Monday Thru Friday Morning Coffees

Jeez, I've been making little notes about what needed to be covered all week and been to busy to post them up, so here's the pile with the super-important ones up top and the rest in somewhat reverse order of freshness.

• THE MUST-READ COLUMN OF THE YEAR!!! - I've always wondered why we were pussy-footing around about the war and why the Left is always bringing up bad behavior by America that happened a century ago to excuse their current opposition to our policies and the answers to both can be found in this monumental column "White Guilt and the Western Past". A snip:

Certainly since Vietnam, America has increasingly practiced a policy of minimalism and restraint in war. And now this unacknowledged policy, which always makes a space for the enemy, has us in another long and rather passionless war against a weak enemy.

Why this new minimalism in war?

It began, I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty. This idea had organized the entire world, divided up its resources, imposed the nation-state system across the globe, and delivered the majority of the world's population into servitude and oppression. After World War II, revolutions across the globe, from India to Algeria and from Indonesia to the American civil rights revolution, defeated the authority inherent in white supremacy, if not the idea itself. And this defeat exacted a price: the West was left stigmatized by its sins. Today, the white West--like Germany after the Nazi defeat--lives in a kind of secular penitence in which the slightest echo of past sins brings down withering condemnation. There is now a cloud over white skin where there once was unquestioned authority.

I call this white guilt not because it is a guilt of conscience but because people stigmatized with moral crimes--here racism and imperialism--lack moral authority and so act guiltily whether they feel guilt or not.

They struggle, above all else, to dissociate themselves from the past sins they are stigmatized with. When they behave in ways that invoke the memory of those sins, they must labor to prove that they have not relapsed into their group's former sinfulness. So when America--the greatest embodiment of Western power--goes to war in Third World Iraq, it must also labor to dissociate that action from the great Western sin of imperialism. Thus, in Iraq we are in two wars, one against an insurgency and another against the past--two fronts, two victories to win, one military, the other a victory of dissociation.

The collapse of white supremacy--and the resulting white guilt--introduced a new mechanism of power into the world: stigmatization with the evil of the Western past.

GO! READ! IT! ALL!!!

• WHY LIBERALS ARE LIKE THE TALIBAN - This week's other must-read is this Time magazine column by a bona fide hard-Left ultra-liberal who found herself being pilloried by her own fellow travelers because she wrote a book praising the virtues of traditional marriage. Liberals are rigid, inflexible people so up their own asses with superiority that they crap themselves when someone actually tries to express a differing opinion. Remember that when they attack non-liberals as intolerant and remember the psychological term "projection".

• IF THE STUPID PARTY SOLICITS MONEY, send them this:



Freaking brilliant!

• STEVEN COLBERT: HERO OR ASSHOLE? - Last Saturday night was the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner which was hosted by comedian Steven Colbert of Comedhimmi Central's "The Colbert Report". While you may've seen a clip of Dubya doing shtick with the impersonator who Jay Leno uses, what got less play was Colbert's trash-talking Dubya and the press. Many fans of Colbert thought it was a poor performance, but what bugged me was that it was yet another example of liberal smugness and a belief that their superiority exempted them from basic politeness.

In one forum I post - where 99.44% of the members are rigid ultra-liberals - they thought it was the greatest thing and were braying about how Colbert was "speaking truthiness to power" - gah, that tired phrase again! - and thought that the Treason Media was selling out to Dubya (yeah, right) by not airing it all over the place.

I tried to point out the rudeness aspect, but they reacted so (typically) badly to this contrary opinion that the moderators had to delete the thread because the stench of all those filled diapers became unbearable. However, it's not just people who don't hate Dubya enough for these fascists you thought it was rude, Richard Cohen, himself a high-ranking leader in the Treason Media priesthood, thought so too in a piece entitled "Not So Funny". A snip:

Colbert was not just a failure as a comedian but rude. Rude is not the same as brash. It is not the same as brassy. It is not the same as gutsy or thinking outside the box. Rudeness means taking advantage of the other person's sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. The other night, that person was George W. Bush.

Why are you wasting my time with Colbert, I hear you ask. Because he is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention wit, in this country. His defenders -- and they are all over the blogosphere -- will tell you he spoke truth to power. This is a tired phrase, as we all know, but when it was fresh and meaningful it suggested repercussions, consequences -- maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or -- if you're at work -- take away your office.

