Here's a picture of Susette Kelo's house:

That's the same house that five Supreme Court justices recently ruled can be condemned, taken from Ms. Kelo, and handed over to private parties, so that local property tax revenues in New London, Connecticut can be enhanced.

It looks like a fairly simple house to me, and I'm inclined to feel sorry for it, and for Ms. Kelo.

But right now I'm wondering what the house snobs like James Howard Kunstler would think of it. Here's what he said about a plain brown house with too many cars when he gave it his "Eyesore of the Month" award:

When you live in a high entropy society, as we do, the entropy manifests in many ways: toxic waste, poor air quality, social alienation, epidemic obesity, odious popular culture, AND immersive ugliness.

Everything that could have gone wrong with this house did go wrong. Garage facing street, monkeyshit brown and beige paint job, horrible window proportioning, screw-on shutters, pitiful canopies, service cables and pipes visible, stunted fake cupola, roof pitch sandwich on right, yard 50 percent asphalt and filled with automobiles, chain-link fence. . . .

And let's not forget the eagle right between the eyes. Perfect.

I think it's incredibly mean and smallminded to pick out a stranger's home and publicly ridicule it like this on the Internet. Kunstler may justify this by imagining that he's making a statement against evil America, or working class people whose taste in decor strikes him as patriotic kitsch. But I don't think that's a defense to such spiteful arrogance. And ugliness.

It is ugly to attack the unsophisticated to score points with the sophisticated. I've been around snobs all my life, and they don't come any worse than this.

There's more than one way to be an ugly American, and I think James Howard Kunstler has a lot of nerve complaining about ugliness.

Is there an architectural culture war afoot? I'll link to a few of them, and readers can judge for themselves.

Here's Kunstler's indictment of another simple home which won his "award":

The vernacular house in small town America as influenced by eighty years of Modernism. A total lack of skill meets a total rejection of history. The result: all the charm of a packing crate and none of the structural integrity. Here's a chilling thought: is the interior as well-organized and charming as the exterior? One imagines a dark warren of off-gassing carpets, empty pizza boxes, and a cat box that hasn't been changed in a month and a half.

I especially like the way those mingy windows on the second story, right side, creep right up to the soffit. The front door for humans (as distinct from the front doors for cars) is reached by that ladder-like jumble of lumber on the left. The supergigantic Palladian window with the pop-in muntins doubles as a neighborhood heat-exchanger. This case study also illustrates a fascinating paradox of culture: the better our power tools get, and the more clever our systemization of assembly becomes, the worse our houses look. The law of diminishing returns never rests.

Well, in defense of Ms. Kelo's poor house, at least there aren't any Snow White figurines in the yard -- or sea gull silhouettes on the wall -- for Mr. Kunstler to ridicule. Still, I don't think he'd like the Kelo house. Not one bit.

In the old days before last week, people on planning commissions who thought like Kunstler had to content themselves with ridiculing homes they didn't like. Now they can do something about them.

Clearly, people who live in "Eyesore of the Month" homes don't pay enough property taxes.

Their eyesores are in need of gentrification.

MORE: Via Donald Sensing I see that churches are next in line for condemnation.

(Especially the "tackier" churches -- the ones that don't have money to hire lawyers.)

Via Green Car Congress, the following fascinating article...

An international research consortium has successfully built a 300-kW pilot plant that uses solar energy to reduce zinc oxide to zinc.

The zinc can be used in zinc-air batteries or be used to produce hydrogen by reacting it with water vapor. In both cases the zinc recombines with oxygen and zinc oxide is produced, which can be reused in the solar reactor to produce zinc once more.

In essence, the process stores solar energy in a transportable metal carrier that then can release the energy as electricity or hydrogen.

The first trials of the solar power-plant have used 30% of available solar energy and produced 45 kg of zinc an hour, exceeding projected goals. During further tests this summer the team hopes to achieve a higher efficiency. The consortium projects efficiency levels of 50%–60% for industrial-size plants.

Straight thermal dissociation of ZnO requires operating temperatures above 1,750ºC...However, the use of a carbonaceous material as a reducing agent...reduces the required operating temperature to between 1,000ºC–1,400ºC...

One side-effect of operating at the lower temperature with carbon as a reactant is the release of CO2. The research team determined that:

...compared to the conventional fossil-fuel-based production of Zn, the solar-driven carbothermic process can reduce CO2 emissions by a factor of 5...

Well, isn't that nice. We may someday be able to use the heat of the sun to power clean electric cars. I'm reminded of the boron burning enthusiast I mentioned a few weeks ago. Or the emulsified vanadium power storage mentioned here. Apparently, exotic energy storage chemistry still has some unexplored potential. That's a good thing. An inexpensive, high capacity energy storage system would go a long way toward allowing intermittent sources to come into their own.

Let me restate that. Windmills and solar cells become much more attractive if we can find a cheap way to stockpile the juice.

I was all enthused and hopeful about this development until I recalled that renewables can't save us. Like the Bandar-log, James Howard Kunstler and his ilk say so, and therefore it must be true.

Here's a relevant quote from the yoinker himself...

No combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run American life the way we have been used to running it, or even a substantial fraction of it. The wonders of steady technological progress achieved through the reign of cheap oil have lulled us into a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome…

That's it, short, light and sweet. No troublesome numeracy required either, which is certainly a blessed relief, me being a humanities major and all. The collective strivings of some of the brightest people on the planet are rendered irrelevant, moot, null and void, by reason of pundit fiat. Do I hear any objections?

Perhaps just a couple. Peak Oil Optimist points us toward the following review of Kunstler's latest opus. A compressed excerpt follows...

Kunstler is a font of vitriol with a BA in theater. His book has been excerpted in Rolling Stone, he has written for the Atlantic, and he has a large following among urban planners and environmentalists.

Kunstler despises the way most Americans live, and his arguments are soaked in intolerance. The result is a book that disserves a worthy topic...meticulousness and patience have never been Kunstler's strengths...The economists, the geologists, the energy experts—all are delusional. Kunstler's book...has no bibliography and miserably few footnotes. None of its footnotes references scientific journals.

The real business of The Long Emergency is to describe in lurid detail the forthcoming and well-deserved collapse of suburban America...he takes clear glee in imagining the punishments Americans will endure for their profligate ways.

These punishments include but are not limited to: famine; war; epidemics of deadly disease; governments releasing viruses into their own populations to cull the weak...a return to local, even pre-industrial, economies; and—I'm not making this up—Asian pirates plundering California...

Kunstler is sometimes described as a radical...but the correct adjective for him is "puritan." America to him is sinful...Americans have squandered their opportunities to repent...So now it is too late.

Kunstler likes to think he is telling us hard truths, but in fact he is taking the easy way out. It is easy to be a pessimist, to peddle inevitability and call it analysis...

