Speaking of the Evil Empire, you've got to hand it to them for out-Edging the best of the hardcore punk scene. (Via the Agitator.)

John J. Miller on the good Doctor, detailing the contrast of his Democratic politics with his fundamentally absolutist notions:

So what are conservatives to do with Seuss? I say read him, because most of his books are incredible fun — but also choose wisely. My favorite Seuss book is one that many people don't know about: I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew (1965). Seuss may not have realized it, but the theme of Solla Sollew is powerfully conservative.

...The unnamed narrator — one of Seuss's typical cat-like creatures — joins an odd fellow on his way to the City of Solla Sollew, which is...in short, Utopia. Trying to reach this impossible place, the narrator embarks on a series of misadventures, including an encounter with a loony knight who bellows, "I'm General Genghis Kahn Schmitz." ("The finest line I have ever written," Seuss once said.) Ultimately, he arrives at the outskirts of Solla Sollew — but he can't get inside. It seems that a key has been lost. Everybody's locked out. Frustrated, the city's gatekeeper declares that he's had enough:

And I'm off to the city of Boola Boo Ball On the banks of the beautiful River Woo-Wall, Where they never have troubles! No troubles at all!

Ah, yes: a place that's even better than Utopia. By this time, of course, the narrator has caught on. He goes back home to confront his troubles rather than avoid them.

Fascinating stuff, and another take on the fickle intersection between liberalism and the right.

Even culinary maestros Julia Child and James Beard could admit a certain admiration, professionally and comestibly, for the restaurant empire Ray Kroc had built upon the least common denominator. Should it be too much to expect more than oddly frequent, fickle remarks about Rush Limbaugh from James Lileks? Certainly, it's to be expected that contemporaries would have opinions on one another that are occasionally overcritical; imagine Faulkner's heart as he wrote, mortified, a letter of apology to Hemingway for comments that found their way into a newspaper. But for one of two pundits on the same broad side of the ideological fence to toss left-handed compliments at the other, more established fellow whenever his name pops up in the news? I raise my eyebrows.

I'll never forget watching one of the Hannity and Colmes with Rush as a guest. Now, Alan Colmes is a liberal like the left-most of them and can hiss like a Berkeley snake when he wants to; but end the debate, and he seems like a reasonable, regular joe. Nonetheless, I about dropped my jaw watching him blanket Rush with compliments and professional questions on air throughout the entire segment. It was both embarrassing and teary-eyed charming. Grown men, yet you knew which suit was "the guy who wrote the book on talk radio" and which was trying to get his copy autographed. That's professional admiration, matched by many more.

What strikes me about Lileks' comments about Limbaugh that have popped up every now and then over the last few months is the slight resentment that shows. As to the chef analogy, I can see why a man who is more refined but lesser known takes a bit of offense at the calculator-busting ubiquity of his rough-and-tumble, hip-shooting contemporary. Is it necessary? Yes, they're light knocks, but they're knocks; and yes, Lileks was discussing an article's thumbs-down on weblogs based on Limbaugh's popularity in a different medium, but he responded as if Limbaugh himself wrote (or even regarded) the article.

You'd just have to know me and my impatience for the internecine darts that fly back and forth as those "sparks fly upward," I suppose. What's the point? If it be comedy, Lileks is Groucho, Limbaugh is Gleason. Both have their audiences, both will be remembered for their best. Leave it at that.

UPDATE: Rush did reference the article later in his program on Friday. It all seems to lead back to the weblog - and which side of your bread is buttered. Glenn Reynolds offers a good roundup of reactions to Rush's aloof, somewhat dismissive reaction to blogging. One is indignant, another is spot-on magnanimous. Remember, Rush is an industry leader and he's not about to become instantly enamored with or flustered by a new medium - you won't find that vulnerability in anyone who's stayed at the top for as long as he has. When it comes to "cutting edge," a guy like Rush - age 55, no less - will defer to the test of time and might simply guffaw in the interim. Where he'll prove his worth is finding the distinction between cool-headedness and reactionism. What's interesting is that both Rush and Glenn are acting, well, defensive. Of course, that's to be expected, too.

Blogging too much about blogging is like rapping endlessly about rapping, or even playing utterly rock-song-aware rock songs. No need to explain why. I had disagreed with talk of this having become a slow week for news a few days ago - what with the slightly comical irritability factor rising in this discussion, I'm now beginning to rethink.

