Ultimate Wingnut Challenge: The Life-Style Team
Although not as competive as the Canadians, as glamorous as the Media Stars, as crazy as the TownHall team, or as pathetic as the Korner Kids, our Life-Style Team are people too. So, let's give them their time in the limelight, their chance to show what they can do, their match with Apollo Creed. Or, we could just vote them all off now, and save some time.
1. Anyway, first up is James Lileks. You might remember him as the guy who wrote some pretty interesting and/or funny stuff -- and then 9/11 changed everything. But you have to admit that he is prolific, as he churns out conservative columns for Newhouse News Service, Dave Berry-esque columns for the Minnesota paper, daily natterings about Gnat at his blog, and occasional hissy fits at a subsidiary of his blog, 'ScreeeeeeeeeedBlog.' Plus, there are all those books, plus the new ones about bad mothers, old matchbook covers, and Spry shortening spokeswoman Aunt Jenny.
(Confession: I would buy the Aunt Jenny one. Or, conversely, if Lileks wants, I will write it for him, and he can take credit for it. Also, if any publishers are interested, I think I could come up with a pretty nifty trade paperback about the lessons we can learn from True Romance magazines from the '50s.) (Further confession: I will probably buy the "bad mothers" book.)
Anyway, here's a sample of Lilek's latest Bleat:
Gnat had classes all day – it’s summer, you know – so I worked and worked. Just so you know, and not that you care, but I always read the pieces out loud, while standing at the kitchen island, before I send them in. If I can’t make them sing when spoken there’s something missing.
I think I can speak for everyone when I say that I care deeply about where you read your pieces aloud, Mr. Lileks.
Posting, I fear, will be light for the remainder of the week; I have a 63 inch piece I have to write tomorrow. Thursday isn’t just a column night - it’s my wife’s Bunco thing, which means I head to Chuck E’s with Gnat. Since the party is at Jasperwood this time, that also means we have to stay away for a long while so my wife can have a few moments of fun.
Mrs. Lileks need to have some time away from her husband and kid in order to survive her dreary existance is a recurring theme at The Bleat.
Now, here's a snippet from the latest Newhouse column, "Once Again, Hollywood Stretches Credulity -- This Time With 'Sleeper Cell'::
It's come to this: Hollywood confronts jihad and gives us "Tommy," a "Causasian, all-American rich kid who reinvents himself as a Muslim extremist."
Those kids today with their wacky reinventing, skullcaps on sideways, wearing their bomb belts hanging down so you can see their drawers. Yes, most all-American kids with lots of money can't see a hot sports car parked in front of a restaurant without wishing it would totally explode and like, completely kill all the hot chicks inside. If that's the true face of the threat, start rounding up the junior Kennedys and building them a wing at Gitmo. Something with a field so they can play touch football.
Of course, there couldn't actually be any real-life inspiration for the character.
And now, to state the grindingly obvious: No, we don't need a series that shows Muslims as wide-eyed throat-slitters in headscarves and robes with green blood and vampire teeth. But to make the sleeper cell a multicultural affair not only strains credulity, it denigrates Islam. It suggests there is something intrinsic to the faith that attracts whackjobs from all walks of life. And it inverts truth, if such a thing matters.
What I think Lileks is trying to say is that all Muslims are black-haired, brown-skinned Arabs, and all terrorists are faithful Muslims -- and to claim otherwise is to insult Islam.
Now, for a clip from his most-recent Backfence column: "This Fantastic Four isn't super." Lileks runs out of Fantasic Four material early on, so answers a reader who asked why French motels don't supply their guests with washcloths.
Well, because the French are CENTURIES ahead of us in these matters. The French invented the towel, in AD 94; previously, people had dried off from the semiannual bath by small dry bags of dirt, which rather defeated the purpose. The Romans dried off with the foreheads of feverish slaves. When the French invented the bath towel it changed everything. They used washcloths for many years, but banned them after the Revolution in favor of a triangular hand-towel called the Citizen's Face-Ablution Cloth Allotment. Being triangular, they were hard to fold; you just ended up with a thick wad that didn't stack well. Sixteen members of the National Towel Committee were guillotined to public acclaim, and ever since then the French have sneered at washcloths. In fact that's one of their pet names for Americans. Les woshcliths.
Now wasn't that a delightfully amusing, and whimsically conservative interlude?
P.S. French hotels don't routinely supply their guests with washcloths for the same reason that American hotels don't routinely supply their guests with toothbrushes: because they think they are personal items, and that everyone should have his or her own. Next time, I hope to see Lileks write about how Americans sneer at toothbrushes.
Anyway, that's probably more than you need to know about Lileks for voting purposes.
2. So, let's move on to our next contestant, Kathleen Parker. She offers us a column entitled Big Mama Hillary and Bad Boy John (it's typical in that it tries to seem fairminded and impartial, but the sneering shows through). It's about how Miss Smarty Pants Hillary Clinton railed on a dirty video game, presumably just to make political points, while John McCain has lost points by appearing in a movie that shows breasts (per Kathleen, even though McCain's cameo was "innocuous," he has "handed a freebie to Democrats").
