Dropping the Hammer

It has occurred to me that I'm ridiculing a lot more than I'm praising, in large part because ridicule is more fun. Anyways, here's a little tip of the cap action:

Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post is today's Object of Praise and Admiration. He hates and blames hippies just like me! The next asshole I see wearing a Peruvian poncho gets a beer bottle upside the head.

Once More, for the Remedial Class

Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn is Leonard Pitts of the Chicago Tribune, who feels compelled to mistakenly point out Bobby Jindal's hypocrisy over the Oil Spill.

Regular readers (of which there is precisely one) will recall I already took a look at the very issue of defending laissez-faire capitalism in the context of the Gulf Oil Spill earlier this week, (Thursday’s Object of Ridicule and Scorn was E.J. Dionne Jr. of the Washington Post) but I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to savage my hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, which is a stiff breeze away from tumbling into complete insolvency.

Leonard Pitts presents an even less compelling argument than Dionne did. No, the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico does not underscore the need for increased federal power and regulation. Precisely the opposite, it shows how ineffectual and inefficient power can be when it is congealed within the grips of a massive bureaucracy.

FREE-MARKET RELIGION LOST IN OIL SPILL by Leonard Pitts 

"There has never been a challenge that the American people, with as little interference as possible by the federal government, cannot handle." — Bobby Jindal, March 24, 2009

That was then. 

Wow. Three words that are both a sentence and a paragraph. The simplicity of the sentence and the short paragraph break really draw me in to the tension of the writing and underscore the starkness of the comparison.

This is

 …Spinal Tap? …Sparta? …how we do it?

now: 

Boo. You had at least three better options.

The Heretic and the Inquisitor

Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn (and it's always a hard-fought battle on Sundays) is Jessica Valenti, whose opinion piece ran today in the Washington Post.

I’ve always been amazed at how liberals have been able to sell the march towards massive government control with the rhetoric of liberty. Normally I’d be impressed, but Jessica Valenti is a leading intellectual within the feminist movement, and she isn’t even close to compelling here.

In a country where women are in many positions of authority across both the public and private spheres and a basic cable package boasts no fewer than three channels programmed explicitly for women, the relevance of the march of feminism is severely limited. So Valenti and her ilk are relegated to peddling the politics of division. Much like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton act as poverty pimps for the black community, Valenti aspires to act as a discrimination pimp for women. Sarah Palin is dangerous because she is a model of astronomical female success built outside of the feminist framework of support.

Valenti leans heavily—though unintentionally—on the motif of the Church of Feminism, drawing a sharp line between “us” and “them.” Valenti casts herself as inquisitor. Feminist leaders like Gloria Steinem are like a council of elders. Sarah Palin is the heretic who has turned from the good word. Even the language of “the movement” is sacrosanct. The dogma is not open for adaptation or interpretation—only the elders can be entrusted with that responsibility.

Here Come the Hawks

I've resisted the urge to post anything on the Blackhawks this postseason. With Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight, I can't really temper my excitement anymore. Let's go Hawks!

UPDATE: Hawks win! 

Ineptitude as an Art and a Science

The Washington Post had the audacity to run this opinion column today by Mark Brzezinski. Brzezinski is a biased subject-matter expert, not a resident Post columnist, so it's actually a decent article that centers mostly around the problem of bribery and other shady business practices in developing nations. It is a problem worth examining, but Brzezinski foolishly believes that cracking down on the bribers (mostly American corporations) will be a more fruitful effort than encouraging responsible governance in the third world. That is not, however, my issue with the article.

I highlight this article because a mere 12(ish) hours before this piece went to press, President Obama refused to answer a question about the Sestak allegations of bribery. Democratic candidate for the US Senate from Pennsylvania Joe Sestak has said repeatedly that the Administration offered him a high-level appointment within the administration (it's widely speculated that the position was Secretary of the Navy) in exchange for withdrawing his primary challenge from incumbent Democratic Senator Arlen Specter. If Sestak's allegations are true, someone high up at the White House has committed a felony.

