Thank you, Terry. This is the first time I ever did a double take while looking at a computer screen.

Michael Hirsh wants you to understand that “the South — or what has become the South-Southwest” is the vessel of “a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores” traceable to Scotch-Irish migration patterns and Andrew Jackson.  “The coarsened sensibility that this now-dominant Southernism and frontierism has brought to our national dialogue is unmistakable.”  And Hirsh doesn’t care for it — the “intolerant nation” he says we’ve become — not one bit.  The essay is subtitled “Southernism is taking over our national dialogue. Maybe it’s time for the North to secede from the Union.”

Yawn.

Such media fear and loathing of the South in Presidential election politics is at least as old as its reaction to Nixon’s “Southern strategy.”   Give it a rest, guys.

How many times have you heard some toad-licking agrarian socialist of the modern day refer to FOX News as “propaganda” or “biased” and then pirouette and insist that CNN or CBS News is a bastion of objectivity?

(more…)

Mark Shea highlights the latest misrepresentation of Church teaching by the secular press.

Well, I must say, I wasn’t at all prepared for this honor.

In today’s WSJ, Christopher Hitchens takes an appropriately sharp look at O.J. Simpson’s new “book.”

I’ve never been an O’Reilly fan, but I happened to see the segment where he went after Dr. Tiller, and it was one of the strongest stands for life I’ve ever witnessed from a television personality.

O’Reilly may have his faults, but at least he is willing to call evil by name and go after the radical proaborts with a vengence. For that reason alone, he has my admiration and respect. 

And kudos to Attorney General Kline as well for his willingness to stand up and defend the most innocent amongst us.

Teens Call Hyper-Sexualized Media Images ‘Normal’

Yikes. Raising a daughter in this culture would send me to an early grave.

Can be viewed here and here.

The New York Magazine has an interesting (and lengthy) profile of my favorite funny man, Stephen Colbert.

(LvMilbarge)

Gee, I never saw that coming.

Question: Could David Gregory be any more of a prima donna?

My guess is that Gregory lost his lunch money on a regular basis during his elementary-school days, and is now trying to make up for it.

It’s o.k., David. They can’t hurt you anymore.

In July, San Francisco Police Officer Nick Birco was killed in the line of duty.  You can read about his sacrifice here.  Apparently, in typical liberal fashion, the SF media heaped criticism on the department over its pursuit policy rather than condemning the behavior of a fleeing felon. 

In this press conference, SF Police Association President Gary Delagnes gives the media the business and points out the judicial failings that led to this tragedy.  Simply outstanding.

And personally, I think CBS is making a mistake in replacing him with Katie Couric.

Nicholas Lemann of the New Yorker turns up his nose at the blogosphere.

While I am certainly no fan of Bill O’Reilly, I agree that Olbermann’s characterization of him as a Nazi is outrageous.

A pompous windbag? Yes. A Nazi? Not even close. 

S.T. Karnick is one of the journeyman writers of the conservative-libertarian (or as he would say, classical liberal) movement.  His work has appeared just about everywhere.  Some of you may remember him from his editorship and co-creation of American Outlook, which was a very good policy and culture magazine put out by the Hudson Institute for several years.  He and Wlady gave me my first opportunities in freelance writing a few years ago.  (Thanks to both for helping through a couple of lean years in Waco.)

Although Karnick has written about just about everything between his freelance work and his regular editorial pieces for the Hudson magazine, he really shines when opining about popular culture.  After years of encouraging him to focus on that area, I am happy to report that Karnick on Culture is now in business.  After only a few short days, Karnick has written posts covering Mickey Spillane, Monk, Psych, the Beach Boys, Touching Evil, Nero Wolfe, The Closer, and Superman Returns.  Spend a little time with S.T. Karnick before you make another CD, DVD, or fiction purchase.  You’ll be glad you did. 

Salvo Magazine is the latest effort by the publishers of Touchstone.  Salvo has an intellectual edge, like Touchstone, but is not devotional or necessarily religious at all.  It is, however, a wickedly funny indictment of culture with some insightful articles along the way. 

I’m telling everyone I can about the magazine because it has exceeded all my expectations.  I wrote an article for it and promptly forgot about the project thinking it would be just another throwaway magazine, but Salvo is gorgeously rendered and makes the articles pop right out of the page. 