Damn me, but that was gratifying. Reminds me of Stephen Jay Gould reviewing Jeremy Rifkin. Read the whole thing.

On a more positive note, The Ergosphere takes a look at some of the numbers involved in solar-driven zinc power chemistry and finds them good.

I can't pretend to any degree of competence evaluating his work. I'm barely clear on the concept of moles. Something to do with Avogadro's Number, if memory serves, so make up your own minds. While you do, I'll dish up a few more bowls of steaming Kunstler...

June 12, 2005

I just paid $3.25 for a twelve-ounce diet coke in the Los Angeles airport, known by the affectionate name LAX by the locals...The truth is, LAX is just the airport code on the baggage label that they slap on your suitcase...Evidently there was an earthquake here today, but the vibe of the city (if you can call this toxic hyper-mega-burb that) is so catastrophic generally that I didn't even notice.

I've been on a long book publicity road trip around California...and it's hard not to feel hopeless about this country after being here...But I stray from my point.

Which is that what you see in California is a society with a tragic destiny. I was all over the Bay Area earlier in the week, from San Francisco to Silicon Valley to Berkeley and even down to Santa Cruz, and that was bad enough, But then I got down to Los Angeles on Friday and have been in a state of pathological reflex nausea ever since.

...life here is all about cars and it will never not be about cars -- until the reality of our oil predicament falls on the hapless public like a hammer of God and the people of California die for their fucking cars in their fucking cars and over their fucking cars.

I was invited to give a talk at Google headquarters down in Mountain View last Tuesday. They sent somebody to fetch me (in a hybrid car, zowee!) from my hotel in San Francisco -- as if I had any choice about catching a train down, right?

Google was probably just being polite. As the above links clearly demonstrate, Mr. Kunstler could have caught the 10:07 at 4th and King and been in Mountain View by 11:21.

The schedules are plainly posted online, but Kunstler has a low opinion of electronic connectivity. "...all this talk about "connectivity" just leads to more commercial shilling, shucking, jiving, and generally fucking with your headspace in the interstices of whatever purposeful activity one may be struggling to enact on the internet."

Like, for instance, obtaining a local train schedule. Poor little country mouse. Can't read the signs in the big city. So sad.

Google HQ was a glass office park pod tucked into an inscrutable tangle of off-ramps, berms, manzanita clumps, and curb-cuts. But inside, it was all tricked out like a kindergarten...The employees dressed like children. There were two motifs: "skateboard rat" and "10th grade nerd."

I suppose quite a few of them were millionaires. Many of the work cubicles were literally modular children's playhouses. I gave my spiel about the global oil problem and the unlikelihood that "alternative energy" would even fractionally replace it, and quite a few of the Googlers became incensed.

"Yo, Dude, you're so, like, wrong! We've got, like, technology!"

Yeah, well, they weren't interested in making a distinction between energy and technology...

The taxi-cab ride to Berkeley (on Google's tab) ran over $160 on the meter.

More vile corporate politeness. They should have sent him back on the train. He could have transferred to BART in San Francisco, and been in the very heart of Berkeley just 21 minutes later.

In Berkeley a radical leftist grandmotherly lady interviewed me for a radio show and once that was over she began to tell me about the chemical contrails that Dick Cheney was cross-hatching across the Berkeley skies...

Flying into LA...and traversing its decrepitating central core clean out to Pasadena in the airport van, was like being immersed in an updated Hieronymous Bosch landscape of hell...

At every turn of the odometer, one wondered: what will become of this entropic socio-economic sink...I gave a talk at the closing session of the annual Congress for the New Urbanism...My message was one that readers of this blog are familiar with...we are sleepwalking into desperate circumstances...But they don't really believe what I said to them.

The sad truth is that they are addicted to the same economic mechanisms as the sprawl-meisters...

Is there no safe haven that the rot hasn't penetrated? No comrade to guard his back?

I hope the New Urbanists come around. They have a whole lot of very useful knowledge that will allow us to make our derelict towns habitable while we re-assign the remaining countryside for growing the food that we need locally.

Emphasis mine. Lusting after agrarian land reform is one of the classic precursor symptoms...

Ah, I admit that I am in foul and turbulent spirits. I have been into the land of the American Moloch among its Moloch-worshippers and I am brainsick from it.

Take heart, country mouse. At least one town mouse finds you fascinating. Join the ranks of such illustrious pundits as John Aravosis, and the eloquently bugling Steve Gilliard. He's been on Air America, you know. Join that exalted, critically praised few. Feel the soothing caresses of James Wolcott's admiring, yet manly, prose. Then sleep. Sleep, and rest easy. We will all get what's coming to us.

...the age of skyscrapers is at an end. It must now be considered an experimental building typology that has failed. Who will ever again feel safe and comfortable working 110 storeys above the ground? Or sixty storeys? Or even twenty-seven?

-- James Howard Kunstler

Architecture, like education, is another one of those subjects beyond my expertise, and normally not considered political.

Normally?

What does normally mean these days? Everything is political. Architecture, in fact, has now become the epitome of politics. There's talk of building "Why They Hate Us" pavilions at Ground Zero, and such luminaries as James Howard Kunstler and Jeremy Rifkin love to weigh in on politically charged visions of "Eurocities" in America:

The highly urbanized Kerry voters, we were told, represented "the real Americans" who reject "heartland 'values' like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia." The suburbanites and small-town denizens came from places where "people are fatter and dumber and slower." "Let them have the shitholes, the Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas," the Seattle paper raged. "We'll take Manhattan."

Urban sophisticates' longstanding disdain toward the suburbs and sunbelt cities is developing into an aggressive hostility. Author James Howard Kunstler now wows Euro-American audiences with dire predictions of an energy-driven apocalypse that will leave the sprawling aspirational cities and their suburban hinterlands in ruins. Kunstler, for one, is so thrilled with the prospect that he says it's time "to let the gloating begin."

Given their contempt for much of the country, it is not surprising that Euro-Americans seek inspiration from abroad. For many, European cities, with three times the density of their American counterparts, are to be hailed as role models. New urbanists like Roberta Brandes Gratz look across the Atlantic and see our urban future. Americans, she concludes, "want what Czechs have," that is, highly concentrated, expensive cities of apartment-renters like picturesque Prague.

On an arguably more serious note, some Democratic theorists also advocate adopting European-style economic and social policy. Back in the 1980s, Robert Reich, for example, suggested the United States adopt the kind of "industrial policy" then de rigueur in Germany and France. Recently, other leftist writers--from the American Prospect's Harold Meyerson to environmentalist Jeremy Rifkin and Euro-enthusiast T.R. Reid--have embraced European approaches to Kyoto, land use, immigration, and technology.

