Category Archives: Media

Continuously Updated: Rescuing H. L. Mencken From Coulter's Clutches

Ann Coulter, Bush, Media, Neoconservatism, The Zeitgeist, War

On Lou Dobbs’ “Today” show, Ann Coulter anointed herself as the Right’s H. L. Mencken. Coulter is certainly sui generis, but she’s no Mencken.

First, Mencken was “Godless.” I believe he wrote “that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind—that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.”

More material, Mencken was a libertarian. He hated government with all his bolshy being, and was deeply suspicious of power—all power, not only liberal power. To Mencken, all government was evil, and “all government must necessarily make war upon liberty.”

He certainly would have had few kind words for Dubya, the quintessential dirigiste. Coulter, conversely, has shown Bush (who isn’t even conservative) almost unquestioning loyalty, other than to protest his Harriet Miers cronyism and, of late, his infarct over illegal immigration. Such devotion would be anathema to Mencken.

Nor would the very brilliant elitist have found this president’s manifest, all-round ignorance endearing—Bush’s penchant for logical and linguistic infelicities would have revolted Mencken.

About foreign forays Mencken stated acerbically that “the United States should mind its own business. If it is actually commissioned by God to put down totalitarianism, let it start in Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Santo Domingo and Mississippi.” He thought that “waging a war for a purely moral reason [was] as absurd as ravishing a woman for a purely moral reason.” Not in a million years would Mencken have endorsed Bush’s war.

Since he was not a party animal, but a man of principle, conformity to the clan would not have seen him fall into contradiction as Coulter has: she rightly condemned Madeleine Albright’s “preemptive attack” on Slobodan Milosevic, as having been “solely for purposes of regime change based on false information presented to the American people.” But adopted a different—decidedly double—standard regarding Bush’s Iraq excursion.

I repeat: Coulter is certainly sui generis, but Mencken she is not.

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Much less charitable than myself has been paleoconservative writer Kevin Michael Grace, who has mused that, “The secret to becoming a successful right-wing columnist is to echo the mob while complimenting yourself on your daring. That’s all there is to Ann Coulter’s craft, the rest is exploitation of the sexual masochism of the American male—he just can’t get enough of the kitten with claws.”

Brokeback Mountain Revisited

Film, Hollywood, Homosexuality, Media, Private Property

From “Brokeback Mountain Revisited“:

“That gays have such a vested interest in this dreary and dull film indicates that, like Hollywood, they too have become colossal bores. Once interesting and iconoclastic, all gays seem to crave now is the State’s pension and seal of approval. They ought to go back to the days of the Stonewall Riots, when the police’s violations of privacy—and private property—were the object of their anger and activism.

More poignantly, if, in Ayn Rand’s magnificent words, ‘civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy,’ then sexual activism or exhibitionism—homo or hetero—is anathema. All in all, it’s most regrettable that the closet has come to signify oppression rather than discretion”.

The Inexpert Juan Cole

Media, The Zeitgeist

When he’s good he’s very good. Christopher Hitchens demonstrates fairly proficiently that professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan—a “minor nuisance on the fringes of the academic Muslim apologist community”—cannot “decipher the plain meaning of a celebrated [Persian] statement and is, furthermore, in need of a remedial course in English.” (I knew the bit about Cole’s flawed English, of course.)

Cole, believe it or not, has denied that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or indeed Khomeini, have called for the removal of Israel from the map. The full account is here: “The Cole Report: When it comes to Iran, he distorts, you decide.”

Morality Play Featuring Mohammed

Islam, Media, The Zeitgeist

There is no mystery as to why Comedy Central blackened out the image of Mohammed in a recent episode of South Park; the network openly confessed to mortally fearing Muslim reaction. But why was it almost compelled simultaneously to depict Jesus in such a demeaning position?
I think that, in stream-of-consciousness mode, the episode got out of hand, gathering its own momentum and becoming the stage for a little morality play. On display was the dynamic interaction between the bully barbarians and the civil and servile West, with the writers assuming the atavistic, base persona of the aggressors.
Thus, once the victim (the West) was deemed metaphorically supine and the aggressor had smelt his blood—and fear—he, Ã la the Muslim Ummah, moved in for the kill, compelling the dhimmi to squat and perform degrading acts. (I can almost hear cries of, “Dance, Jew, dance.”)