You have to buy the mag or subscribe for four quarterly issues to see it, but I can assure you that the fake ads are worth the price of admission alone.  Bobby Maddex has really accomplished something as editor of this magazine and I encourage everyone who wants to see more of these efforts to support it by subscribing for the first year.

Wow.

Lee at A Bama Blog has written the definitive response to Dana Milbank’s shabby attack on Senator Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.)  It ends with this:

Back in 2004, Dana Milbank co-authored a column with David Broder entitled “Hopes for Civility in Washington are Dashed.” To quote the Instapundit…”Indeed.” Perhaps Mr. Milbank should re-read his own material from time to time.

Read the whole thing.

Dana Milbank’s column today is a remarkably nasty personal attack on Sen. Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.), apparently triggered by Sessions’s positions on immigration policy and border control.  “Forget Politics. This Battle Is Personal” begins with this:

Alabama’s Jeff Sessions sure knows how to nurse a grudge. Talking about his family earlier this year, the Republican senator recalled that “Lincoln killed one of them at Antietam.”

Now he is turning his prodigious anger on legislation the Senate is expected to approve on Thursday that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to become citizens. In the process, Sessions is taking on the White House, his leaders in the Senate, the Congressional Budget Office and business interests at home.

Nowhere in the column does Milbank explain how Sessions’s position is “personal,” nor does he plumb the source of Sessions’s “prodigious anger” or explain how Sessions’s positions are a function of some “grudge” of his.  Instead, the reader is treated to a textbook example of ad hominem argument, including this passage:  

A short, wiry man with protruding ears, Sessions has become the Lou Dobbs of the Senate. He argues his points not with the courtly Southern tones of the late senator Howell Heflin (D), his predecessor, but with the harsh twang of a country tough — which, in a sense, he is.

So, the reader is left to speculate that, maybe, Sessions opposes an open-border approach simply because he’s a mean-spirited, vicious redneck.

That’s the Washington Post I know and love.

More on Sessions and immigration from A Bama Blog, including a link to this John O’Sullivan column, calling Sessions “a hero of commensense in this debate.”

Update:  Steve Sailer is all over this.

Further update:  Lee at A Bama Blog has a very thorough response to Milbank here.

I saw United 93 on Saturday night. It was the single most powerful film I’ve seen in my life. The film lacks any element of fiction. I didn’t feel as though I was being told a story, so much as I felt that I was a ghost given permission to observe events at the FAA, NORAD, and onboard United 93.

What I observed was the incredible vulnerability of human systems confronted by something new, the tenuousness of authority in the face of relentless second-guessing by media and legal professionals, and the willingness of people to keep working in the most impossible situations.

The recreation of events on the flight are super-realistic. We only get one side of phone calls. We see the rapid formation of a plan by men who know only that they have to do something and that failure will be no worse than a death sentence 95% already delivered. By the time the passengers move against the attackers you are so keyed up and identify so fully with their plight, you move with them. I could almost smell the recycled air of the cabin.

The closest I can come to explaining the experience is to invoke the holodeck of Star Trek fame. I felt as though I had walked into a holodeck taking me through September 11 and United Flight 93. I couldn’t help, but I could feel the emotions and take in the atmosphere.

When the passengers finally move against their captors, I felt a dam break inside me and all the tension, fear, and anger racked my body as tears literally jumped out of my eyes. I knew no one in the theatre would notice because the other people were going through the same thing. When the credits came up, no one moved.

After a few moments, we recovered from our shock and walked from the theatre in a procession just as orderly as a funeral.

If a lot of people see this film (and I pray they will), there will no longer be much debate about Iraq or Iran. Wide recognition will dawn upon Americans that we are in uncharted territory and that something is exponentially better than nothing when facing an implacable foe. We need to churn up as many difficulties as possible so that our experience will be wide and we will never again display the innocence we did just a few Septembers ago.

No matter how much we wish it were not so and pretend it is not true when previous memories fail, we are violently reminded that there is evil in the world and that its practitioners are convinced of their rectitude.

which I saw last night.   Many have questioned whether it is too soon to have a movie on these events.  Before seeing the movie, I also wondered if it was too soon.  However, during the movie and since, that thought never crossed my mind.  The only impact of the currency of the movie, for me, was that I remember the events more clearly than if it had been twenty years ago.  Although on second thought, I doubt those memories will ever fade.