To the denizens of Euro-America, John Kerry's obsession with "global tests" and appealing to the E.U. were not misplaced or ill-conceived. The American dream, Rifkin tells us, is failing, economically, culturally, and politically. "We need Europe," Meyerson writes in the American Prospect, "to save us from ourselves."

This Eurocentric "smaller is better" anti-skyscraper movement was given a boost with today's scathing attack on the Freedom Tower by the New York Times' Nicolai Ouroussoff. In a piece titled "Appraisal: Fear in a soaring tower," Ouroussoff likens the design to the work of Nazi architect Albert Speer:

But if this is a potentially fascinating work of architecture, it is, sadly, fascinating in the way that Albert Speer's architectural nightmares were fascinating - as expressions of the values of a particular time and era. The Freedom Tower embodies, in its way, a world shaped by fear.

What the tower evokes, by comparison, are ancient obelisks, blown up to a preposterous scale and clad in heavy sheaths of reinforced glass - an ideal symbol for an empire enthralled with its own power, and unaware that it is fading.

I find it ironic that Ouroussoff complains about the politicization of the Freedom Tower, because as someone who hates bureaucracy and thinking by committee I'd normally be inclined to be sympathetic with that argument.

I too would love to see some classical elements added to the design. But, that would only compound the irony by inviting more Nazi comparisons, for despite New York's ubiquitous Neoclassicism, it just so happens that Neoclassicism was at the heart of Speer's work!

Yet, when the "Speer smear" is coupled with the conclusion, I'm left with the feeling that Ouroussoff wants to manipulate us into believing that tall buildings are synonymous with Nazism. That's a direct slap in Ayn Rand's face. It's too much, and loses me completely. Here's his conclusion:

Absurdly, if the Freedom Tower were reduced by a dozen or so stories and renamed, it would probably no longer be considered such a prime target. Fortifying it, in a sense, is an act of deflection. It announces to terrorists: Don't attack here - we're ready for you. Go next door.

Sigh.

Being a leading architecture critic, Ouroussoff is of course entitled to invoke the Speer smear as justification for his scapegoating of tall buildings. However, much as I hate to resort to cycles of Speer recycling, I feel I have no choice but to close with Speer's recollections of Hitler's actual plans for American skyscrapers:

In his prison journals, Albert Speer recalled an astonishing scene towards the end of the World War II: Adolf Hitler, in a kind of delirium, "pictured for himself and for us the destruction of New York in a hurricane of fire." The Nazi leader described skyscrapers being turned into "gigantic burning torches, collapsing upon one another, the glow of the exploding city illuminating the dark sky."

If only we'd built them smaller!

I just got back from seeing the new "War of the Worlds" movie, and I have to say that I'm stunned. As a long time fan of mindless alien invasion epics, I'm what you might call a discriminating consumer, and trust me, this one really delivers the goods. Hopefully, it permanently raises the bar for stupendous, colossal, end-of-the-world extravaganzas. There's not a false note of any importance in the entire film.

Cloying, saccharine moments? A few, but only as needed. It's as though Steven Spielberg had his treacle sac surgically removed for the duration of the production. Never fear, it's probably in cryo-stasis somewhere, waiting for another chance to ruin his work. Damned shame, too.

If Spielberg could excise his sentimentality (as he did for this film) on a regular basis, his films might be critically adored masterpieces for the ages instead of just being the hugely popular mega-scale money machine cultural icons, beloved by millions, that they are.

Oh well. He had his chance. With this movie, he partially redeems himself. And why is that, exactly? I'm happy to tell you.

This is quite simply the finest screen adaptation of H.G. Wells that I have ever seen. Ever.

Purists may argue that liberties have been taken. True. Nevertheless, I believe that they were necessary and beneficial. Let me go further. I believe that if we could resurrect H.G. Wells and show him this film, he would be delighted with it. Genuinely delighted. It's that close to the spirit of the original. In fact, it manages to fuse an intelligent and informed appreciation of the book (the entire text of which is available here) with an equal knowledge of and respect for George Pal's 1953 production of the same name.

Realistically, I could not be better pleased with this movie.

Carpingly, small-mindedly, ungratefully, I find that there are just a couple of small points bothering me.

First, I grow weary of Hollywood physics. Normal people cannot fall seventy feet without grave injury. More and more, characters in modern movies just shake off impacts that would kill a trained paratrooper or martial artist. Whenever I see it happen, it jars me. I can't help myself.

More reasonably, continuity errors rub me the wrong way. A reviewer at IMDB has already remarked on the still-working camcorder. Yeah, that's annoying. A more subtle error, but still readily apparent, was the sliding-scale size of the tripods. A small spoiler follows...

Comparing the sizes of the (presumably) identical war machines, we find that they expand or contract as needed for purposes of awe-inspiring spectacle. The ferryboat capsizing machine is a behemoth compared to the more modestly sized blood-sucking abduction machine. I blame arrogant storyboard artists. They think the average moviegoer won't notice such things. They think that their eyes are more sensitive, better trained, than ours. They condescend to us, and it irks me.

But these are mere quibbles. If you enjoy a good alien invasion (as who among us does not?), this is the movie to see.

As an extra-special bonus feature, it came bundled with a trailer for Peter Jackson's newest movie, which looks absolutely terrific. No, really. The first minute might make you think it's a depression era showbiz movie. Nice fake. Only gradually do you realize that it concerns an ocean voyage by tramp steamer, a lost island, hostile indigenes, prehistoric beasts, and a profound exploration of the limits of "Furry" culture. Can love conquer all? I think we all know how it ends.

This week's Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by Adam Gurri at Sophistpundit. There are many good posts, some great ones, lots of life, and some death. As is my habit, I'll just mention a few that stood out for me.

There's a lot more of course. As Adam concludes,

the blogosphere is not lacking in activity.

The Second Anniversary Edition of the great Bonfire of the Vanities has been posted by Kevin Aylward at Wizbang.

This week's theme?

"I've Been Naughty, Please Spank Me...."

I'm on my way out the door (so I can't do them all the injustice they deserve), so I'll only spank two --

Read 'em all! (Then douse the fires with Sean Hackbarth's Raspberry Coke.)

Blog nostalgia freaks, be sure to check out the Bonfire's First Edition here.

I just took this test, which says I'm 30:

You Are 30 Years Old

30 Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

Sigh.

You'd think that at age 50 I'd have earned the right to have a midlife crisis, but no!

Setbacks like this are utterly unnerving, but serve as another reminder that going through life is (as a well-connected friend said):

like trying to climb to the top of a greasy pole. The closer you get to the top, the greasier it gets!

MORE: I can't help noticing that certain bloggers want to rub it in (at least in the comments below) by claiming that according to the test they're younger than I am!

Well, I'll have them know that if Tom Cruise can have a midlife crisis, so can I! (Crisis tip via Donald Sensing.)

