RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON FACEBOOK: “Having neutered both sets of Washington zookeepers Putin realizes to his horror that the American wildman is on the loose.”
Archive for 2017
July 30, 2017
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THE COLUMN THAT ALL AMERICA WANTS. THE COLUMN THAT ALL AMERICA NEEDS: Who else but David Brooks, the man, the myth, the sandwich shop legend, the Fonzie of Fifth Avenue, can explain to the readers of the New York Times “How Cool Works in America Today”?
Cool had other social meanings. It was a way of showing you weren’t playing the whole Horatio Alger game; you weren’t a smarmy career climber. It was a way to assert the value of the individual in response to failed collectivisms — to communism and fascism, to organized religion. The cool person is guided by his or her own autonomous values, often on the outskirts of society.
To be cool was to be a moral realist. The cruelties of the wars had exposed the simplistic wholesomeness of good and evil middle-class morality. A character like Rick Blaine in “Casablanca” is trying to live by his own honor code in an absurd moral world.
Until he realizes that “the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world,” and joins the effort to defeat Hitler. Having taken an interest in the horrors of the world beyond his café’s doors, does that mean that Bogey’s Rick is no longer cool? Brooks goes on to explain to his readers at the Times the difference between “cool” and “woke:”
Cool was politically detached, but being a social activist is required for being woke. Cool was individualistic, but woke is nationalistic and collectivist. Cool was emotionally reserved; woke is angry, passionate and indignant. Cool was morally ambiguous; woke seeks to establish a clear marker for what is unacceptable.
But earlier in his column, Brooks wrote that “You can [still] see cool figures like Kendrick Lamar…” But if “cool was politically detached, but being a social activist is required for being woke,” how does that explain this album by Lamar and its cover, as Victor Davis Hanson noted last year:
A few hours before delivering that State of the Union, President Obama met with rapper Kendrick Lamar. Obama announced that Lamar’s hit “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite song of 2015. The song comes from the album To Pimp a Butterfly; the album cover shows a crowd of young African-American men massed in front of the White House. In celebratory fashion, all are gripping champagne bottles and hundred-dollar bills; in front of them lies the corpse of a white judge, with two Xs drawn over his closed eyes. So why wouldn’t the president’s advisors at least have advised him that such a gratuitous White House sanction might be incongruous with a visual message of racial hatred? Was Obama seeking cultural authenticity, of the sort he seeks by wearing a T-shirt, with his baseball cap on backwards and thumb up?
To play the old “what if” game that is necessary in the bewildering age of Obama: what if President George W. Bush had invited to the White House a controversial country Western singer, known for using the f- and n- words liberally in his music and celebrating attacks on Bureau of Land Management officers?
For a much better definition of how “cool” changed American society, it’s still tough to beat the column the late Michael Kelly wrote on the topic 20 years ago, after Frank Sinatra passed away at age 82:
And what Frank Sinatra projected was: cool. And here is where the damage was done. Frank invented cool, and everyone followed Frank, and everything has been going to hell ever since.
In America, B.F., there was no cool. There was smart (as in the smart set), and urbane, and sophisticated, and fast and hip; but these things were not the same as cool. The pre-Frank hip guy, the model of aesthetic and moral superiority to which men aspired, is the American male of the 1930s and 1940s. He is Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep or Casablanca or Archie Goodwin in Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels. He possesses an outward cynicism, but this is understood to be merely clothing; at his core, he is a square. He fights a lot, generally on the side of the underdog. He is willing to die for his beliefs, and his beliefs are, although he takes pains to hide it, old-fashioned. He believes in truth, justice, the American way, and love. He is on the side of the law, except when the law is crooked. He is not taken in by jingoism but he is himself a patriot; when there is a war, he goes to it. He is, after his fashion, a gentleman and, in a quite modern manner, a sexual egalitarian. He is forthright, contemptuous of dishonesty in all its forms, from posing to lying. He confronts his enemies openly and fairly, even if he might lose. He is honorable and virtuous, although he is properly suspicious of men who talk about honor and virtue. He may be world-weary, but he is not ironic.
