“A very calm and understated manner.”

Got that? That’s the new standard for political debate; whatever you say in a calm and understated manner must not be alarming, and thus people must not act as if they are alarmed, no matter what it is.

This notion of an overblown reaction to understated remarks merely continues the stupid emphasis (by both left and right) on means rather than ends, form rather than substance, and the idiotic principle of proportionate response.

While administration flacks may not be going over-the-top in the way that Democrats at large, and especially the lunatic left, did over the last eight years, the velvet fist is the perfectly predictable result of adding “the Chicago Way” to the mix by electing as president a total unknown with exceptionally thin skin from the nation’s most politically corrupt city. How is it understated to say, as David Axelrod did last Sunday, that Fox News is not even a news organization and should not be treated as such by other news organizations? It’s just another way of saying that the single television news organization that doesn’t regularly suck the president’s dick must be shut out for that reason. Is it somehow less offensive or threatening because he said it calmly?

Theblogprof has some fun ridiculing the MSM for being taken in by the real fake protesters (or is it the fake real protesters?) at the healthcare townhalls. (Trust me, neither “real fake” nor “fake real” is an oxymoron in this case.)

While the MSM does, as the good professor notes, have egg on their faces, it’s of little good if no one sees it, and no one will. Denial always works for the MSM.

I’m reminded of a scene in the 1967 movie A Guide for the Married Man, in which Robert Morse, through a series of vignettes about other men, schools Walter Matthau in how to cheat on one’s wife without being caught. In one vignette, the guy is caught — red-handed, when his wife returns home to find him in their bed with another woman. Does he panic? Beg forgiveness? Claim it’s not what it looks like? None of the above.

He denies. Caught red-handed, he denies. Denies, denies, denies. His exchange with with his wife goes something like this:

Wife (upon catching her husband in bed with another woman): “Oh, my God!”

Husband (as the other woman rolls out of bed and starts getting dressed, and he pulls on his trousers): “What?”

Wife: Who is she?!?

Husband: Who?

Wife (pointing): Her!

Husband: Who?

Wife: Her!

Husband (as the other woman walks out of the house): Who?

Wife: Her! Her! Her!

Husband (as the other woman drives away in a cab): Who?

Wife: That woman who was in bed with you and is now driving away in that taxi!

Husband: Whatever are you talking about?

In the end, the wife thinks she must be going nuts and doesn’t believe her own eyes. That, my dear professor, is an awfully large part of he American public, which is also the answer to your exit question.

Think they’ll stop complaining now that the white face is gone? Nah, me either.

UPDATE: I changed the original Joker image to include the “Socialism” caption. I’m still catching up  on my  reading about this, and didn’t realize the caption was part of the original artwork. Speaking of catching up on my reading, Allahpundit had some terrific commentary on the absurdity of finding racism in so many criticisms of Obama:

[The WaPo column] reminds me of when McCain’s “Celebrity” ad debuted and the left went on a three-day bender trying to top each other with ever more inventive theories about the alleged racial subtext. It’s a parlor game for progressive nerds: Take any conservative attack on Obama, assume racism, and then connect as many dots as you need to in order to get from point A to point B. Here it’s Obama = Joker; Joker = terrorizes city; terrorizing cities = stereotype of blacks; ergo, Obama = stereotype of blacks. It’s like “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” but with political benefits.

UPDATE #2: Yikes! Fixed a typo that might have left the wrong impression. “They’ll” used to be “they’s,” which approximated the Amos & Andy style of speech.

Baldwin’s credentials are questionable… but Al Franken is no slouch. He’s Harvard educated and one of his first duties will be as a committee member for the confirmation hearing of Sonia Sotomayor next week.

Alec Baldwin is shocked — shocked! — that a member of the media could be so elitist:

So Franken fits the mold for Cafferty because he went to Harvard? What other schools does Cafferty approve of as breeding grounds for office holders in America? What other professions does Cafferty believe should be excluded from holding office?

Uh, Alec? Where have you been the last several years? Your party is all about elitism. Wake up!

Oh, and from the Weekly Standard blog: “Alec Baldwin attacked Jack Cafferty today with a level of invective he usually reserves for his own daughter.”

Sue them, bankrupt them, ruin their lives, destroy their careers, shut down their blogs and other propaganda outlets, get ‘em locked up wherever possible. Kick them in the teeth again and again, until they howl in pain from the gutter they roll in. Scorch the very earth under their feet. Unleash pure hell on them, and make every single day of their lives a horror and a misery — just as they did to you, just as they’ve done to so many other decent men and women who have the temerity to disagree with their anti-American ideal of what this country should be. Liberal asswipes have gotten away with this sort of thing for far too long.

And here he was yesterday:

And for the rest of us, attack them we must. We must leave no stone unturned when it comes to Democrat Socialists at every level of government and their bought and paid-for media whores; we should mete out to them, measure for measure, the same vicious vitriol that they hurl at us. We should plow them under, bury them, and salt the earth over their heads. We should go after every last one of them — from Obama on down — not with open hearts and hands, but with clenched fists and hard-hearted ruthlessness.