Even though I know nothing about education (and even less about a field of study called "Education"), I was frightened enough reading about the teaching of "Education" to write a post about it. That post (and many other, far-better-informed ones) now appears in this week's Carnival of Education.

I never thought I'd be so interested in something so "non-political" as education, but my morbid fear and loathing of politics is heightened every time I see politics reach out and destroy another important thing in our lives which should not be political.

Here are a few examples from the Carnival:

(The easiest way to solve the problem might be to simply prohibit anyone with a degree in "education" from teaching anything but, well, "education.")

I had no idea how bad things were.

The Carnival of Education makes me glad we still have the First Amendment.

Thank God for the Carnival! Until today, I never knew that mathematics could be made political, but the above post aroused my curiosity, and I found this:

By showing that math is not just the product of white-male thinking, a number of professors hope to make math more agreeable to nonwhite students and to women.

Or math meets politics: In the words of Ubiratan D'Ambrosio, a Brazilian mathematician who is a founder of ethnomathematics, the movement, which tries to increase respect for other cultures, is nothing less than "a step toward peace."

"Mathematics is absolutely integrated with Western civilization, which conquered and dominated the entire world," Mr. D'Ambrosio wrote in response to an e-mail interview. "The only possibility of building up a planetary civilization depends on restoring the dignity of the losers and, together, winners and losers, moving into the new."

Will it "restore the dignity" of my dead white illiterate ancestors?

No. I much prefer thinking forward to backward thinking.

Read the rest.

A couple of book-related, um, issues...

Not long ago, I speculated that Ed Klein, the author of "The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President," (a mouthful of title, if ever there was one) might be working as a sort of secret agent for her campaign. Why else, I reasoned, would an author known for previous lefty associations accuse Hillary of having been raped by Bill?

Well, in a riveting, no-holds-barred interview by John Hawkins, Klein denies ever saying that:

John Hawkins ...Can you give a quick explanation of what you were getting across there and also do you think Drudge did you a disservice with the way he handled that?

Ed Klein: The book has a scene in which I describe Bill Clinton telling a bunch of friends that he’s going back to his cottage -- in Bermuda, in 1979 – and he had been drinking and said in jest, as a joke, “I’m going back to my cottage to rape my wife.” They all laughed, nobody took it seriously and nobody thought, “God, he meant it seriously.”

He did go back to his cottage and the next day he called a friend over. The friend found the place in a kind of shambles; however, this friend whom I spoke to did not suggest to me -- nor did the friend say -- an actual rape had occurred.

Three months later Bill called this friend and told him that he was reading in the newspaper that his wife was pregnant and that she had the announcement without even telling him about it. That’s the point of the story.

The point of the story is that the conception of Chelsea Clinton, which would be of nobody’s business, if Hillary herself hadn’t written about it in "Living History," was an example of how the Clintons are not an intimate couple, but are a political team – and that’s what I meant by that whole scene.

John Hawkins: Do you think Drudge took you out of context?

Ed Klein: I think Matt Drudge, whom I admire and respect a great deal -- sometimes his headlines – he gets carried away with his headlines. I certainly think that as a result of that headline a lot of people, especially the good people on the conservative side of the fence, were initially misled by what kind of book this is.

This is a serious book about a serious subject which is Hillary Clinton’s quest for the presidency and it’s by a serious author, me; I’m a serious guy. I’m not a right wing person; I’m not a left wing person. I’m certainly not a liberal.

I’m a journalist and a biographer and this book is a character study -- a character study of a woman who has a very good chance of becoming our next President and who I think would make a very bad President -- and a President that we should not have in the Oval Office.

John Hawkins: Is this on or off the record?

Ed Klein: It’s on the record. I thought maybe I’ve already said – you know, I’ve spoken to so many people I can’t remember what I said 10 minutes ago – but, you know, Hillary and the Clintons have a tried and true method of destroying their opponents. In my case what they’ve done is they identified my strongest point – which is my reputation, my background which is solid, and my track record which is, you know, impeccable -- and attacked that by trying to compare me to the tabloid Kitty Kelley type of writer -- which I’m not.

By throwing a lot of mud at me, some of the mud has stuck. Then when I try to respond to them on a national level through the mainstream media they have gone to the mainstream media -- meaning the TV news presidents, and executive producers of the major TV shows -- and threatened them with retaliation of withholding Hillary’s appearance on those shows. So I can’t respond on those national shows.

This is, I would say, you know, from their perspective, brilliant strategy, which has even seemed to work with some of my – I would think -- potentially conservative supporters because, you know, after all, we read all this stuff about somebody in the press and you say, “Gee, where there’s smoke, there must be fire.” But in fact, if you read my book, and it is my view, you’ll find it to be utterly responsible and not at all sleazy and a very intelligent assessment of a woman who is on the verge of becoming the next President of the United States.

(Sorry to have to be the bearer of such news, John, but it happens to be what I think.)

Bloggers, be advised: talk to Ed Klein at your peril. Why, right now, by even citing the Hawkins interview I might have blown any chance I had of obtaining the long awaited "Classical Values Interview With Hillary Rodham Clinton." (A shame, really, because we all know she's read the Klein book herself. While that's just speculation, sooner or later there'll be another one of those inevitable "reading list" campaign questions, and maybe we'll get a peek at her reading.)

Here are more details about Klein's "blacklist blackout":

Ed Klein: ...I interviewed 96 people for this book. Of those 96 people, about half of them are on the record and about half of them are off the record.

The reason they are anonymous is because they are afraid of Hillary Clinton and I think they have good reason to ask for anonymity because Hillary can be a vicious person. For instance, because of my book, Hillary and her war machine have called every major television network in the United States and suggested to them that if they have Ed Klein on to discuss his book, they can forget about Hillary being a guest on their network.

As a result, the entire mainstream media – NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC – have blanked me out. This is my 5th best seller in a row. I’ve been on all of those networks for all my books up ‘til this one book. I’ve been a constant guest on the Today show, the Good Morning America show, you know, the Chris Matthews show, etc. Suddenly I’m anathema and the reason I am is because the Clintons, Hillary in particular, have threatened all these mainstream media outlets. That’s a good reason in my view for the conservatives to get behind this book.

Get thee behind me, all conservative and liberal Satans?

Sorry, but mere curiosity about what Klein said (and whether he's a Kitty Kelley muckraker or Hillary agent) does not constitute "getting behind" anything.

I'm not sure whether there is such a thing as morality in the context of book buying, but the fact is, every time a human buys a book (at least in any retail outlet), digital data is recorded which tends to increase the book's ratings. Computers being dumb, there is no way that they can record whether the buyer is buying the book out of love, hate, or a research project (paid or unpaid). So, merely totaling up the purchasers of the Klein book (say, by looking at the Amazon ratings) does not give a clear picture of Hillary's enemies. For all I know, half of the people buying fully intend to vote for her. And some of the Hillary haters might very well hate the book but buy it anyway. I know that Amazon keeps track of the other books purchased by the same customer, because every time I buy a book on Amazon suggestions consistent with my previous purchases are thrown at me.