A few things that struck me about the movie though:

1)  I did not like how the movie followed the terrorists preparations for the day.  Granted it was not extensive, but I was shocked and disgusted to feel a non-negative emotional connection with the terrorists, in the way that Hitchcock got the audience to connect with Norman Bates such that when Bates tried to dispose of the body in the car the audience almost rooted for the car to sink.  The movie should have followed the day-to-day activities of the innocent vicitms.  We only learn sparce details from conversations and that failed to create the appropriate emotional connection.

2)  The movie made me see 9/11 through new eyes.   I had lived it with fear from my safe mid-western home, and had pondered the emotions of the victims, as well as those who lost family and friends, or who were in the New York and D.C. areas and while not direct victims suffered the reality much more than I had.  However, this movie made me realize the utter fear and helplessness the air traffic controllers, NORAD and military personel encountered that day.  I thought that an important insight.

3)  The movie also made me realize how impossible it is to keep us safe, and reminded me of all the ways in which we are suspectible.

4)  I found disturbing the way the movie showed both the terrorists and the victims sincerely praying as the end approached.  Watching terrorists pray for such evil evoked the same stomach-churning emotion as hearing of a story of the desecration of the Holy Eucharist.

5)   Finally, I wondered early on how the “politically correct” society would view the movie’s portrayal of Muslims.   You cannot present United 93 without showing the religious views of the terrorists, but I wondered if the movie would be condemned as hostile to Muslims.  I did not see it that way, but a friend of mine said that there were two young men in the bathroom who made comments along the lines of “I hate Muslims” after the movie.  I was shocked to tears to hear this.

From Mark Shea

Consider, in a *single year* 1998, the Dept of Justice listed 103,600 cases of sexual abuse in public schools. From 1950 to 2003, there were 10,667 reported cases of clergy sexual abuse. That’s 10 times as much in one year as there were in 53 years in the Church. Yet nobody is passing laws singling out teachers for special exemption from ordinary laws. Only Catholics.

From Archbishop Chaput:

Hofstra University’s Charol Shakeshaft, the leading expert on public school sexual misconduct, testified to the Colorado General Assembly earlier this year that nearly 7 percent of students nationally report “being sexually abused in a physical manner by an educator in public schools.” That means, according to Shakeshaft, that “of the approximately 45 million students attending public and private K-12 schools, more than 3 million will have been the target of physical sexual exploitation by an employee of the school by 11th grade.”

Now, for those of you who loathe the Catholic Church and everything it stands for, please feel free to ignore the statistics I just posted and go straight to calling me an apologist for the few rogue priests who committed unspeakable acts of violence and evil against innocent children and young teens.

Well, at least one gentle soul at NPR is doing just that. Kudos to you, Mrs. Langston. 

Here’s the direct link to the audio.

Fox News is merely a tool of the Bushitler White House. 

Hey, why not? It’s not like we’ll ram an airplane into MTV’s headquarters in retaliation.

Along those lines, it’s interesting to note that MTV and Comedy Central are both owned by Viacom.

Pathetic.

Michael Savage (LvMSatC&EI!).

Unless you’ve been in some sort of shot coma, you know the bubbly Miss Couric announced her departure from the Today Show for the CBS Evening News.

I’m no Couric fan. I’m quite the opposite. I don’t so much dislike her as I simply don’t prefer her style (nor the balance of the Today Show’s style). My question for the readers: Are you excited about this move? I imagine that many of our readers could care less about network news generally, but there is no denying the import of the CBS Evening News anchor job. Couric will deliver election results, special reports on disasters, and other major happenings that concern the nation.

So, how do you feel? I’m giving you a few options, but you can expand at will with your response in the comments section:

1. I am excited for Couric and for the CBS Evening News. I think it’s all good.

2. I am against the move. Couric doesn’t have the chops for the job. CBS will regret this.

3. I don’t watch network news, but I’ll tune in to see what happens.

4. I don’t watch network news, and it will take more than this for me to tune in.

5. I’m a professional who doesn’t get home in time for the network news. It’s been months since I got home and the sun was still shining!

6. Katie who?

My take is #3. I’m slightly inclined to #2, but I’m no longer sure it takes much to do the evening news on the major nets. Perhaps election coverage and the like, and reporting on major events on the fly, but not the canned evening news.

I’ll tune in, mostly for the show. I am fairly confident I won’t be all that crazy about the new CBS product, but one never knows.