The new cool man that Sinatra defined was a very different creature. Cool said the old values were for suckers. Cool was looking out for number one always. Cool didn’t get mad; it got even. Cool didn’t go to war: Saps went to war, and anyway, cool had no beliefs it was willing to die for. Cool never, ever, got in a fight it might lose; cool had friends who could take care of that sort of thing. Cool was a cad and boastful about it; in cool’s philosophy, the lady was always a tramp, and to be treated accordingly. Cool was not on the side of the law; cool made its own laws. Cool was not knowing but still essentially idealistic; cool was nihilistic. Cool was not virtuous; it reveled in vice. Before cool, being good was still hip; after cool, only being bad was.
Spot on. (Which isn’t to say that Sinatra didn’t have many brilliant moments in his career as both a singer and actor.) To be fair to Brooks, not all of his takes are completely wrong in this column. As Mediaite notes, “David Brooks Tackles ‘Cool’ in New Column, Declares Kurt Schlichter ‘Woke.’”
Heh. OK, we’ll give him that one.
IT’S CALLED THE “SUPREMACY CLAUSE” FOR A REASON: Keeping ICE Away From Courthouses Turns Out To Be Harder Than Liberals Thought.
TWO DECADES OF KOREAN CAN-KICKING: Japan’s Doomsday Preppers Are Buying $19,000 Bomb Shelters: North Korea’s missile launch sends demand surging.
TIME TURNED INTO REDUCTRESS SO GRADUALLY I BARELY EVEN NOTICED: How to Keep Donald Trump from Spreading His Toxic Masculinity to Future Generations.
HEY, WHO HACKED STELTER’S ACCOUNT? Whoa: Brian Stelter asks why J.K. Rowling hasn’t deleted her ‘bogus tweets’ on Trump and the boy in the wheelchair.
Better do it, Joanne — all CNN inquiries are now assumed to have the implicit threat of doxxing behind them.
Related: Dear Brian Stelter: Please call out Chelsea Clinton for retweeting Rowling’s ‘bogus tweets.’
“EVERYTHING BUT COUNTRY AND RAP:” WHAT YOU REALLY MEAN. “Everything but country and rap” at its core is a class issue. “To admit you like country music is admitting you like something inherently and purely working class, which jeopardizes your status as middle class. There’s a real anxiety in this, and country music is an immediate ‘flashpoint,’ in Hubbs’ words, for this internal struggle of outward presentation.”
This is not so true in the South, of course, where middle-class status anxiety is less of a thing.
WITH DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ AND THE PAKISTANI COMPUTER GUYS, THERE’S MORE THAN BANK FRAUD GOING ON HERE, ANDREW McCARTHY WRITES: “This appears to be a real conspiracy, aimed at undermining American national security.”
Read the whole thing.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT MONOPOLY INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF CORRUPTION? 34 Baltimore cases dismissed after video appears to show officer planting drugs.
Baltimore’s last Republican mayor left office before the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
THE USS ZUMWALT AS A 21ST CENTURY POCKET BATTLESHIP: The author of the article thinks the USN should strip the Zumwalt of its guns, pack it from stem to stern with anti-ship missiles and employ it as a stealthy ship-killing platform.
The conversion would start with deleting the two 155-millimeter Advanced Gun System howitzers on the bow and replacing them with a large field of Mk. 41 vertical launch systems. Each Mk. 41 can hold a single missile, which in this case will be the new Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM). Removing the guns could free up room for up to two hundred Mk. 41s, resulting in more silo-based firepower than even the Ohio-class guided-missile submarines. The combination of a stealthy ship and stealthy antiship missiles guided by artificial intelligence would make a formidable adversary. Alternately, the two hundred or so silos could be filled with Tactical Tomahawk missiles for a land-attack mission.