A little C.S. Lewisesque thought, brought on by a rather providential occurrence this morning:

Never, ever, ever shrink from greeting the strangers you bump into, and heartily return a greeting when given one from another. It may brighten their spirits; yours will be, too, undoubtedly. I have seen it so many times. Happiness begins the day we lose our nagging sense of shame for being refused, by an occasional grump, the fellowship of informal acquaintance.

Don't get me wrong on Sullivan. If it weren't for him and his sources, I wouldn't know the depth to which the New York Times has fallen.

Norman Mailer, as you may or may not be aware, spends his time writing and disseminating puerile screeds against America and the Western World in general. His latest abomination caught the attention of none other than comedian and political color-man Dennis Miller, who was apparently invited by the Wall Street Journal to respond, comic lampoon against nonsensical gobbledygook. Among the highlights:

A guy like Mailer hates a guy like Bush because Mailer thinks of himself as infinitely smarter than Bush and yet President Bush is the most powerful man on the planet and old Normy's connecting through Atlanta and flying on prop planes to a community college that's so far out in the sticks the mail rider has yet to arrive with the message that The Great Mailer is currently more out of the loupe than a jeweler with conjunctivitis. All so he can scoop up a submicroscopic honorarium and the accolades of star-struck locals and 18-year-olds who mistakenly think Mr. Mailer wrote "Gravity's Rainbow."

Mailer, not to be consistent with his higher-plane-of-consciousness magnanimity, answered with an intent not at all in good spirits:

Dear Dennis,

Just because the two big guys who flanked you on Monday Night Football took away your balls and left you with a giggle in replacement doesn't mean you have to suck up to The Wall Street Journal.

But thanks for appreciating my fine use of "keen."

Keen up, then, to my piece and read it again without panic. You're too good to become squalid and kiss-ass for so little.

Cheers, blessings,

Norman Mailer

Megan McArdle called foul. I added my several cents to the argument:

Mailer and the left: my guess would be that Megan is matching the stated intent of the "enlightened left" to its behavior - not rank and file, mind you, as Megan seems specific; therefore the top-echelon fellows like, say, Fisk and Mailer, Gore and Chomsky. They're all lauded as caring and passionate and arduously devoted to human dignity, peace, love and all sorts of wonderful colors of the leftist-worldview rainbow. But what comes out of their mouth or pen betrays a certain calculating coldness; a horrible, spindly bitterness. There's a sharpness - a deliberateness, a permanence - in the delivery of a negative comment.

Miller and others - even Limbaugh - may poke fun and attach names, but I'll tell you: it's never done in the manner - the syntax, the rhythm, the tone of voice - one would use if they truly wanted to hurt someone.

I say this as a keen, objective observer: I'm quite good at reading a statement's motivation and intentions. I've seen a lot of snappy insults flung about by people who generally lampoon; mouthy folks who, true to their character and experience, wheel and deal with jokes and jabs.

And then there are people who are unmistakably brittle and vulpine. You wouldn't believe it until you saw it, but they intend to injure. I've known a couple of people like that personally and angry exchanges have been, in a word, frightening.

For a less aristocratic analogy, they're the guy who, when mates are blotto and taking a few fun swings at each other, gets hit, gets mad and, quietly slipping on the knuckles, asks for one more shot.

People like this inhabit all planes of society but it appears Megan's view - mine, as well - that they saturate the highest, most venerable and intellectual ranks of the left.

To which someone asked:

Are you nuts? That's like calling Buchanan and Jean LePen top-echelon conservatives.

I responded:

I doubt it.

First of all, Le Pen is nobody's child; when American conservatives talked about him, it was with a mixture of revulsion and bemused observation, what with France's history of Stalinists and Trotskyites, extremists on the other side of the pond, grabbing large chunks of a given vote.

The New Republic stands out for hammering Mailer consistently; elsewhere he's either lauded or arbitrarily disconnected from the left but without the necessary criticism to dialectically disown him - which Buchanan, now teetering at the weirdo ideological nadir between reactionary and radical, receives from the mainstream right whenever he opens his trap.

Vidal - intellectuals who have been shamed out of authority do not have their biographies written by Fred Kaplan.