Thus has Clinton, in a lucky convergence of media moments, become Lucy to McCain's Charlie Brown. Exuding Miss Priss and oozing teacher's-pet smartness, she's managed to chip another chunk of the GOP's moral high ground, while one of her likeliest contenders for the 2008 presidential run is criticized for dubious judgment and questionable company.
[...]
[Hillary] has staked herself out as the grown-up, a mature leader, the adult parent who can be trusted to protect children. And, as Lucy did repeatedly for Charlie Brown, she is demonstrating that when boys will be boys, girls will take charge.
Of course, Lucy was mean, bossy, treacherous, and crabby -- but I'm sure Kathleen didn't mean to attribute any of those qualities to Miss Priss Hillary.
3. Dennis Prager brings us part MCMIXCII of his continuing series, "Why Judeo-Christian Values Should Be the Law of the Land." Today's installment: Murderers must die: Judeo-Christian values: Part XVIII.
Dennis starts by conceding that some Judeos and some Christians don't believe in the death penalty. He then explains why their beliefs are wrong.
When all murderers are allowed to keep their lives, murder is rendered less serious and human life is therefore cheapened. That is not only the Judeo-Christian biblical view. It is common sense. The punishment for a crime is what informs society how bad that crime is. A society that allows all murderers to live deems murder less awful than one that takes away the life of a murderer.
In order to show how much we value human life (because it's God-given) we must kill certain people. That makes sense.
There are those who argue that precisely because they so value human life, they oppose the taking of a murderer's life. They argue that you cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing. But that is the same as arguing that you can't teach that stealing is wrong by taking away a thief's money or that you can't teach that kidnapping is wrong by kidnapping (i.e., imprisoning) kidnappers.
So, the reason the justice system makes thieves forfeit their ill-gotten gains is to teach them that our society values money?
Finally, the Old Testament is preoccupied with justice. And allowing one who has unjustly deprived another person of life to keep his own is the ultimate injustice.
There are many good reasons to be wary of taking the lives of murderers -- such as insufficient evidence, corrupted witnesses, distinguishing between premeditated murder and a crime of passion -- but love of life or a commitment to biblically based values are not among them.
Actually, I'd say that the state taking the life of an innocent person would be the ultimate injustice. So, until we're positive that all accused murderers are actually guilty, maybe we should just lock them up in prison, realizing that only God can mete out ultimate justice. (I think that last part is in the Bible too.)
4. Our last contestant, Peggy Noonan, is on vacation (i.e., in detox again). Therefore, let us enjoy a column from July 2002, A Time of Lore. (Yes, that's both the title of the column AND a description of 2002.) In this piece, Peggy says that even though we are living in an epoch, we still have icecream, A/C, and the dreamiest President ever.
You are perhaps reading this at the beach, or after a day at the pool, or at home in your den near midnight as you sneak a bowl of Häagen-Dazs frozen yogurt with fresh strawberries. You are comfortable, well fed, well clothed; the air conditioner hums. Everything feels normal. Everything is! Which is why you haven't gotten your brain fully around the fact that we are living through abnormal times. We are living Days of Lore. Days of big history. We are living through an epoch scholars 50 years hence will ask about and study. (Yes, I think there will be scholars 50 years hence.) They will see us, you and me, as grizzled veterans of something big. Which is funny since we don't even see ourselves as soldiers.
Mainly because most of us aren't. (Sure, those of us with blogs and WSJ columns are soldiers, and are single-handedly winning the War On Terror by writing bad things about Muslims, Frenchies, and liberals, but the rest of you are just lazy slugs who have no right to talk to scholars 50 years hence.)
The sitting president, our leader, was nine months into a new presidency when history's assault began. He is friendly, intelligent, funny, not deeply experienced in terms of his personal experience but deeply experienced in terms of watching up close the experiences of his father and of the president before his father.
Translation: He learned everything he needed to know from watching Ronald Reagan movies.
He was elected legally but with fewer votes than his opponent, a new-age whack job who, upon his loss, grew a beard and came to look like a portly Gilded Age banker. This man will have his rematch.
I'm not sure if Peggy was predicting that Bush and new-age wack job Gilded Age Gore would run against each other in 2004, or if the portly Gilded Age banker would someday see a comeback.
And there is the current president's predecessor, who seems more and more like Warren Harding, president as the Roaring '20s came to a screeching halt--handsome, gray-haired, wayward, blame-deflecting and, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth memorably said, "a slob."
I don't remember Alice saying that, but then, I'm not as old as Peggy.
A congressman who regularly fills the Capitol with his deranged banter and whose head looks like the last sanctuary of tree squirrels is expelled this week from the House, the second man to be so removed since the Civil War. The vote was 420-1, the holdout being the congressman famous for being assumed to have murdered his young lover.
Wow, 2002 really was another country, in that I had to use Google to make sure that Peggy was talking about Gary Condit, since where we live (the FUTURE!) nobody assumes he murdered Chandra Levy. But I can easily recall that Peggy is the Crazy Jesus Dolphin Lady, even though the dolphin column was from 2000. It just goes to show.
