The blog’s title is Rob Stove’s, the epistolary Wizard of Oz.

Gerard Baker’s lampoon of Obama was read on Fox-News’ Hannity & Colmes. Mr. Hannity credited “My producer,” rather than its talented author (who narrated). The banal front men and women of American punditry prefer not to doff a metaphoric hat to their betters. In fact, unless absolutely irresistible—as this piece surely is—they prefer that the less known about ideas not their own, the better. Dimming debate so that they are never outshone is the impetus behind the men and women of America’s malpracticing media. The result: a paucity of original thinking in American public life. Mencken would have been unemployed today, because brilliant (and non-partisan).

Satirical writing such as Baker’s is seldom undertaken by American pundits, whose writing is strictly prosaic and pedestrian. Likewise, it remains unappreciated by readers. Rob tells me that “in Australia there seems to be this notion that if a writer uses nuance, he must be homosexual.” I’d argue that this perception is rooted in a culture that still values manliness, albeit in its symbolic manifestation. Anointed public intellectuals in the US are almost always the “girlie boys”—down to their trendy eye wear, fussy falsettos, and pasty faces. Their writing is similarly androgynous.

(Vastly inferior, my “Mephisto’s Medicare: A Parable” was written many years ago when the muse struck. More “prosaic” versions thereof were published in the Calgary Herald and Vancouver Sun. I take consolation in knowing I’d do better today.)

Update (July 28): Please note “Mild Colonial Boy’s” comments hereunder. I missed the part of the broadcast to which he refers. My bad. Therefore, he is correct; I may have been hasty, but heck, 99 percent of the time my comments obtain. It is most unusual for the cable cohort to air, much less credit, original thinking.

HE VENTURED FORTH TO BRING LIGHT TO THE WORLD
By Gerard Baker

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth – for the first time – to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the

Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child’s very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.

In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.

As word spread throughout the land about the Child’s wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.

And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child’s journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.

The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.

And there were other wonderful signs. In the city of the Street at the Wall, spreads on interbank interest rates dropped like manna from Heaven and rates on credit default swaps fell to the ground as dead birds from the almond tree, and the people who had lived in foreclosure were able to borrow again.

Black gold gushed from the ground at prices well below $140 per barrel. In hospitals across the land the sick were cured even though they were uninsured. And all because the Child had pronounced it.

And this is the testimony of one who speaks the truth and bears witness to the truth so that you might believe. And he knows it is the truth for he saw it all on CNN and the BBC and in the pages of The New York Times.

Then the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine and stepped onto the shores of the Old Continent. In the land of Queen Angela of Merkel, vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.

But when he had finished speaking his disciples told him the crowd was hungry, for they had had nothing to eat all the hours they had waited for him.

And so the Child told his disciples to fetch some food but all they had was five loaves and a couple of frankfurters. So he took the bread and the frankfurters and blessed them and told his disciples to feed the multitudes. And when all had eaten their fill, the scraps filled twelve baskets.

Thence he travelled west to Mount Sarkozy. Even the beauteous Princess Carla of the tribe of the Bruni was struck by awe and she was great in love with the Child, but he was tempted not.

On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair and his successor, Gordon the Leper, and his successor, David the Golden One.

And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”

Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.

“I suspect most media cheered for Obama reflexively, rather than consciously—too stupid to ask themselves whether what they were doing was journalism or advocacy. A couple of older news guys, ABC’s Charles Gibson comes to mind, failed to take sides. Consequently, the pack pounced on him and on George Stephanopoulos for asking the senator some pointed questions. But good newsmen are a dying breed. Good newswomen are mostly dead already. By the time she died, the brilliant and brave Oriana Fallaci had long since been buried professionally by mediocrities like Barbara Walters of the ‘cutting edge’ anti-aging reportage and colonic crusader Katie Couric.”

“So how did a mindless monolith’s hunger for Hussein help the Obama momentum?”

Find out by reading “Mindless Monolith: Media Pick Obama.” The column leads the WND Commentary Page today.

Update I: A friend, who’s no fan of Katie Couric, thought my description of her as a “colonic crusader” should be patented. Fun aside, to be a “good” newsman today means taking up a disease and fighting against it. The triumph of sentimentality over reason. Couric’s thing is colon cancer, an awful illness, indubitably, but, consider Fallaci who’d been blown-up covering many a revolution–she never so much as discussed the breast cancer that killed her. I suspect that given the kind of mind she had, it didn’t much interest her. I too switch off most newscasts when they start on the kiddies, cures, and critters crap. Part of the takeover by women.

Update II (June 7): In reply to the reader from Lewrocwell.com, who asserts that I have singled out “comrade” Obama for criticism for some reason he simply cannot fathom:

I too cannot quite understand why readers assert baselessly, rather than argue based on facts. The reader has clearly not read “Ilana’s” scathing commentary on the other candidates. It’s on this site, for those willing to do a wee search—two mouse clicks away really.