Chomsky - I wouldn't exactly call Harvard and MIT backalley SA dens, and I have yet to see him politically jettisoned from the intellectual left.

Fisk - celebrated and again, hasn't received the shaming one requires to be disconnected with a given ideological wing, or else claims that "he doesn't represent it" ring hollow.

These four have hardly been disassociated by the left, which as a group seems unwilling to expend the capital or energy. Instead, whenever one of this bunch says something reprehensible, the left shrugs its shoulders and denies involvement.

When Pat Buchanan's blubbering, blame-the-Jews missive on the Iraqi liberation was printed, conservatives rightly took a day to tear it to shreds. And that was it. Buchanan has been marginalized and, indeed, the right does not take him seriously.

And if you don't believe me or don't buy into the great responsibility a community of journalists and publications has to shame and expel those who no longer represent its collective voice, Buchanan received his condemnation in no uncertain terms from one of the premier conservative magazines in 1999.

Here is the final paragraph of that article, written by Ramesh Ponnuru, a coup de grace if ever there was one:

During the '80s, conservatives used to groan every time Kevin Phillips was quoted as a "conservative" saying something snippy about Ronald Reagan. They joked that he had acquired a new first name, "Even," as in, "Even Kevin Phillips opposes these tax cuts." Like Buchanan, Phillips is an old Nixon hand who decided at some point that exploiting cultural resentments and seeing various elites get their comeuppance mattered more than expanding freedom. The difference is that letting Buchanan continue to describe himself as a conservative would be not just irritating but destructive. He is in no important sense a conservative any more. Let his failure be his alone.

Put aside the irresponsible cheerleading for the extension of happiness' pursuit to narcotics; have we forgotten about the ease with which we can be taken into comfort?

Today's weather patterns in Cleveland are of the character I describe as, not at all inappropriately, "Dagobah." Cloudy, wet, muggy, foggy. It is conspicuously unattended by bats, lizards and the awful sort of bog monsters that try to swallow venerable R2 units whole. But it's enough for me; if Vitamin D could be injected intravenously, I'd carry around a vial and needle like a diabetic. Clouds are fine; thunderstorms moving in and out are better - but blankets of grey slay me. They say tunnel and limits, two concepts I widely dislike.

Driving back from lunch today - a Dagobah day that had me tied up in lethargy - I slipped my disc of the 1995 U2-Brian Eno collaboration Passengers: Original Soundtracks Volume 1 in the car's player and, overwhelming the clouds' stricture, found myself off into one of my favorite worlds: memories. It was an instrument or a sound or a melody that began my jump back about twelve years and then, from there, I skipped forward like a stone on a pond, hitting this memory and that - not necessarily connecting them; simply enjoying them. I'm amazed at how nearly every period of my life, when cast in hindsight, comes away with a fantastic, rose-colored patina. Whatever frets or challenges or sadnesses I struggled with at the time are set neatly into perspective and the beauty of everything else around me back then - especially as I remember most of it quite accurately - can be appreciated by itself. The memories are plush and for one's immersing; I giddily, silently revel in the delight.

And when the memory can oblige, the light is always - always - golden-yellow of warm sunshine.

Never accept criticism of an idea that is not followed by any suggested recourse. Filibusters are reserved only for august bodies of irresolute chatterers.

Tail first. Best when slightly stale. Yellow coat preferred.

Happy Easter.

In the midst of a little web-skirting I caught on a link to a Time piece on weblogs; from there, I was presented with links to the biggest of the warblogs. One was, of course, what can be described as one of the premier amateur liberal weblogs. The site is mentioned frequently by Tacitus (almost unfailingly in frustration), and I've snooped around it before - so I figured another peek couldn't hurt.

For any of you who doubted what animates the left - blind hatred of George W. Bush; an adolescent, "Don't bother me with the facts!" non-analysis of the situation; and little else - I must say that you can be persuaded. No substance. No maturity. No wisdom.

Just inexplicable anger and venom. And a daily pass given to Saddam Hussein, the poor, poor misunderstood Arab.

I began to apply some cognative resources to the conundrum of how people could possibly couch themselves, day after day, in pessimism and cruelty; constantly searching for mistakes and tragedies. Then I thought better of such an exploration, briefly accounting for all the mass movements that have stood by while evil threatened, and let it alone.