Re-Fighting the Cold War

Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn is The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne Jr.

GULF OIL SPILL OFFERS A LESSON IN CAPITALISM VS. SOCIALISM by E.J. Dionne Jr. 

So who is in charge of stopping the oil spill, BP or the federal government? 

It’s not really a question. British Petroleum is the only one even trying. At this writing, the Top Kill method to plug the leak—an idea generated and executed solely by BP—appears to have worked.

The fact that the answer to this question seems as murky as the water around the exploded oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico 

There’s absolutely no murkiness in the answer. It’s clear as day. But admitting clarity would deny Dionne the chance to use that clunky simile.

suggests that this is an excellent moment to recognize that our arguments pitting capitalism against socialism 

Less than twenty years after defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Dionne is actually admitting that capitalism and socialism are battling it out for the future of America. This is akin to the United States having “arguments pitting capitalism against fascism” in 1964 or "arguments pitting monarchy against a republic" in 1802. Socialism is a defeated and discredited ideology. If there are large-scale arguments in the United States between capitalism and socialism, who exactly is arguing the virtues of socialism? Conservatives have been blasted from the left for suggesting that Barack Obama and other members of the Obama Administration were socialists. Is this vindication?

Winning the Lottery

I find myself flabbergasted by Maureen Dowd's column today. I choose to view this column like a lottery. Even if the odds are a million to one, if you buy a million tickets, chances are you'll win once. That describes Maureen Dowd's relationship with sensible conclusions. Sooner or later, she just stumbles upon them by accident.

OF TOP HATS, TOP KILLS AND BOTTOM FEEDERS by Maureen Dowd

It’s unnerving, disorienting. 

Why do crappy writers insist on starting columns with bullshit sentences like this? No, this does not draw me deeper into the article saying “OMG!!! WHAT IS UNNERVING AND DISORIENTING?!?! AND WHY DID SHE USE A COMMA INSTEAD OF A CONJUNCTION?!?!” The ambiguity of the pronoun doesn’t make me feel like I need to know what she’s talking about. The evasion of grammatical conventions does not make me think that her opinion must be important; it just makes me think she’s a crappy writer.

Capitalism is Dignity

I used to ascribe to the school of thought that Capitalism, in its irrefutable virtues, needed no defense. If only that were still true. Avowed communists have penetrated the Executive Branch. The President has advocated for wealth redistribution on multiple occasions--famously with Joe the Plumber in '08.  Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn is Roger Cohen, who apparently believes that the weakness of governments in India demands a stronger government here. (Yes, it's exactly that asinine.)

This piece is a call-to-arms for the institution of neo-Communism in the United States. More government. Less freedom. More toilets. Less cell phones. I realized about half-way through that I was no longer being funny. In truth, there’s not much to make light of in this article. These may be some of the most dangerous, and brutally honest ideas expressed by the left: Capitalism is broken. Trust us to fix it. Stop asking how.

TOILETS AND CELLPHONES by Roger Cohen 

NEW YORK — I was intrigued to learn the other day that there are now more cellphones in India than toilets. 

There’s an ap for that?!?

Almost half the Indian population, 563.7 million people, is hooked up to modern communications, 

Not too long ago, the United Nations teamed up with One Laptop Per Child as a means to distribute information to children to bridge the information divide between rich and poor nations. Now, all of a sudden, technology is indefensible when developing countries decide they want to spend their own money on it?

Encouraging Productive Behavior

Today's Object of Praise and Admiration is Nicholas Kristof, of the New York Times. I had to pound two shots of vodka just so that I could physically type that.

Kristof uses this week's column to take a look at poverty in central Africa. Far from advocating throwing money at the problem, Kristof actually had the guts to take a look at the spending habits of the impoverished. Heavy drinking and expensive cell phones out-prioritize mosquito nets, school tuition, and rent. This is, of course, a tragedy of the first order, and emblematic of a culture that has lost faith in itself.