It will never be enough merely to defeat them; we must destroy them utterly, with every means we can possibly find to use, fair or foul. From here on out, the question should never be: is this polite? Is this decent? Does this make us more like them than we’re comfortable being? Rather, it should be: is this effective? Does it lead us to victory? Does it assure that, when they smear and vilify us, they know there will be a heavy price to pay for it?

The stakes here are way too high to pull our punches in the name of supposedly fighting fair; the stakes are our country, our freedom, and likely enough, our very lives. Anyone who thinks these things not worth fighting hammer and tongs for ought to step aside until the dust settles.

I’m with him all the way, as long as he is not advocating throwing around lies and frivolous ethics charges. With the abundance of corruption in politics, we shouldn’t need either. But I’m all for exposing skeletons in the closet, as long as they are real skeletons.

Rumor has it there’s a John Edwards – Rielle Hunter sex tape floating around out there. But I’m pretty sure there’s no truth to the rumor that Mark Sanford has mobilized the South Carolina National Guard and the state police in a dragnet to find the tape.

If it shows up, it will sure be interesting to see how the press handles the situation.

With several blogs devoted to Palin, she really doesn’t need me to stick up for her. But two recent articles at The American Thinker caught my eye for their analyses of two classes of Palin detractors.

First up is writer/singer Lloyd Marcus, who starts by comparing Sarah Palin to Gary Cooper in High Noon, and then writes:

Why are Obama and his gang so committed and desperate to destroy Palin? Could it be they recognize her destiny, like that of Moses, to set her people free? And why is she so despised by them? Obama’s gang hate Palin for all the reasons we love her. Sheriff Palin is a good, decent and strong character driven conservative leader. Palin also believes in God. Such humility and virtues are as repulsive to liberals as showing Dracula the cross.

Something that sticks in the craw of many liberal women is that in their youth, they brought into the feminist rhetoric that women’s liberation means no husband and family. Tragically, they find themselves aging and alone. Meanwhile, this conservative woman has it all: great career, fine family and a husband who loves and respects her. Adding insult in injury, Sheriff Palin looks mighty fine in her jeans.

She is seen as a threat and she’s not allowed to be happy because she’s not a feminist. OK, that’s about right. Stuart Schwartz explores that feminist angle in depth, specifically in contrast to the cultural movement surrounding Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues:

The Washington Post, which has devoted much of the past decade celebrating the Ensler culture, nastily declared that her “greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”  Those were among the kinder words written by one of its showcased writers on faith, a University of Chicago divinity school professor who also derisively noted that someone who “has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!)” does not a woman make.

So what does make a woman…politically, that is? Hate and cultural conformity, to judge by the venom spilling from the nation’s elite.  Ensler promotes this, exhorting women to “vote with your vaginas” and put Democrats in office. She has urged them “to get our vaginas to the polls”, in this last election warning that a vote for Palin is the equivalent of a vote for rape…the bad kind. Women — and those non-traditional men who have escaped gender stereotypes to embrace a walk down the “vagina trail” — should ask themselves: what would your vagina do?

Conservatives knew all this already, but I’m hoping that this kind of thing is being noticed beyond the grassroots.

Let’s talk a little about my use of the word “freak.” I don’t say it with gusto, nor do I say it with venom. Well, not venom for Michael Jackson, anyway. I say it with venom for the culture and the media that not only made possible, but encouraged, Jackson’s descent into his freakish world. I don’t have the flair for writing Pundette does, so I’ll excerpt her post, “Disgusted” (which didn’t even start out about Michael Jackson):

How fitting that images of another great example of coolness, unconvicted child-molester/freakazoid Michael Jackson, should be everywhere right now. Only an ailing culture would fall all over itself for a performer who, at his peak (before the extreme self-mutilation), defined himself by his artificiality. It was evident in his dance moves, in his over-produced sound, and in the silly pseudo-uniforms he wore. Eventually artificiality bloomed into bizarre unnaturalness. A healthy culture would have averted its eyes from a man so overwhelmed with self-hatred. But we’re suffering from cultural arrested development and have developed a taste for self-destruction. Get ready for multiple tell-all books from the inner circle (time to cash in!) that will curl your hair, and endless tributes that gloss over his pervitude.

Jackson was a freak, but he wasn’t solely responsible for that status. And pedophile or not, that parents would serve up their children to him for such unnaturally close attention is frightening.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg also captures my thoughts well. (H/T: Pundette.)

I’m irked, but Randy Ranger at Cold Fury is, well, furious that Jackson’s death yesterday has so greatly overshadowed Farrah Fawcett’s death earlier in the day, and I can’t blame him. Pedophile or not, Jackson was a freak, even if it wasn’t entirely his fault. A neighbor of mine in show business assures me that Farrah Fawcett, by contrast, was quite sweet and down-to-earth. And her public persona was not freakish. Who knows, perhaps she is pleased that the press isn’t tearing her life story apart right now. I hope so.

UPDATE: Oh, for crying out loud. A moment of silence in congress. Are you effin’ kidding me? Bonus points (and cash contributions should go) to anyone in that chamber who refused to stand when Jesse Jackson Jr. asked them to.

UPDATE #2: It just gets worse at Fox News.