How the story of today’s media transformation is being written by the losers: “We should not expect anything like impartial analysis from people whose very livelihoods—and those of their close friends—are directly threatened by their subject matter.”
Want a glimpse of where health care is headed if ObamaCare isn’t repealed or overturned? In the UK, doctors told a woman to find another provider because her carbon footprint to visit them was too large. All two miles of driving worth. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
Painter Thomas Kinkade has died at age 54. Kinkade was the extraordinarily popular “artist of light” who managed to turn himself into a franchise, opening up mall stores to sell reproductions of his paintings.
This was the sort of thing he did:
Pleasant enough, but not my cup of tea. Then again, I’m not really into landscape paintings per se, and the small amount of art I do have on my walls tends to come out of the science fiction and fantasy genre (like this Ned Dameron piece for Stephen King’s Dark Tower series). But the main reason I’m bringing up his death here is his position on the fault line of the culture wars, because Kinkade was absolutely despised by bi-coastal liberal urban elites. I can think of few things more unfashionable for a Manhattanite than declaring that they love Thomas Kinkade’s work. Personally I have a hard time thinking of any art work I hate enough to dedicate an entire blog to tearing it down, but Kinkade seemed to bring out the same instinctual, irrational loathing in them that Sarah Palin does.
There are likely several reasons he’s so loathed. Part of it is the fact that he was a technically competent, representational artist who strove to make his paintings pretty in an age which devalues all of those attributes in comparison to “authenticity.” Part of it was his success, his ability to sell signed reproductions of work he touched up with highlights for tens of thousands of dollars that no doubt infuriated starving artists in lofts across Greenwich Village.
But most of all, I think Thomas Kinkade was hated because he was liked by the wrong kinds of people. He was a favorite of the loathsome Lumpenproletariat of flyover country, the people who had the bad taste to work with their hands, live in Suburbia, believe in God and vote Republican. (Kinkade himself was not shy about professing his Christian beliefs, which probably infuriated his critics all the more.)
Here’s a fine example: “Kinkade and the culture that supports him… same thing as Bush. Same thing as Enron. Crooks masquerading as religious men… fool the masses of totally ignorant and self-absorbed Christians… and make millions.”
Many hated Kinkade overtly for having different personal or artistic values than them, but some probably hated him just because everyone else hated him; they hated Kinkade because all their hip friends hated Kinkade in the same way they all read The New York Times and voted for Obama. It’s just what’s expected of them.
First, the ubiquitous Richard Epstein, on why Justice Kennedy’s million dollar question might restore our understanding of the Commerce Clause to the pre-NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin and Wickard v. Filburn reading that held sway from the founding of the United States to the imposition of the New Deal.
Second, Ramesh Ponnuru examines Dmeocrats’ magical thinking that the overturning of ObamaCare would lead inevitably to a groundswell of support for a single payer system (presumably including a mass march on Washington by Americans of all walks of life coming together, firsts clinched high and singing “The Internationale”):
Reality-check time: When Obamacare became law, Democrats had more power in Washington than at any time since the Carter administration in the 1970s. They had the presidency and lopsided majorities in both houses of Congress. Because conservative Democrats have declined in numbers, it was probably the most liberal Congress since 1965-66. They were still barely able to pass the law. And that was with important medical industries either neutralized or in favor of the legislation, which they would not be in the case of single payer.
After Rick Perry’s disastrous fall campaign, I floated the idea that he was still hopped up on goofballs (i.e, taking serious pain medication) following his back operation.
Well now comes word that there’s at least some supporting evidence in the form of Inside the Circus, a book on the 2012 Republican Presidential race. Caveat the first: The Perry camp is hotly denying it. Caveat the second: One of the co-authors is Evan “Obama is a sort of God” Thomas. Caveat the third: The last third of the Chron piece is given over to to professional Perry-hater James Moore to do his usual bashing. Caveat the fourth: The excerpted bit the Chron uses is actually pretty weak sauce unless there are more like it in the book.
Still, the theory nicely explains why Perry, who has been a sharp and relentless campaigner in his state races, floundered so badly at the national level. Indeed, it explains it so neatly that I wonder why the Perry campaign is so insistent in denying it, since it’s much more flattering to him than the liberal “Perry blew it at the national level because he’s a moron that just happened to have kicked our asses repeatedly for the last decade” theory.