What this means is that Amazon has information which would be of great value to the Hillary Clinton campaign. What that means is that her ops probably have it. So it could be argued that buying such a highly charged book through Amazon is likely to drag a decent company into campaign skullduggery.

Which means that I won't say whether I bought it at all, or where.

In the interests of fully deniable disclosure through innuendo, though, I will state that on Saturday I bought a book at an undisclosed bookstore in downtown Philadelphia, and yesterday I bought another book at another undisclosed bookstore at a local shopping center (I won't state the name or names of either bookstore, but the first letter is "B"). And I'm pretty sure I paid cash, although I can't swear to it. One of the books was Paul Johnson's History of Christianity, which looks absolutely fascinating, and begins with a riveting account of the Council of Jerusalem. (Stocking up on books for a long upcoming trip BTW.)

I have to say that what happens at these bookstores makes me yearn for the illusory anonymity of Amazon! While the latter compiles digital stats, the actual bookstores, even if you pay cash, are not content to just let you pay for the book and leave. Last night I was plied with what I considered to be a series of annoying questions:

"Would you care to contribute ___ dollars to help the ______ in their campaign for ______ ?"

"Um, no," I grunted.

Do you have our ______ Card?"

"Unh unh."

"Would you like to have more information about advantages of having the _____ card?"

(Waves shiny slick pamphlet promising me many "advantages" -- meaning one more slippery piece of trash I have to throw away.)

"NO." (I was more firm, as I just wanted to Take. The. Book. And. Leave!)

Experiences like that is why agoraphobes like me prefer Amazon!

I'd rather have my privacy invaded anonymously than my anonymity invaded publicly.

Google has regularly been receiving heavy criticism around the blogosphere -- mostly quite deserved, and some of it coming from this blog. This time, I want to thank Google.

(More properly, maybe it's Google Values I should thank.)

I get a fair amount of Google traffic, which is usually said to be bad, because it's not considered as "clean" as traffic coming from other blogs. Obviously, I'd prefer "clean" readers from blogs to "dirty" readers from Google, but I don't have much choice in the matter. Which is why I haven't been as interested as I perhaps should in the type of reader sent here by Google, and I've only given the Google hits an occasional glance.

But even my cursory glances began to reveal a pattern. Many readers directed here by Google had used the word "Values" in their Google searches.

Values? What kind of values? I wondered. So I googled the word "Values" and I was blown away to see that Classical Values came up first.

That's Number One out of 129,000,000 hits.

(A hell of a thing for someone who's never googled his values before to see, I assure you.)

This gave me a start, and the more I thought about it, the more humbled I felt. After all, this web site engages in satire, and satire means making fun of stuff. Especially the stodgier, more intrusive type of "Values" so often hurled in our face by people who feel that they alone possess the moral high ground to use that horribly overwrought word. I meant to poke gentle fun at them when I started this blog, and now I'm taken aback to see this funny little blog ranked higher than the Goliaths it makes fun of.

It's almost not funny, and I doubt it would be funny at all to some of the Goliaths of "Values."

The ultimate irony is that my own values are actually pretty conservative, as I hope most regular readers would acknowledge. Yet my conservative values mean nothing to the people who love to scream about values, for the simple reason that I don't agree with their way of looking at things. I think too many of the people who scream about values view the world through a sort of penis prism. (May Steven Malcolm Anderson forgive me for that bit of spectrumology!)

But seriously, they're more inclined to judge people by the content of their orgasms than by the content of their character. To the other "Values" people, homosexuality (and other sexually oriented things) is what it's all about. Christianity, morality, culture -- for them it all comes down to where a man sticks his penis.

And it's not so much actual homosexuals or even the practice of homosexuality that bothers them. As I remarked to a friend in an email the other day, the people I complain about have always struck me as more rattled by opinions than by conduct. It isn't physical homosexuality that bugs them the most; it's ideas. And despite the current media hoopla, it's about a lot more than the relatively recent idea of gay marriage. To the people I'm complaining about, mere tolerance of homosexuality means the breakdown and ultimate destruction of Western Civilization. That's too much. That deserves satire and ridicule. I grew so sick to death of this homos-destroy-Western-Civilization meme that it was a major reason I selected the name "Classical Values" for this blog.

And that's why I thought I should take a moment to thank my Google readers.

While I'm at it, let me reassure everyone that just as "the homosexuals" are not out to destroy Western Civilization, neither is Classical Values!

No quarrel here with tradition, either.

MORE: John Beck's comment below ("Kofi Annan rapes dead horses") coupled with Glenn Reynolds' "Michelle Malkin + Kinky" plot, makes me yearn for greater culture Googlification.

So why didn't I get any hits when I Googled "Kofi Annan rapes Michelle Malkin's Kinky dead horses"?

Can't we get along?

MORE: In the interest of full disclosure, I ought to note that a few holes are beginning to appear in my values. Commenter Urthshu thinks I should "start talking about dholes" (a new playpal for pits) so I can corner the word, but after researching and giving the matter considerable thought, I have concluded that the dholes may be suffering from a phthalate imbalance.

One breeding female for ten or more males?

Has anyone checked the dholes' phthalate values?

Here's San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom:

"People like pit bulls, but there's a reason we don't have polar bears or mountain lions in the city."

I see several problems with this comparison. Let's start with the polar bears. San Francisco not only has them, they run sex ads for them:

"Single white female needs mate."

As personal ads go, it's simple and understated. Aspiring matchmaker Deb Cano jokes that it couldn't hurt. Although her candidate is only 23, her biological clock is ticking. And there's another problem, too: Ulu, a onetime provocateur, might be more than most males could handle.

Still, Cano -- an animal keeper at the San Francisco Zoo -- is undeterred. She's hoping a betrothal might materialize at a four-day meeting of the International Polar Bear Husbandry Conference, which begins Wednesday in San Diego.

On the whole, polar bear courtships at the San Francisco Zoo have not gone smoothly.

Two years ago, a Wisconsin polar bear destined for Ulu's lair had some medical issues that eventually doomed his transfer.

Two decades ago, Andy and Pike, the zoo's two other polar bears, were supposed to mate someday. Andy, born in Atlanta and named after then-Mayor Andrew Young, was imported as a companion for Pike (pronounced pee-ka), a female born at the San Francisco Zoo. They turned out to be a same-sex couple when it was finally discovered that Andy was a girl.

No wonder he's denying they exist.

