From Frum to Steyn

National Review has traded up in the slot of Canadian backpage columnists. Expect some howitzer-like explosions from the readers of that page for now on.

- posted by Carney at 1:02 PM; link

 
False Objectivity II

The same cannot be said for the next review in Commentary, David Frum's review of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken.

It's mystifying to me that Commentary would feel the need to review this book, which is a book by a comedian, not a policy book. Especially considereing how unlikely it is that there is a single subscriber to Commentary that is also a member of Franken's intended audience. It's unclear what the purpose of attacking such a book would be, except as an arena to show off your rhetorical skills.

But Frum confronts it anyway. His first point is that the book is not laugh-out-loud funny, just wry-smile funny:

"Not to be invidious, but the best right-wing funny men—P.J.O’Rourke, Rob Long, Mark Steyn— truly are laugh-out-loud funny. I have been on airplanes on days when Steyn’s column is running in the local paper and heard the laughs exploding from the seat in front of me like artillery shells out of a howitzer."

Frum makes a nod to the subjectivity of humor, but the attempt to marshal quasi-empirical evidence to make the claim that Steyn is more funny than Franken is preposterous. Firstly, because it's unlikely a conservative will enjoy a liberal comedian as much as one of his own stripe--deferring the accusation of subjectivity to fellow plane passengers of unknown political affiliation does not solve the problem. I for example, find it incomprehensible, that Paul Krugman finds it "hilarious" that Rush Limbaugh "informed Cigar Afficionado that his favorite Bordeaux is Chateau Haut Brion '61--a vintage that retails for about $2000 a bottle" (p. 5 of the current NYRB in his review of Conason's Big Lies).

It's also preposterous because there's no possible way Frum has been on multiple flights on days when Steyn had a column running and happened to sit behind someone who happened to be reading Steyn's column and laughing uproariously. Who could possibly believe that? And even if it were true, it'd be a freak occurrence not objective evidence of Steyn's superior sense of humor.

Why would Frum bother to assert anything about the humor value of Franken's book, anyway? Mainly to claim that Democrats aren't buying it because it is funny (since it's not) but because "[t]oday’s Democrats are looking not for answers but for villains and scapegoats"–and that's what Franken offers in lieu of genuine humor.

But why not instead just claim that the book is built on a substructure of lies, distortion or silly liberal politics, like most conservatives would? Because Frum is a new school conservative, a South Park conservative. He's not the kind of right-wing square who would simply object to the book's politics. Instead he's a connossieur of humor, attacking Lies for not being hilarious. But it's hard not to see that as just a self-deceptive pose, pretending to an objectivity you simply cannot have.

- posted by Mark at 11:57 AM; link

 
False Objectivity I

Charles Murray, the co-author or 1994's notorious Bell Curve, has a new book, Human Accomplishment, which is reviewed by Terry Teachout in this month's Commentary.

The book is an attempt, in Teachout's words, to give a "patina of quasi-scientific objectivity" to the assertion that "the Judeo-Christian West has done the most to foster Human Accomplishment throughout the latter part of recorded history, and that non-Western cultures will similarly thrive only to the extent that their values resemble those of the West."

Since he compiles his list of great men by seeing how many times they're mentioned in (mostly Western) Encyclopedias and the like, more scientifically minded readers might wonder, with Teachout, whether the book isn't simply a grand exercise in circular reasoning.

More humanistically-minded readers, though, might balk at the intrinsic dubiousness of any supposedly scientific approach to genius. And, with respect to artistic genius, it doesn't appear that Murray's taste is all that discerning: "No apologies need be made, certainly not by me, for Western popular culture at its not-infrequent best. But when Murray mentions the TV series The Simpsons and the films Saving Private Ryan and Groundhog Day (the only works of popular art cited by him as exemplary) in the same breath as Caravaggio, Brahms, and Racine, one inevitably wonders whether he has any business making critical judgments of any kind about art of any period."

Teachout is fundamentally in sympathy with Murray's attack on the kind of postmodernism that would reject any claim to greatness as culturally relative, which makes his critical review of Murray's book so credible. It's a good example of conservative intellectual self-policing.

- posted by Mark at 11:56 AM; link

 
This Ain't Your Mother's Economy

Let's all give a round of applause to the Bush economy: 7.2% annual growth rate. Reminds me of the 1980s when Reagan used to give us 9% annual growth rates.

Let's also give a round of applause to John M. Berry at the Washington Post for this surprising tip of the hat: "Fueled by personal income tax cuts that became effective in July and a record surge in home mortgage refinancing, which gave households more cash to spend, consumer purchases rose at a very strong 6.6 percent annual rate in the third quarter, by far the strongest factor in the overall GDP gain."

But honestly, what evidence is there that these bozos in the White House have anything to do with GDP?

- posted by Carney at 6:50 PM; link

 
Controversial

Sean Rushton at Committee for Justice penned a piece in defense of Janice Rogers Brown ("right-wing dream judge" or "Clarence Thomas in a skirt" depending on how little regard you have for blacks and women) on National Review today.

Rushton hints at, but doesn't have time to delve into a question of word choice. The media do not hesitate to describe as "controversial" Bush judges whom Chuck Schumer and Teddy Kennedy want to kill or have killed (Miguel Estrada, Charles Pickering, Carolyn Kuhl, Leon Holmes, Bill Pryor, Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen [I'm sure I'm forgetting someone]).