On the other hand, maybe they deny it so insistently because it’s not true, no matter how convenient an explanation. And bloggers (myself included) should always be somewhat suspicious of a story that fits our preconceptions a little too neatly…
The word, in this case, is “moderate,” which seems to be particularly tricky to define. Especially when it comes to Middle Eastern political parties. Since you can support Hamas and promise to wipe Israel off the map and still be considered “moderate”…
I don’t usually link to long audio snippets like this one. But this 19 minutes interview of Richard Epstein is so chock-full of concise and articulate reasons why ObamaCare is unconstitutional that I recommend anyone interested in the subject listen to it in its entirety.
Evidently you have to suck as bad as Keith Olbermann. He went from CNN to MSNBC to Current TV (whose audience ratings clock in slightly higher than a rounding error), where he was just fired and replaced with Client 9. To continue the pattern of moving to ever-smaller markets, I guess he’ll next have to host the SUNY Stony Brook Revolutionary Hour of Power on cable access.
I don’t usually spend my time and attention attacking the likes of Olbermann, Bill Maher, Paul Krugman, etc., simply because doing so takes time and attention that could be used describing the many failures of the Obama agenda, and the incompetence, corruption, and cronyism of both the Obama Administration and Democratic officeholders in general. But sometimes your shotgun is in the shop, and you need to restock the barrel with pike…
So Keith Olbermann is out of a job. Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh’s ratings are up by as much as 60%. So how’s that war against conservative media working out for you, liberals?
Why ObamaCare can’t work: “It is a perverse but very real fact of life that the more complex and rich the system to be regulated, the less the ‘experts’ and the goo-goos have the political power to impose their vision on the regulatory process. The more carefully crafted a law needs to be, the more it is going to be full of lobby lollipops and sweat heart deals. A legislative body trying to write a health care law for a country like ours is like a neurosurgeon operating, drunk, with one hand holding a chainsaw and the other in a boxing glove.”
Paul Ryan endorses Mitt Romney. That’s a great pickup for him, and it eases, ever so slightly, my concerns that Romney will be a “big spending Republican” in the mode of Bush43 should he get elected.
Dwight notes a Hezbollah connection to the story of a chain of Austin bars that weren’t paying their employees what they were owed.
So a Hispanic Democrat shoots someone who might or might not have been assaulting him, and suddenly Texas Democrats are ready to drag gun control back on the agenda. Thanks Rep. Garnet Coleman (Democrat, Houston)! I was a little worried that gun owners might be not be motivated to go to the polls in Texas in 2012 (what with the House, Senate, and Governor’s mansion all under Republican control), but your proposal to end the castle doctrine is just the tonic we need to get them to the voting booth!
The King Street Patriots in Houston have a Democratic Judge rule against their tax-exempt status in a lawsuit brought by the Democratic Party. I wanted to point out the frivolous nature of this lawsuit, but Big Jolly already beat me to it.
Ted Cruz won the endorsement of Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, which is a terrific pickup for him. He joins Jim DeMint and Rand Paul among sitting conservative Republican senators who have endorsed Cruz.
Rice University political scientist Mark P. Jones says that David Dewhurst is a moderate by Republican standards: “Frequently used his powers of agenda control to help pass legislation opposed by the most conservative members of the Republican delegation. In addition, the best estimate of Dewhurst’s location along the liberal-conservative continuum which dominates voting in the Texas Senate suggests he is significantly less conservative than approximately one-third of the Republican delegation, particularly conservative outliers Brian Birdwell of Granbury and Dan Patrick of Houston….for Republicans located in the party’s centrist and moderate conservative wings, Dewhurst is likely to be ‘just right.'” It’s an interesting statistical analysis, and conforms to my own opinion of Dewhurst: Not a RINO, but not a true movement conservative, either.
The Dewhurst campaign is being more than a bit silly (again) in trying to link Cruz to George Soros because some of the other 1,300 lawyers at the same international law firm have done work for Soros. I’ve already debunked this. It’s actually fairly embarrassing that they’re still trying to make this argument.