Sadly, Kristof falls short of expanding the lessons of this article: subsidies promote inefficient behavior the world over. Clearly the self-perpetuation of poverty in the Congo is not unique to Central Africa. Poverty is more often the result of poor spending choices than insufficient income (for those who work). We see poor spending decisions every day in the United States by subsidized citizens. Not only are the Welfare and Food Stamp systems rife with fraud and inefficient spending, but they routinely give cover for the poor to make poor financial choices and sidestep the consequences.

I wonder, will Kristof be so stridently critical of poor fiscal responsibility when he gets back to the States?

Deregulate the Regulators!

Before we delve into this smoldering heap of nonsense from today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn, The Boston Globe, let's take a moment to acknowledge how soul-suckingly terrible the people in New England have it. It's cold until May, the urban planning in Boston makes a Rio De Janeiro slum look like the Eastern Bloc, and high school kids can't stop saying "wicked hardcore" (pron. hahd-cowa) in a way that would even piss off Will Hunting.

Still, the harshness of the brutal New England landscape does not exempt them from my scorn. Get your proverbial house in order, Boston Globe, because this was just feeble.

Just Skip to the Crossword.

Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn is the New York Times Editorial Board. The Times' liberal slant, particularly on the editorial board, has been well-established. When David Brooks is the conservative anchor of the operation, you know something's a little off.

Here, the Times has wandered way outside its wheelhouse and into the realm of high finance. Andrew Rosenthal & co. should stick to subjects it's more comfortable with--defending the artistic chops of fecal sculptures, supporting the socialist propaganda in middle school education, bludgeoning conservatives with White Guilt, and swooning for Hugo Chavez. Never forget: write what you know.

The clumsiness of the argument belies an unfamiliarity with the subject matter altogether. Leave the big-boy talk to the Wall Street Journal, and just skip to the crossword. Quick! What's an eight letter word for "utterly uninformed?" Damn it. Now I need a five letter word for "lacking in originality."

Know When to Fold 'Em

The Los Angeles Times is quickly turning into a gold mine of inarticulate opinions by insufferable nincompoops. After promising to try to attempt an argument about moving the 2011 Major League Baseball All-Star Game out of Phoenix and earning themselves worldwide renown as an Object of Ridicule and Scorn at Embrace the Divide, the paper's very own Tim Rutten is out for blood that Phil Jackson, head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, had the audacity to--in their eyes at least--endorse the Arizona Immigration bill.

The Times is really milking this story for all the race-baiting it's worth. The fact remains that the American people support the bill. It's time to fold the hand.

I could parse this column for absurdities pretty easily, but it would just be redundant. Check out Balk! if you really want to read me rhetorically bludgeon the Times' inanities.

At No Point Have You Kicked Enough Ass

Today's Object of Praise and Admiration is Thomas Sowell, who would, if such a thing existed, be in the OPA Hall of Fame.

This is an exceptionally articulated argument centered around Obama's socialism-masquerading-as-modesty that "at some point, you've made enough money." Thomas Sowell's clarity of thought and sound historical perspective are on full display here. A lesser writer (ahem...) would say "eh...I've kicked enough ass. I'll let this one slide with a snide remark or two." Not Sowell. Sowell understands this comment for what it is: a telling window into the dangerous mind of a far-left radical.

Ayn Rand mused in Atlas Shrugged that a American perspective is responsible for the phrasing of the term "making money." Think about the literal meaning of the idiom as you work your way through Sowell's economic argument, and ask yourself:

Can anyone really make enough money?

Extreme [ik-streem], adj: 1a. Right of Evan Bayh

Paul Krugman is an exceptional writer. So talented is Krugman that he has managed to successfully argue and maintain demonstrably wrong positions for years. In his latest column, the extremely liberal Krugman has clearly wandered outside of his wheelhouse, and landed as an Object of Ridicule and Scorn.

