The Toilet Taliban and Other ‘Paines’ in the Posterior

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Hollywood

This week’s column is two-pronged, or shall I say two-ponged (Crow is the gift that keeps giving):

“…Having unleashed “E-Crowli” into the ether, Sheryl should zip those lips over that overbite. The only thing that might lift the malodorous aura that has clung to Crow since she came out of the toilet with these schemes is the knowledge that her well-appointed bathroom sports a bidet. Or, conversely, that she practices “Islamic toilet etiquette.” The latter, at least, involves water! But don’t hold your breath. (Or maybe you should!)”…

“Speaking of a pain in the posterior, or is it a ‘Paine,’ Trotskyite-turned-neoconservative Christopher Hitchens has a new book out: Thomas Paine’s ‘Rights of Man.’ Hitchens has dedicated it, “by permission,” to Jalal Talabani, the President of Iraq, whom he clearly considers the Paine of Mesopotamia. …
Hitchens wants to convince his readers that Paine’s proto-socialism—he advocated welfare financed by taxes—is quintessentially American. I disagree, but understand where this ex-Trotskyite transplant is coming from.
Still, leery as I am of Thomas Paine’s philosophical provenance, it seems egregious, even comical, for Hitchens to have paired Paine with Talabani.”

The complete column is “The Toilet Taliban and Other ‘Paines’ in the Posterior”

After Imus

Conservatism, Free Speech, Political Correctness, Race, Racism, Republicans, The Zeitgeist

Libertarians will tell you that there is no such thing as free speech, only property rights. In other words, you have no right to deliver a disquisition in my living room, unless I allow it. Your speech rights depend on whose property you’re on. Similarly, Imus’ speech rights depended on the good graces of those holding title to the news network that employed him: CBS.

A libertarian would not dispute that CBS was perfectly entitled to terminate Imus, and thus curtail his speech on their behalf. But this case is not strictly about the libertarian law—most cases rarely are. One cannot neglect the backdrop to, and implications of, a termination that was, on its face, perfectly legal in libertarian law.

It began with a tasteless comment, which, I believe, was not intended to be racially offensive. Imus, rather, was probably trying to be hip, not hurtful. Imus lapsed into Wigga mode in an attempt to get down with the hoodniks.

Cora Daniels, author of Ghettonation: A Journey Into the Land of Bling and Home of the Shameless, examines, in a Newsweek interview, how “the hip-hop lifestyle and behaviors attributed to inner-city neighborhoods—celebrating gangsters and violence, revering fancy cars and bling, flaunting women’s bodies—has permeated American culture and created a widespread ‘ghetto’ mentality.'”

From soda-filled baby bottles to black men calling each other the ‘n’ word to MTV’s ‘Pimp My Ride,’ Daniels chronicles the pervasiveness of ‘ghetto’ thinking and shows how people from all walks of life engage in and celebrate ideas, language and behavior they should find repulsive.

Neither was this about what the conservative representative on The View, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, called market forces. Imus’ show, I believe, was doing well. But because of the racial lobby, the advertisers, and subsequently the proprietor, froze in fear of being labeled racists. Fear and cowardice drove CBS to forsake a product for which there was demand.

Speaking of Elisabeth Hasselbeck: she’s a real lightweight in the contemporary tradition of the conservative, female teletwit. Her “conservative” credentials include support for breast cancer prevention and research, the Amber Alert Initiative, the war, Our Leader. And being blond and bubbly, of course.

Indeed, conservative thinking is constantly evolving in the age of the idiot. Many prominent conservatives, Michelle Malkin and Bill O’Reilly come to mind, celebrated this frightful coup of mob over free speech. The fuss these conservatives are making, moreover, over hip-hop lyrics is a red herring. A result of complete confusion, the premise of which is that these lyrics ought to also be censored. In that, conservatives resemble Democrat Tipper Gore and her comical attempt in the 1980s to censor rock lyrics.

