but I had thought — from listening to many recent shows — that he would end by saying Geraghty is one of those establishment Republican types who just want to get back in power and don't understand the real passion of those who want to repudiate everything Obama stands for, and that we really do need more of an attack dog like Santorum. But he didn't end that way. So I think Limbaugh understands the importance of the "he's a nice guy" component of an criticism of the President.

I suspect that those in the know perceive this fling with Santorum as an opportunity to satisfy the Obama haters, and they all know that after all the excitement — jeez, Santorum as excitement! — we're all going to settle down and marry Romney.

Romney the Husband.

"An increasing number of affluent women with affluent husbands are casting off the chains of professional work..."

Writes James Taranto, noting a new Federal Reserve study showing a decline in the number of highly educated women with highly educated husbands in the workforce. (Between 1976 and 1992, there was an increase.)

"The trend is not limited to top earners," Reuters notes. "It has been detected among households earning around $80,000 per year." But $80,000 goes a lot further in the middle of the country than it does in New York or San Francisco. A husband has to be fairly affluent for his wife to be able to afford to stay home: "Only a few households can afford to give up a good second income."...

Marriage and male responsibility for families were once the norm at all levels of American society. Feminism was supposed to liberate women from dependency on men. Instead it has helped to create a two-tiered culture in which the norm is for women to be "chained to a desk," but those who hit the jackpot in the mating game can realistically aspire to escape that status. Nice going, ladies. Happy International Women's Day.

Oh, my.  I'm not going to try to say everything that's wrong with that. I'll just say:

1. A family is an economic unit, and the adults in it should think carefully and clearly about their needs and interests. It may very often work out better, both financially and in terms of happiness, for one person to specialize in bringing in the money, freeing up the partner to contribute in other ways, through child-rearing, homemaking, community service, developing social connections, and innumerable other things that a person not tied to a job can do. There is absolutely no reason that the spouse in the job-free position needs to be the wife.

2. Male or female, a working person can find himself/herself in a stultifying or otherwise unpleasant job, and a job-free spouse may find himself/herself lacking power in an abusive relationship. There's no one answer to how to stay out of the many bad positions a human being can get into. You can go too far protecting yourself from dysfunctional dependency on a lackluster job or a lackluster jobless life. And you can go too far clinging to one or the other.  People need to pay attention to the details of their own lives and exercise good judgment as they make their own individual decisions. You can get into trouble using big ideologies to make those decisions.

3. Feminism opened up some new ways of thinking about various life decisions. If women are simply trying to be good feminists and not thinking about their own individual wants and needs, then they're unlikely to be any better off than if they'd unthinkingly followed the old-fashioned traditions. And they're not even good feminists, because they're just doing what they think other people want them to do. Good traditionalists are reflective too. Think for yourself!

4. Is there a "mating game" with "jackpots," in which some women just get lucky? That sounds like a loser's theory. I think there's some skill involved. And it's not a matter of finding the person with the most wealth. A man being rich is like a girl being pretty...



... but you might be happier shopping for a mate a few levels down from the top of the wealth/beauty pyramid. Shop well. Make good decisions. And stop being envious of everyone else. Get your own life in order.

James Taranto is "surprised to see @annalthouse sort of defending" Charles Blow.

Taranto's tweeting. Citing 2 of my blog posts — "Mr. Blow may attempt to delete that Tweet..." and "Our reflexive response to 'Everybody Draw Mohammad Day'... was sympathetic/But Althouse prompted us to reconsider" — he wonders whether I think we "should mock religion or not."

Let's get a few things straight:

1. I was not defending Blow's infamous "Stick that in your magic underwear" tweet. My post quotes Jim Geraghty making the usual double-standard criticism about which religions are mockable, then asks — asks! — if you'd like to see the counter-argument, that religion should be vigorously mocked, and links to Crack Emcee. I'm just setting up discussion there, not drawing my own lines about what I think people should be saying about religion.

2. My "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day" post is demanding that people look at a double-standard problem, using the hypothetical "Everybody Burn the Flag Day." You need to think about what you're doing when you decide to leverage your protest on deep reverence that other people feel.