But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in. He also knew that Bush would have to sit there and pretend to laugh at Colbert's lame and insulting jokes. Bush himself plays off his reputation as a dunce and his penchant for mangling English. Self-mockery can be funny. Mockery that is insulting is not. The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity. This is why Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.

On television, Colbert is often funny. But on his own show he appeals to a self-selected audience that reminds him often of his greatness. In Washington he was playing to a different crowd, and he failed dismally in the funny person's most solemn obligation: to use absurdity or contrast or hyperbole to elucidate -- to make people see things a little bit differently. He had a chance to tell the president and much of important (and self-important) Washington things it would have been good for them to hear. But he was, like much of the blogosphere itself, telling like-minded people what they already know and alienating all the others. In this sense, he was a man for our times.

He also wasn't funny.

I guess Cohen can look forward to being thrown under the bus by his fellow travellers, too. NOTHING must stop the "Get Dubya" jihad!!!

For an interesting profile of the Dubya impersonator, here's a story from today's McNewspaper. I didn't realize this guy used so many prosthetics. I just figured he was riding a fortuitous moment of dopplegangerdom.

• RECONQUISTAS ON PARADE - The big illegal immigrant amnesty rallies were on May Day and I caught on O'Reilly's show, Geraldo Rivera spew stupidity and reveal the inherent racism of liberalism by saying that the alternative to securing the border is $20 bananas and a $10 avocado. He was saying that we should exploit the brown people in exchange for cheap produce. Isn't it immoral to exploit people for low prices - that's what they Lefties say about Nike, yet it's OK to explot Mexicans? What are the benefits of economic apartheid and why is the Left trying to enshrine racist slavery?

• LIONIZING A MURDERER - On eastbound I-94 in Detroit is a billboard that Eminem's Shady Records uses which now reads "BIG PROOF FOREVER". While I understand Proof's significance to the Detroit rap scene, the truth remains that he killed an unarmed man over a pool game. The family of Keith Bender is suing the estate of this murderer, who was buried in a $44,000 coffin around the corner from Rosa Parks. Good for them! The Detroit alternative weeklies are still lionizing this killer. Pathetic.

• AMERICA'S ROYAL FAMILY SKATES AGAIN - 3rd-string Kennedy loser, Patrick Kennedy (D-RI, or should that be D-UI?), crashed his car and the cops who were right there said he looked and smelled drunk. Instead of being hauled off like us peasants, the Capital Police brass rushed to the scene, didn't give him a Breathalizer test and swept it under the rug. The Treason Media is actually reporting on this, proving that while they'll go all out to commit crimes against America, they aren't such whores that they'll dive for the political equivalent of Nicole Richie.

• THOSE ADS FOR TAG AND AXE BODY SPRAYS seem to promise that guys who use them will be constantly assaulted by hordes of smoking hot babes, pawing at their clothes and basically trying to get a baloney pony ride. If it was that simple, rock stars and rich guys would be getting left alone in favor of po' boys wearing Axe, ya dig?

• GUYS GONE WILD - What is the market for these discs: Women or gay men? What's scary about the ads is that they use the same language as the "Girls Gone Wild" ads, including the bit about "wait till you see what happens when the lights go out." Yeep!!! Is it Brokeback Spring Break?!?

• GANG MEMBERS IN THE MILITARY? - That's what it looks like and it's not a good thing.

Egads! I've still got a ton more to include, but it's already lunchtime! The rest will (hopefully) go up for dessert tonight. Stay tuned...it's not as if there isn't already plenty to chew on here. Two more quickies....

• FRIDAY FIVER:

1. Have you ever been to Mexico?

No. And if I snuck in, I doubt they'd be receptive to my demands for rights and free stuff.

2. Do you know anyone who is currently in the military?

I did, but most have already cashed out their stints.

3. What is the last party you attended?

I can't remember.

4. What do you think about President Bush saying that the United States' National Anthem should only be sung in English?

Considering he was having it played in Spanish and singing along during his campaigns, it's another one of his bonehead comments. Forget worrying about the anthem and start moving toward making English the official tongue of the US government and stop all this bi-tri-quad-lingual garbage. Learn the language or get the f*ck back to wherever everyone else can understand you!

5. French fries or freedom fries?

DIRK® Fries, bitch!

• DIRK'S DISH DU JOUR: I know I posted her recently, but I'm in the mood for some more Scarlett Johanson. (Like you're complaining.)