Honestly, what makes them "controversial?" Is that any statement about the nominees in themselves? Or is it just a statement about what the Senator from Chappaquiddick thinks about them.

Why not, "nominees leading Democrats find objectionable,"? Or "imperiled nominees"?

- posted by Carney at 4:44 PM; link

 
Poker

Now that the World Series is over, and all you hard-luck Yankees fans have nothing to do but wait for next year, you might wonder what you're going to do with your Wednesday nights.

For those of you with cable, I have a recommendation: World Poker Tour 9-11pm on the Travel Channel. It's better than the poker you see on ESPN, which switches from table to table to chase the action, because each episode focuses on only the final match of each tournament. The stakes are higher and the talent is more uniform.

Unfortunately:

1. Though one of the hosts of the show is a poker expert (whose worst fault is that he lacks charisma) the other is an actor who apparently was chosen simply because he's a nice foil to the expert, despite the fact that he adds nothing substantive to the commentary. [10/30/03 Add.: I take this back. He's not so bad.]
2. They teach you how to play poker every episode.
3. Too often, there are Olympics-style bios of the players interrupting the play.
4. Even less congruously, they occasionally mix in little travel documentary segments about the country the given tournament is in. (A fault mitigated by the fact that this show is on the Travel Channel).
5. You can guess whose going to win by seeing who has the most money by the time 10:50 rolls around, since the action is edited to fit the time.

I heard there's going to be a Gaming Network soon. Hopefully, they'll take Poker coverage a little more seriously than the Travel Channel does–and treat it more like a sport and less like an entertainment show.

- posted by Mark at 4:54 PM; link

 
K Street Populist

Those of you who missed the October 20 National Underwriter may not have seen this passage about former conservative Oklahoma Governor, Frank Keating.

One area where Keating parts company with many of his fellow Republicans is that he is not in favor of abolishing the estate tax. He is a "populist," he said, and wants to keep the tax because "we don't have a class system in this country."

I'm sure Keating's desire to keep the death tax in place has nothing to do with his heading the American Council of Life Insurers whose clients rely, in part, on estate planning.

- posted by Carney at 1:48 PM; link

 
You down with G.O.P.? Yeah, you know me.

Andrew Sullivan, here and here, is advertising a new kind of conservativism, not the "humorless puritanical conservatism of the religious right," but "South Park Conservatism." A South Park Conservative, apparently, is someone who says this kind of thing:

"We might have long hair, smoke cigarettes, get drunk on weekends, have sex before marriage, watch R-rated movies, cuss like sailors—and also happen to be conservative, or at least libertarian."

Two notes:

1. Whatever this is, it is not hip.

They might have long hair? How outré.

And drink on the weekends? And watch R-rated movies? And cuss? I hope to God that this is a parody of what young conservatives think of as hip behavior.

Dare we dream of a day when conservative college students will watch NC-17 rated movies without hiding their heads in their hands?

2. Whatever this is, it is not new.

I'll give you ten-to-one odds that the person quoted above is or was an objectivist. You noted that he said "at least libertarian," right?

Libertarian/Objectivists have been a staple on college campuses for at least thirty years. Following the all-too-imitable Alice Rosenbaum (a.k.a. Ayn Rand), they have always celebrated smoking, drinking, and sex. (I've also always imagined that Hank Reardon had long hair, but maybe that's just me). And as far as my experience is concerned, this has been nowhere near enough to make them "hip."

- posted by Mark at 8:10 PM; link

 
Chaucer Online

A miserable Guardian article at the weekend pointed out that the British Library has put William Caxton's first and second editions of The Canterbury Tales online. Here's the site if you're interested in having a look. (I haven't been able to get the transcript to work though.) It's a lot of fun if you enjoy either Chaucer or looking at old books (or both!).

- posted by Laura at 1:55 PM; link

 
I Think I Saw Richard Perle Wearing This

- posted by Carney at 11:41 AM; link

 
Bush-lite

Fox News Channel hosted a debate among the democratic contenders for president last night. Afterwards, commenting on it, Bill Kristol was stunned that the other candidates haven't noticed that Howard Dean is casually running away with the nomination. And it was remarkable, even Ambassador Carol Mosley Braun, who looks like she'll get 1% of the vote, was optimistic and proud of her "vibrant, robust campaign". I imagine that this debate will end that polite posturing and inaugurate the first round of serious attacks on the Dean campaign. The old Senators will undoubtedly attack him for his lack of experience in global affairs and, as they did last night, try to align themselves with Clinton as closely as they can ("If you liked Bill Clinton's economy, you will like John Kerry's.") Sharpton will attack Dean for any concession he makes to economic reality and continue to promise heaven on earth, paid for by the rich, if he's elected. Braun will probably attack him for being male--just like George W. Bush, if you hadn't noticed.

The interesting thing will be watching General Wesley Clark, who would make a particularly strong addition to the Dean ticket, to see if he attacks Dean or is preparing for a possible offer to run as Dean's Vice President.

Note: Rep. Kucinich is a funny, irrelevant little man.

- posted by Mark at 10:22 AM; link