GOING TO THE EXTREME  By Paul Krugman 

Utah Republicans have denied Robert Bennett, a very conservative three-term senator, a place on the ballot, because he’s not conservative enough. 

There’s one too many commas in that sentence, but I’ll let it slide.

Balk!

The Los Angeles Times has decided to weigh in on the Arizona immigration debate vis a vis the 2011 Major League baseball All-Star Game, and earned themselves a spot as today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn. The editorial starts out so promising, with a clear position, an aggressive title, and an interesting and relevant subject matter. I was gearing up to face an actual challenge when I read this. Sadly, despite a lot of very impressive words, there weren't any clear arguments here, which is particularly upsetting because this column speaks for the position of the entire paper. 


Just to be open and honest at the outset, I'm going to make an earnest effort to limit myself to only one steroid-related joke.

Hell: Where You Are Judged in Run-On Sentences

Since Helen Thomas’ refuses to contribute to the arena of relevance—her column this week is about the role of the First Lady and fashion trends—I’m forced to look elsewhere for this week's Object of Ridicule and Scorn. So I looked outside the box, and found the barely-coherent Mark Morford, a SFGate columnist (Morford doesn't have the chops to make it into the print edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, whose larger online content is under the banner of SFGate) that decided to lambast Laura Bush after her appearance on Larry King Live. It’s nice that I get to stick with Thomas’ chosen theme of first ladies. As usual, some commendations are in order. Good for Morford for not pulling any punches. The guy had the courage to speak his mind. Sadly, we were all forced to confront just how incoherent his mind is.

Fun with Contemptuous Indignation

Sweet baby Jesus, it's glorious! This post is going to kick off another EtD feature, "Object of Praise and Admiration."

This article by Quin Hillyer at The American Spectator makes me just a little more giddy than I'm comfortable with. Hillyer absolutely skewers the President with a rare concoction of precise writing and genuine ire. It's the type of forceful articulation that lesser writers (ahem...) dream of.

The Sentinel of Xanadu

This is the first piece in an ongoing EtD feature I'm going to call "Object of Ridicule and Scorn." Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn is Helen Thomas, a partisan windbag with clear opinions. You'd think she’d be my type of writer. Sadly, she has eschewed coherence at virtually every turn. So in an homage to the late, great baseball blog “Fire Joe Morgan,” I’m going to mercilessly parse her latest column, entitled “An Eloquent Defense of American Democracy.”

AN ELOQUENT DEFENSE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY by Helen Thomas

I know this is going to be fun because, as any grade schooler with a civics class under his belt could tell you, there is no such thing as an American democracy, and for good reason. Now, I understand that for whatever reason, democracy has a leg up on representative republicanism in the P.R. department (I’ll leave you to meditate privately as to why), but the disparities between the two are not trivial, particularly when one uses the specifics of the definition to make a political argument. It’s not without condescending bemusement that I ponder how both Helen Thomas and Barack Obama—to whose speech Ms. Thomas’ title refers—managed to elude this very basic premise of American governance.

Embrace the Divide

We don't all get along, and I like it that way.

Conflict evokes certain questions of self, and is a singularly formative element in the development of each of our senses of identity. What do you stand for? What won't you stand for? Who will you stand with? These are questions we all answer, sooner or later, because we are forced--either by external events or the internal impulse of conscience.

Each of us has a duty to ourselves to find the truth. That involves gathering information, assimilating it, and reconciling conflicts. It is a complicated process uniquely suited for the human brain. Our understanding of truth manifests itself as virtue, justice, and ideology. we rightly live our lives according to this internal code, and there's where we really start to rub against it.

Make no mistake, the world will ask you to go along to get along, to sacrifice your judgment for the wisdom of the collective. There can exist no greater wrong than the betrayal of self that comes with that sort of capitulation. The alternative, the most natural extension of humanity's greatest virtue, is conflict, volatility, division.

It means that we still trust ourselves above all others. It means that we're all still moving towards purpose. Embrace the divide!