The media tell us the Imus Affair has inaugurated the beginning of a debate about race. For a change. Prepare, then, for members of the besieged majority to be constantly bashed by the racial lobby—professors, journalists, assorted shakedown artists, and Paula Zahn. This, despite the fact that there is nothing remotely racist about Americans. In fact, they’ve been thoroughly brainwashed to believe mankind is one big brotherhood.

Also, watch how debate will become more timid and dishonest as it is in Canada, where there are anti-hate speech tribunals. To seek a remedy against speech they don’t like, the Canadian clones of Sharpton and Jackson need only to turn to the courts. In these kangaroo courts, none of the traditional legal defenses applies. Truth, the absence of intent to harm, etc.—forget about trying to mount a legal defense. You are guilty until proven innocent.

It is my guess that the Imus watershed will lead to a similar speech-limiting code in the US, the Bill of Rights be damned.

Toilet Taliban

Etiquette, Feminism, Music

What a remarkably ill-bred, indelicate creature is singer Sheryl Crow. Read the following bons mots for a sense of creepy Crow’s planet-saving concoctions:

I have designed a clothing line that has what’s called a ‘dining sleeve.’ The sleeve is detachable and can be replaced with another ‘dining sleeve,’ after usage. The design will offer the ‘diner’ the convenience of wiping his mouth on his sleeve rather than throwing out yet another barely used paper product. I think this idea could also translate quite well to those suffering with an annoying head cold.

Raised in a barn she must have been. Her mother clearly never taught her any table manners. How crass and asinine can Crow get? Read on:

Now, I don’t want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.

I’m not sure what’s more offensive, Crow’s notion of what industry and natural rights consist of, or her filthy ideas about personal hygiene. The only thing that might redeem this toilet Taliban is the knowledge that she has a bidet in her well-appointed bathroom. Judging from what we’ve heard so far, she sure needs one.

Paine and The Painful Brother Hitchens

Iran, Political Philosophy, The West

“A nation of nose jobs, not nuclear war,”? is how Peter Hitchens describes the Iranians. Hitchens offers a much-needed corrective to the neoconnery’s perspective: they’ve been itching for a fight. Iranians are a modernizing people, with Western sensibilities to match their demographic youth. But, contra the “cake-walk,” they’ll-greet-us-with-bonbons-and bouquets-crowd, “that will not stop [the Iranians] fighting like hell if we are foolish enough to attack them.”

Peter’s lesser brother, the Trotskyite-turned-neocon Christopher Hitchens, is more at home shedding darkness. He has a new book out: Thomas Paine’s “Right of Man.” Christopher has dedicated it, “by permission,” to Jalal Talabani, the President of Iraq. Trotskyites share with neocons an ahistoric approach —to say nothing of philosophical Alzheimer’s —that has made it quite acceptable to compare the neocon-initiated carnage in Iraq to the constitutional cramps of early America. But, as I have pointed out over and over again, there is absolutely no philosophical link between the feuding Mohammedans and the American founders, followers of John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu.

Although he wrote some great libertarian tracts, Paine was too much of an acolyte of the French Revolution for my tastes, at one stage nuzzling up to the Jacobins (until they turned on him), and writing in opposition to Edmund Burke’s condemnation of that blood-drenched revolution.

Paine’s emphasis on the universality of political rights is also so French Revolution. I believe that all men are imbued with natural —but not political —rights. I believe taxpayers alone ought to have the vote. Not tax consumers. And that goes for politicians, who pay taxes out of what they loot from the taxpayer. As the very American John C. Calhoun explained in “A Disquisition on Government,” a sizeable majority of the people “receives in disbursements more than it pays in taxes.” The minority funding the orgy “pays in taxes more than it receives back in disbursements.” The latter, not the former, should have the vote.

But even Paine should probably not be paired with Talabani and his paired-down, uninspired mission: staying alive politically and literally. But then what would Hitchens know.