In fairness to Newsom, he probably doesn't mean all polar bears; just wild ones. The kind that would run around loose and rifle through people's trashcans, make off with the family pet, and waylay the occasional hiker or two. Is he suggesting that existing laws don't already allow the city to deal with dogs that do that? San Francisco has leash laws, a vicious dog ordinance, a well-financed animal control agency, and packs of lawyers who'd be all too delighted to go after the owner of any dangerous dog.

The polar bear comparison, therefore, is as factually false as it is metaphorically inapt. Frankly, Bush is more like Trotsky than pit bulls are like polar bears. At least Bush and Trotsky are both members of the same species... (and please no wisecracks about that, OK?)

But what about the mountain lions? They might not be limited to the San Francisco Zoo! That's because mountain lions have already attacked and killed California hikers and there have been repeated sightings and incidents right in the San Francisco Bay Area -- including places such as San Jose, Palo Alto, and Oakland. (Perhaps they can change the name of nearby suburban Mountain View to Mountain Lion View.)

Most intriguing to me is this disappearing report of a mountain lion sighting in South San Francisco.

The driver -- whose name will not be released by California Fish and Game officials until their investigation is closed -- spotted what appeared to be a mountain lion behind Forbes Boulevard businesses, said police Cpl. Mike Toscano, who reported to the scene.

Although six South City police officers arrived on the scene within three minutes of the 7:52 a.m. phone call, none was able to find the animal after combing the area, said Toscano, who explained that the Peninsula Humane Society and California Fish and Game were immediately notified.

I'd be surprised if they did, especially considering that when police shot a mountain lion menacing children in the San Francisco suburb of Palo Alto, instead of being thanked as heroes, they were compared to the Americans at Abu Ghraib.

I guess by Newsom's standards, that's another fair comparison.

So I guess this had to be expected:

....Bush is truly a Trotskyite, a believer in permanent revolution. We have never had one as a president before. He wouldn't understand that, but Wolfowitz would. He truly is. And he's doing it -- what he thinks he has to do, the revolutions he has to create, without any information, without any -- without an ability to absorb information that's counter to what he wants to hear. And so, I don't know where you are when you have a man with as much power as he controls and as much ability to do something. I don't know how we can get at him.

But what if Hersh is right?

How can we ever hope to get at him?

UPDATE (06/29/05): While I didn't see President Bush's speech last night, other bloggers have commented on it extensively, but nowhere did I see any discussion or mention of Trotskyist (or Trotskyite) tendencies in Bush's speech.

Well, Trotsky's name did come up in Roger L. Simon's post, but only in a Jeffersonian context. (Link and general roundup to speech reactions via Glenn Reynolds.)

Obviously, further studies (like this one positing a "Trotskyist ascendancy over the conservative movement") are needed.

A couple of photos from my trip to Camden yesterday:

In an awfully predicamenting embarassment, I just learned that Tom Brennan had tagged me with the book game before I was tagged by Matt Sheffield.

But I already responded to Matt. The question now becomes what to do. Should I delete the previous book post and explain to Matt that I had a previous unknown engagement? Or should I fess up to Tom that I am a blithering dolt who fails to notice when he is "it"?

I'm in a true dilemma. There's no way to handle such a thing gracefully even now. I can't retract the previous post because it was true. And I can't reissue it because that would be, well, redundantly repetitive. Which means that I'll have to incorporate it by reference, using the magic words,

"My previous post, as evidenced by this link, was, and at all times herein mentioned is, for all purposes pertaining to the current post, hereby incorporated herein by reference, and all answers previously given to Matt Sheffield's tagging shall retroactively be deemed to have been also been given in response to Tom Brennan's tagging."

In my defense, I would remind my judges that Tom and I shared a book in the Books That Mean A Lot To Me category -- Witness, by Whitaker Chambers. (Nothing like being on the right side where it comes to the wrong side.)

I hope at least that will be taken into account at sentencing. I understand and have been informed that Pay or Play is a serious charge locally, and I hereby state for the record that I am without 20 dollars Canadian.

Further your affiant saith not.

If you're like me you're a huge fan of George A. Romero's living dead series. Then again, you're probably not.

At a party the other night a friend remarked that watching Night of the Living Dead with my running commentary enhanced the experience, which isn't normally the case when some know-it-all fanboy won't stop yapping. But Romero's first zombie flick is in my opinion the perfect film. It's got it all -- internal drama compounded by an external threat, social commentary that isn't over the top or preachy, an unrecognized hero, and did I mention the gore? It's actually tame by Romero's later standards.

(Do yourself a favor and steer clear of Tom Savini's 1990 remake of the original, which completely misses the point and turns the cheese up to 11.)

The sequels are great for their own reasons, and they're quite different. The allegory (which, despite critics who pretend to come bearing keys, is never subtle) was simpler and more direct in Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead was just good fun with a big gory budget.

Now that Romero has completed the series with Land of the Dead it's appropriate that boffins are close to perfecting the art of zombification with the aim of preserving life. It's doubly appropriate that those boffins are in Pittsburgh, where Romero's films were shot:

SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans. US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.

Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.

The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.

But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.

Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre.
. . . . . .
Tests show they are perfectly normal, with no brain damage.

Kudos to the editors for choosing the most menacing dog pic they could find. Looks like a zombie dog if ever I've seen one.

(I should add by way of postscript that while Return of the Living Dead is an unofficial sequel, it's a (campy) classic in its own right. The film, made by disgruntled producers and the co-writers of Romero's first two films, actually begins with the claim that Night of the Living Dead was based on a true story, but that the government made the filmmaker change the details. One of the 'true' facts is that zombies eat brains. And to this day more than half the people I talk to about Romero's original say, 'brains! brains!,' a testament to the power of a good camp a send-up.)

Troublemaker Eugene Volokh believes that you have just as much right to talk to someone over the telephone as you do in person! Critiquing Robin Wallace's idea that it's bad to discuss personal business in public, Professor Volokh distinguishes between rudeness (talking during performances or concerts) and simple discussions with friends or family:

Now back to the first two paragraphs (and setting aside the conversations in the yoga class and the dinner party, which I agree are generally rude, setting aside extenuating circumstances). Imagine that the writer had been sharing a cab with two other people, who were saying the same things to each other in person, or overheard two people conversing in the gym or the grocery store. Would he have said that it was rude for them to talk to each other? Well, maybe, if they really were quite graphic in dicussing their sex lives. But I had never, until the advent of the cell phone, heard of people complaining "I was on a bus -- or at a grocery store or in the gym -- and two people were complaining about their creepy bosses and their financial woes; how rude!"

Talking to a friend in public is generally seen as perfectly well-mannered behavior, if one isn't too loud, one isn't socially obligated (or, in the case of driving, obligated by the needs of safety) to pay attention to others, and one stays away from a small set of extremely private topics. In fact, it's often thought of as good -- instead of shopping or riding in solitude, one gets to socialize with a friend. As a matter of manners, I don't see any reason why the rule should be different when one is talking on a phone to a friend who's physically absent.