Anyway, while it might be irresponsible to speculate that any current columns by Peggy would be just as wingnutty as the ones from her golden age, it would be irresponsible to believe that Hazelton, while a fine facility for treating substance addiction, can cure deep-seated mental problems. So, either penalize Peggy for using an old column, or don't. Whatever.
5. Outside Challenger:
Carrie Lukas, the director of policy at the Independent Women's Forum, has challenged for the right to join the Life-Style Team. To demonstrate her worthiness, she proffers an NRO column about how Washington interns are drunken sluts. It's called Coffee, Copies, and Copulation (and I think she has a good shot at staying on wingnut island just based on that title).
Once the life of a D.C. intern was no more intriguing to outsiders than a summer as a camp counselor or life guard. But this town's junior staffers now have earned notoriety. First, there was Monica, the rubenesque White House vixen who nearly brought down a president through her thong-snapping seduction. Chandra was the next intern to captivate the country. Her affair with a congressman was unearthed during the investigation into her murder, which remains unsolved.
No, Peggy solved it: see above.
Low-level Senate aid Jessica Cutler reinforced the sexually charged stereotype when her Internet blog detailing her sexual escapades became public. She lost her job, but leveraged her "fame" into a lucrative book deal
So, even though Jessica wasn't an intern, she reinforced the stereotype of slutty interns by being an unmarried woman in Washington who had sex.
Americans watching the media-hyped coverage of these scandals can be forgiven for thinking the Beltway an over-sexed cesspool, where powerful politicians prey on too-willing young women.
Yes, the media has over-hyped these scandals, thus giving Mr. and Mrs. Non-Insider a false impression of D.C. as an "over-sexed cesspool." Thank heavens the Independent Women's Forum commission a survey to find out the truth -- and it turns out that D.C. actually is an over-sexed cesspool.
The Independent Women's Forum commissioned a poll to gauge the real-life experiences of Capitol Hill interns. The findings suggest that most interns come to Washington focused on advancing their careers, but that Congress is indeed a sexually charged environment.
As one might expect, three quarters of the 200 interns surveyed reported flirting among interns. But half had also seen it between interns and staff, and more disturbing, nearly one in ten had witnessed flirting between an intern and an elected official.
Hey, I once witnessed flirting between Ronald Reagan and Peggy Noonan, if you define flirting as "to show superficial or casual interest or liking: 'flirted with the idea'" But even if you use "flirt" to mean "behave amorously without serious intent," I don't know if it's a big deal that 20 interns said they'd seen fliriting between an intern and an elected official, since we all know that elected officials will flirt with anyone they think might vote for them.
One percent claimed to be aware of an intern's having an intimate relationship with an elected official — a small percentage, granted, but it is still problematic if such affairs take place at all.
Well, before we get too concerned, we should remember that these two interns might be reporting gossip, or could just just yanking the chain of the IWF.
Sleeping with a congressman or senator may be the province of the daring few, but plenty of interns are getting physical during their D.C. summers. Nearly half (44 percent) admitted to having "hooked up" — defined as a casual physical encounter including anything from kissing to intercourse — since arriving in Washington. That's almost twice as many interns as when this question was asked in a 2003 survey.
Wow, almost 100 interns could have casually kissed while in D.C.? I'm shocked, SHOCKED!
Alcohol goes hand in hand with the hook-up culture, with more than eight in ten interns responding that alcohol is "always" (30 percent) or "sometimes" (54 percent) present at social functions.
Beer sometimes being present at social functions goes hand in hand with casual kissing. Studies have proven it.
Why should anyone care that drinking and hooking up are a part of the typical Capitol intern experience — chalk it up to harmless fun and life experience, right?
Unfortunately, research shows that many young women experience serious regret after engaging in such encounters. While two thirds said they were open to a serious relationship and would consider marriage if they met their perfect mate today, they overwhelmingly recognize that hooking up is unlikely to lead to a meaningful relationship. Moreover, the hook-up culture has largely displaced the traditional dating practices that would give young men and women the opportunity to build the meaningful, lasting relationships that they say they want.
Therefore, we should prohibit young women from serving as interns, because working in Washington could lead to anything from kissing to sexual encounters, and thereby prevent them from getting married while in college, like they should. (Young men can still be interns because drinking and hooking up are just part of the typical intern experience for them.)
Few pay serious attention to youth culture on Capitol Hill except when some politician is caught with his pants down. We need to have a running dialogue about the drawbacks of existing traditions and practices so that a healthier culture can develop. After all, Washington's newly arrived interns may be making copies today, but one day soon they will be running the country.
We need to send VBen Shapiro to Capitol Hill to chaperone. Also, we should make him give lectures on Why Sex is Bad, and make them mandatory for elected officials. Maybe that will stop them from flirting with young people.
And now it's time to vote. Who do you think should get kicked off the Life-Style Team (and Wingnut Island) : James Lileks, Kathleen Parker, Dennis Prager, Peggy Noonan, or Carrie Lukas? (Remember, you can pick TWO of them. And also remember that we can't send the losers to Canada this time.)
5:19:52 AM 
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