3. I've never stated a general rule about mockery and religion. I don't have one. Comedy is a great and dangerous force. Most people aren't too good at using it. It can communicate good fun or extreme contempt. You can be a complete asshole with comedy — which you have a right to be, but if you go too far in that direction, you'd better be good! You're probably not as funny as you think you are, but if you want to go to extremes, you're stupid if you don't know there's a risk. Now, the riskiest stuff is also the funniest stuff. Ask Lenny Bruce. No, you can't. He died. Remember when Michael Richards tried to do that Lenny Bruce thing? His career died.

4. Instead of a pathetic and necessarily futile hope for rules for humor, let's think deeply about what humor is. Here's a classic starting point:

In Freud's view, jokes...  happened when the conscious allowed the expression of thoughts that society usually suppressed or forbade. The superego allowed the ego to generate humor. A benevolent superego allowed a light and comforting type of humor, while a harsh superego created a biting and sarcastic type of humor. A very harsh superego suppressed humor altogether.... Freud followed Herbert Spencer's ideas of energy being conserved, bottled up, and then released like so much steam venting to avoid an explosion.

5. Underpants.

James Taranto has a question and a prediction about social conservatism.

The question:

If liberal baby boomers stubbornly refuse to see the damage that their idea of "progress" has wrought, what about younger generations, for whom the sexual revolution was an inheritance, not a choice, and therefore perhaps not an essential component of personal identity, even among those on the left?

The prediction:

Even if Rick Santorum is not the next president, and even if Barack Obama crushes him in the general election (the latter, though not the former, is a big if), social conservatism will continue to grow in size and importance over the next couple of decades. That is to say, if Santorum loses, it will be in part because he is ahead of his time.

And speaking of James Taranto, I don't think he gets enough appreciation for the diligent work he (or some assistant) does cranking out comedy, day after day, based on headlines. So let me give him some. This made me laugh out loud:

Unappreciated Comic Book Heroes

"Tenant Allegedly Tapes Super Sodomizing Dog"--headline, Journal News (White Plains, N.Y.), Feb. 18

Isn't comedy like that inconsistent with social conservatism?  I don't know. I'm a baby boomer and a social liberal. I am Taranto's demons. And speaking of demons, it's time for me to do my post about Santorum and Satan. I'm calling it: Satanorum, can we ignore 'im?

"Apparently @TPM doesn't expense its employees' salaries."

Pithy takedown.

"[Y]ou have to have a government that both encourages marriage and also supplies wage subsidies to men to make them marriageable."

"If you believe in the centrality of family..."

What?!

"Although we never became religious, by our late teens we had concluded that it was silly to be a militant atheist."

"Why go around proselytizing about what you don't believe in?"

Asks James Taranto on the occasion of the death of Christopher Hitchens.

"Bizarre denial" from the NYT? It depends on what the meaning of "fringe" is.

In the Twittersphere, James Taranto caught Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of the NYT, taking a shot at Herman Cain, saying "McCain was fringe. Cain is fringe."

We tweeted back: "Says the editor whose page endorsed him [McCain] in the Republican primary." Which prompted a surprising reply from Rosenthal: "Was wondering where you were. Might read the editorial. We said he was best of BAD choices. No endorsement."

We did read the editorial, which appeared Jan. 25, 2008. Not only did it appear to us to be an endorsement--albeit a backhanded one--but it contradicted Rosenthal's assertion that "McCain is fringe": "Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe."

"Fringe" is a key word at NYT. Taranto is making a big deal about what counts as endorsement, but the NYT wasn't really endorsing any Republicans over Hillary/Obama in '08. No one was fooled. The only potentially "bizarre" thing here is the fringe/not fringe characterization of McCain.

And even that isn't bizarre, since it's all a matter of perspective. What is the "fringe"? It depends on what you're looking at. If you're the NYT, looking only at the group of Republican candidates in 2008, everyone but McCain is way out there on the fringe. But if you're the NYT looking at a collection of Republicans and Democrats, all the Republicans, including McCain, are on the fringe.

Everything is utterly what you'd expect and not at all bizarre.