There I was, staring intently at one of those huge display maps, trying to figure out the location of particular store when my cell phone rang, and I dared to answer it. Lo and behold, it was Justin, and yes, I confess, we dared to chat. At some point, an issue in the blog came up (I can't remember what, but it wasn't especially earthshaking), and while I was talking, a total stranger walked right up to me and snapped, "ARE YOU TALKING TO YOURSELF?" Nonplussed, my reaction was to say "YES! I LOVE TO TALK TO MYSELF!" The guy stormed away, looking even more annoyed, with one of those "there ought to be a law!" looks on his face.

Now, I was wearing an earbud, and I know that this might be confusing to some people, especially the technologically unsophisticated. But I think my earbud is obvious. I have short hair and I make no attempt to hide the thing, and the man who came out of his way to barge into the conversation was considerably younger than I am. He appeared to be in his mid thirties, and was wearing glasses, which meant he could probably see. And he obviously could hear. While it's all unprovable and speculative, I think he just didn't agree with what he heard me saying to Justin (which I'm pretty sure was political in nature.) I very much doubt this same man would have come up to me had Justin been there and I'd said exactly the same thing. Nor do I think he'd have been as annoyed had I really been some mental case talking to myself. I think he knew damned well I wasn't talking to myself, and this was just his way of being rude.

He, of course, would say that it was rude of me (or "exhibitionistic") to discuss politics. In a shopping center. He'd probably also opine I shouldn't have been "sharing" my "personal life."

Not that such a characterization of my conversation would make any difference.

If the personal is now political, then the political must now be personal!

I have some lingering questions. Is it ruder to discuss politics over a cell phone than to discuss "personal" issues? Is it ruder to use an earbud than to hold the phone to your ear? Is the polite thing to crawl into the darkness somewhere and hunch over? This is an evolving area of etiquette and I am not sure. I prefer not to talk on my cellphone in public, but if it rings in a place like a shopping center, if I'm alone I'll tend to answer it.

Rights are one thing. I was well within them legally. But are there rules?

Bear in mind that I was slow to get a cell phone, as I dislike telephones of any sort because I have problems with interruptions. I do have friends who are possessed of the "I refuse to get a cellphone ever!" mentality, and while I'm somewhat sympathetic, I think they're making too big a deal out of what is just another way of communicating.

There's a great new Carnival, certain to appeal to anyone who reads this blog (regardless of whether they agree with me).

It's called the "RINO Sightings Carnival," (a product of the Raging Rinos -- a group created by the Commissar):

for secular and moderate conservatives who don’t drink the party Kool-Aid on issues such as whether it’s legal for dudes to diddle dudes and all that God business. Republican, without all the crazy.

The RINO Sightings Carnival is hosted this week by a longtime favorite of Classical Values, SayUncle, and of course he does a great job of hosting.

While I am sure that the individual bloggers who've affiliated themselves with the Raging Rinos do not all agree with each other, I have noted a certain ability to view things logically instead of emotionally, as well as the ability to sort things out according to individual issues. This post on the ACLU is as good an example of any. Blogger Pigilito notes that contrary to the usual assumptions, the ACLU was supporting the right of a student "suspended at Liberty High School in Las Vegas in September for wearing shirts bearing religious symbols" -- in violation of a school dress code. Pigilito linked to the case because it dispels the popular stereotype, even though he agreed with the court's upholding of the dress code.

....this is not intended to support the ACLU's position in this case. I posted this news because the ACLU is often portrayed by the religious right as being a first cousin to the devil. I thought it nice to discomfit them, however slightly.

From the sketchy info available in the article, I happen to agree with the court's holding here. If the school district bans all messages on t-shirts, then I have no complaints. However, if only religious messages are excluded, then I 'm with the ACLU.

Things which defy stereotypes usually don't.

Speaking of stereotype smashing, don't miss Environmental Republican's fisking of the Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial attacking the prosecution of the Bio2005 protesters:

Whether or not the protesters intended for a cop to die, the fact is that he did indeed die as a result of breaking up a scuffle that the protesters started and the police were forced to attempt to break up.

These are not college kids protesting the Dean because he decided to shut down a frat house. These are trained protesters who travel to every event and they have the goal of creating anarchy. They are worldwide as was evident in Genoa, Italy.

By inciting violence, they had a direct impact on a police officer's death regardless if the man was pumping sludge through his arteries and needed a quadruple bypass. It is not murder and Lynne Abraham is not prosecuting for murder, but they were criminally responsible.

With a touch of tongue-in-something satire, SayUncle also points to Bill Hobbs' link (via Donald Sensing) to these thoughts from Chicago Boyz on homosexuality:

... by calling a homosexual union marriage, and making it a Constitutional right, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and soon many like-minded courts around the country, are more or less intentionally making Christianity illegal. Repeat: Christianity is being made illegal. The teaching that homosexuality is a sin is embedded in Christianity. It is in the Pauline letters. There is no getting around it. I have heard the counter-arguments, and they don't cut any ice. The Christian teaching against homosexuality is organic, it was part and parcel of the attack on the pagan society of the Roman Empire and it is fundamental to the Christian conception of marriage and sexuality. So, again, if gay marriage is a Constitutional right, then anyone preaching the moral teaching of Christianity is committing a hate crime or otherwise attacking the exercise of a Constitutional right. I object to this as a Christian, obviously.

(However I've covered the topic in a lengthy series of essays.)

But it just goes to show what a thought-provoking and enjoyable Carnival this is.

Don't miss it! And you RINOs out there, you know who you are.

Join in!

Has the specter of racism reared its ugly head in Atlanta? According to advocates for the homeless, the city's proposal to place restrictions on panhandling is, well, white racism, and even terrorism:

Clergy and advocates for the homeless railed against the proposal, calling it harsh, unconstitutional and uncharitable. Several cited the Bible, saying that begging is an ancient practice and that giving alms is a blessing.

Murphy Davis, a Presbyterian minister who with her husband, Ed Loring, runs the Open Door Community, a homeless shelter on Ponce de Leon Avenue, said the city should provide less expensive housing instead of passing "one more law to hurt and harass the poor."

Loring, who is white, was more blunt, labeling the proposal a "Negro removal" policy because many panhandlers are black. He likened the ordinance to efforts a half-century ago to raze homes in impoverished areas with mostly black residents.

Although panhandling and begging are considered constitutionally protected speech, the proposed ordinance was written in a way that can be defended in court, the city Law Department says. That is in part because it is restricted to specific locations, unlike a citywide ban in New York that was thrown out by the courts.