Of course, it’s also a no-brainer that the most prominent candidate—the frontrunner—would garner more commentary than the rest. Is it not? Perhaps not to all. Genghis Bush got my undivided attention in years past.

Here’s some of the commentary Mr. Allen “missed”:

“The Hillary, Hussein, McCain Axis of Evil”

“Mitt’s Gone; Bill’s Back”

“Axis of Economic Idiocy”

“Lexicon Of Lies”

“Busybody Hillary’s Bhutto Blather”

And more; practically every column of mine, here’s another example, is peppered with derogatory comments about the candidates and their positions, or lack thereof, as applied to the issues discussed in the column. I guess people see what they want to see.

A different perspective on my rather matter-of-fact narration of the media’s crowning of Obama comes from a rather independent-minded gentlemen I’ve come to know—he happens to be Sean Hannity’s producer, although as much as he often likes what I have to say has not succeeded in getting me on the program:

“This is your typical iconoclastic clarity – some people fight PC, you remind me more of some Buffy who stakes it through the heart and then cuts its head off on the backslash.”

As you know, the plagiarism of ideas is, especially to this writer, a litmus test for bottom-feeding scum, plain and simple. Why is lifting ideas worse than verbatim copying? Because only the latter is legally actionable. “Smart” people know this—they know how easy it is to get away with lifting ideas, since that’s legally kosher, if utterly odious and unethical.
Those familiar with my work know that I cite religiously and faithfully—I cite even when I don’t have to really. That’s because of my ethics. On a personal level, it’s because I’m not threatened by anyone. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. Why borrow what I may be able to best?
My last brush with this contemptible conduct came about because of a brilliant and ethical colleague—if not for him, I would not have known I had been kind of victimized yet again. He was incredulous when he came across what he recognized to be my ideas, and those of a primary source I had quoted diligently in my essay, all appropriated as the offending writer’s own.
I fought back, and got a citation appended to this second-hand text. I believe you must fight back, so that those who imagine they deserve credit for your ideas pay by losing face. They now know you’re on to them.
In my case, oddly enough, people whom I quite respected have nicked my rather idiosyncratic formulations. Sean nailed it (I could credit myself with this insight, but it’s his): “what’s at play in these instances,” he explained, “is someone who believes he has said what you said, and in the event that he hasn’t, he, being so great, thinks he deserved to have said it.” Something along the lines of, “Who the hell is Ilana to write stuff that sounds as though I ought to have written it?”
Ugly, unmanly sentiments indeed.
Prior to this last episode, about which I would not have been the wiser without my ethical colleague, there was the “professor”—they are a dime a dozen—with no paper or pixel trail to his name, who decided he deserved credit for my vindicating of Michael Vick.
If you recall, I was the first to offer a detailed and rather idiosyncratic defense of Vick’s dog fighting. Sean Hannity said he had not found anyone other than me to offer a coherent defense, which is why he criss-crossed me on his show. My piece was later published in the Orange County Register too.
Google “Defense Michael Vick.” Who’s right up there after Whoopi Goldberg (who, for obvious reasons, would come first)?
My arguments continued on the blog and took a very distinguishing tack, to which the good “professor” adhered closely. His editor defended this no-name dog of a writer. Yeah, this from a bunch that never shuts up about values—the Values Vulgarizers. (Not to mention the violators of the injunction against Second-Handerism.)
So what do I think of the allegation that Obama lifted words not his for one of his uninspiring Hear Me Roar speeches? If it’s true, I agree with Howard Wolfson, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, that, “When an author plagiarizes from another author there is damage done to two different parties. One is to the person he plagiarized from. The other is to the reader.”
While Obama is accused of some lengthy appropriating absent any word of credit to the primary source, his come-back to Hillary is as impoverished as his plagiarism practice. Obama says she borrowed his “signature chant ‘fired up and ready to go’ in Davenport, Iowa, and later her echoing of his rally cry, ‘Yes, we can!’”
Puh-leeze. Next our “intellectual” will be accusing Hillary of stealing the “You Go Girl” bimbo battle cry. The above is clearly Hillary’s mocking paraphrase of Obama’s call to arms. Before he makes his next empty accusation, Imam Obama ought to know that “Ouch”  has also moved into the public domain.
This particular professor is a bit shabby in this department. All not very surprising, considering my own tales of woe with professors.

Update: Obama ought to have said, “To paraphrase my friend, x,” or something along those lines. However you spin it, it’s not very elevated, coming from a man who prides himself on the proper use of words. Sourcing is part of the proper use of words.

Paul Gottfried is, easily, the most learned, ignored scholar dealing with the history of the European and American Right. In this no holds barred interview, Prof. Gottfried and I discuss Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right, Prof. Gottfried’s latest book. The interview is the first of two; the book is the last in a series of books dissecting the Right, among which are After Liberalism (Princeton, 1999) and Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt (Missouri, 2002).

Enjoy. Comments are welcome.