Last week, city lawyer Stacey Abrams described the ordinance, which the Law Department has been drafting since June 2003, as a "kinder, gentler" version of the city's existing panhandling law.

But Joe Beasley, one of the critics at Monday's meeting, saw nothing kind or gentle about it.

"This is a mean, cold, calculated move," said Beasley, the Southern regional director for Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH coalition. He raised the specter of terrorism, saying that if the city mistreats its poor, "at some point, they'll strap a belt around their waist and blow you up. We've got to become a more loving city."

Must be a pretty tough law to inspire such selfless acts of martyrdom and courage.

Intrigued by this, I decided to research the matter further. While the text of the law says nothing about race, MSNBC links to the text of the proposed ordinance:

(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to solicit funds or any item of monetary value within the parameters of downtown Atlanta [the latter is defined as being bordered by certain streets].

(b) It shall be unlawful for any person to request a donation of money from another person while being within fifteen (15) feet of an automated teller machine, Metropolitan Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) station, bus depots, sports coliseums or Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport.

The Rev. Murphy Davis, a white woman who runs Open Door Community to assist the homeless, dismissed the argument that the panhandling ban cannot be racist because it is backed by black council members and the black mayor, Shirley Franklin, in a city of 425,000 that is more than 60 percent black.

"The white business interests still run this city," Davis said.

But Atlanta is a majority black city! Which means that by simple math, any law passed there will necessarily tend to have more of an effect on black citizens than on white citizens. Laws against shoplifting, vandalism, or even running stop signs could, if enforced equally, be expected to have what is called a "disparate impact" on black people. The argument made against panhandling laws could thus be made against any law.

While none of the activists seem to have raised it, is there may be a legitimate first amendment issue here? Is there a right to ask someone for money? Or does asking for money cross the line from speech to conduct? According to the First Amendment Center, the Seventh Circuit has upheld laws similar to Atlanta's:

The panel also determined that the ordinance, because it did not completely ban all panhandling, should be analyzed as a time, place and manner restriction on speech.

According to the panel, the ordinance was constitutional because it was narrowly tailored to serve a significant government purpose and because it left open alternative avenues of communication.

The panel wrote that a beggar "may hold up signs requesting money or engage in street performances, such as playing music, with an implicit appeal for money." The appeals court panel also noted that the ordinance still allowed daytime panhandling as long as it was not "aggressive."

'soliciting, begging or panhandling' on a five-mile strip of Fort Lauderdale's city beach.

Is there a religious issue here? Back to the white ministers who

...cited the Bible, saying that begging is an ancient practice and that giving alms is a blessing.

Needless to say, this program was detested by Berkeley's homeless and street people, even those who did not spend whatever cash they came into on booze or drugs. The coupons often were sold on the street or simply tossed as soon as the presenter was out of sight.

While I use the term myself because it's so readily understood, I've often thought that "homeless" is the wrong label to place on people whose lack of housing is a result of larger problems in their lives. I've taken in homeless people, and while I'm no expert on the subject, I've known some who just wanted to be left the hell alone to live in a tent. Others suffer from mental illness or drug problems which prevent them from working normal jobs and thus paying for a home. To call them "homeless" makes about as much sense as to call them "inappropriately groomed." The name "homeless" falsely implies that a home will fix the problem. Neither free homes, nor a brand new Giorgio Armani suit, nor direct distributions of cash, will cure alcoholism, drug addiction or mental illness.

But activists thrive on false labels.

And poverty is violence!

While Justin's remarks about James Wolcott being a "Vienna Sausage twiddler" struck me as just a wee bit on the disrespectful side (after all, mocking a man's dietary habits comes precariously close to resembling ad hominem), they were nonetheless highly amusing. And the more I thought it over, the more I realized that Wolcott is bringing this all on himself, because he isn't being polite.

Far from it.

And the irony here is mouth-wateringly rich. What prompted this latest strand of the various Wolcott "threads" was Glenn Reynolds' quote from Heinlein regarding a certain inescapable truth about polite society. (A concept I believe in despite my regular failings.) Wolcott, diving in headfirst, attacked the view that an armed society is a polite society with a barrage of petulant ad hominem attacks against Glenn Reynolds and Robert Heinlein.

If I may paraphrase Heinlein and Reynolds, the argument advanced strikes me as along these lines: if civilized people have at hand deadly force to protect themselves, they will tend to show more respect for each other, and will be more polite. And even uncivilized people will think twice if they know the civilized are armed.

This is a fact of life with which I couldn't agree more. Having deadly force at your disposal is a responsibility not to be taken lightly. I own a number of guns, and it is at least as humbling as it is empowering to know they are there. I think it makes me slower to anger and more careful, especially in situations which might provoke people to become violent. I don't want to start trouble with anyone, and one of the reasons is that I'm awed by the responsibility of knowing I can defend my life with fatal force. This is a form of self confidence which resembles the feeling one gets after extensive martial arts training. While I only reached the purple belt stage in my own training (and really should pick up where I left off), that was enough to experience firsthand the feeling that that sort of physical self confidence can bring. Self training leads to self discipline, which leads to respect for others (because you don't want to hurt them unless you have to), which in turn leads to self-respect. Admittedly, it might be argued that guns are a shortcut, but there is no question that unless you're an uncouth criminal asshole of some sort, owning guns brings a similar type of self respect -- and respect for others. It is humbling, and I really believe the politeness factor is greatly increased.

So, I know from the lessons I have learned in my life that Robert Heinlein is right, and Glenn Reynolds is right. Whoever else has voiced that sentiment is also right.

It would be one thing if James Wolcott offered some sort of thoughtful disagreement. Instead, he lurches into a raving personal assault:

GLENN REYNOLDS OUT-STUPIDS HIMSELF

I stray into Instadunce as rarely as possible, wishing to spare myself the antic-less antics of a performing flea with only a couple of tricks in its repertoire. But today my wanderings took me there--I must have been following a link--and in one sentence Reynolds disclosed an impressive depth of ignorance worthy of a hick hack.

I think it's the height of rudeness.

It is unworthy of polite society, even if its rudeness is clothed in a sort of rhetorically foppish Sunday best.

By his own example, I think Wolcott only proves how wrong he is. Certainly, he's in no position to be holding court on the subject of politeness.

I notice that Wolcott continues his stubborn habit of not providing links to what he references. But me, I'm so darned polite, I even placed a Vienna Sausage "link" right there up at the top.

And I'll be even politer than that!

After accusations like Justin's (coupled with the so utterly "linkless" Wolcott) I feel the least we could do here is help the man come up with his own brand of link-free sausages.

Hopefully they're boneless (despite Justin's rather crude insinuation to the contrary).

Yum.

Cultural micro-icon and probable ascot wearer James Wolcott is trolling for hits again. I shall oblige the greased (just a dab, please) vienna-sa