A ship-killing Zumwalt would by necessity operate alone, as an escort would be easy for enemy sensors to detect. Fortunately, the combination of the ship’s AN/SPY-3 Multi-Function Radar and SM-2 and ESSM missiles makes for a powerful self-defense suite. The Zumwalts’ eighty Mk. 57 silos, already installed onboard the ship, would be reserved for defensive weapons. The eighty silos could provide a layered defense with a combination of medium-range Standard SM-2 air-defense missiles and short-range Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM). If the newer SM-6 surface to air missile fits in the Mk. 57, the secondary antiship role of the SM-6 would give the Zumwalts a backup antiship weapon for use against enemy vessels that don’t rate a LRASM.
The article is worth the read.
UPDATE: Just so Insta-readers know, when it comes to the Second Amendment and USN warships, I am pro-gun.
TIT FOR TAT MISSILE TESTS: This is breaking news. The U.S. Army Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missilee is now 15 for 15 in intercept tests. Another test took place today. THAAD is designed to intercept intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs). North Korea tested an ICBM prototype on July 4 and July 28. This latest THAAD test is billed as a response to the latest North Korean ballistic missile test. Intercepting North Korean test launches with U.S. and allied ABMs is a course of action option — in other words, near simultaneous tit for tat tests with North Korea providing the target free of charge. I like the name “Operation Return of Serve.”
DESPITE… DESPITE? I DO NOT THINK THAT WORD MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS: Barbie sales are bombing despite new body types.
IN THE MAIL: From Jerry Pournelle & Roland J. Green, Lord of Janissaries.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
EVERYTHING IS STUPID: The Sanctions Blowback From the EU Begins.
In other words, the sanctions are effectively a done deal, even if they are not official law just yet. Opponents of the bill can read the writing on the wall—and they are already making moves to retaliate. On Friday morning, Moscow pulled the trigger on what it hinted could be the first of many retaliatory measures.
Moscow’s reaction here is predictable enough; the Russians have been threatening a version of this move ever since the Obama administration kicked out Russian diplomats and seized Russian diplomatic compounds back in December. With the Trump administration unable or unwilling to release those facilities, and a new slate of sanctions on the way, the time was clearly ripe for the Russians to express their displeasure with Washington.
But it’s not just the Russians who are upset with the sanctions. As we wrote last month, Germany and Austria have fumed that the sanctions threaten European energy interests, by targeting (among other European-Russian ventures) the Gazprom co-financed Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany. For the bill’s European enemies—among them the Netherlands and France, who have been quieter in their opposition than Germany—the sanctions are a thinly veiled excuse to promote American LNG exports and meddle in the European energy market. And top German business leaders are already mulling retaliation. . . . The new sanctions bill may well achieve Congress’s goals of imposing costs on Moscow and limiting Trump’s flexibility on Russia. Still, it perversely could have given Putin some common ground with Europeans, and could lead to bigger headaches down the road than anyone bargained for.
All driven by a bogus “collusion” panic. Sigh.
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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Not even sexual assault counselor who talked to ‘Mattress Girl’ thinks she was raped.
NOTHING SUSPICIOUS HERE: Wasserman Schultz Seemingly Planned To Pay Suspect Even While He Lived In Pakistan.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz seemingly planned to pay cyber-probe suspect and IT aide Imran Awan even while he was living in Pakistan, if the FBI hadn’t stopped him from leaving the U.S. Monday. Public statements and congressional payroll records suggest she also appears to have known that his wife, a fellow IT staffer, left the country for good months ago — while she was also a criminal suspect.
In all, six months of actions reveal a decision to continue paying a man who seemingly could not have been providing services to her, and who a mountain of evidence suggests was a liability. The man long had access to all of Wasserman Schultz’s computer files, work emails and personal emails, and he was recently accused by a relative in court documents of wiretapping and extortion.
Records also raise questions about whether the Florida Democrat permitted Awan to continue to access computers after House-wide authorities banned him from the network Feb. 2. Not only did she keep him on staff after the ban, but she also did not have any other IT person to perform necessary work that presumably would have arisen during a months-long period, according to payroll records.
Let me add that the Daily Caller has owned this story. There’s been some coverage from the Miami Herald and Politico, but the Caller has done the heavy lifting, and by all appearances they’ve done it responsibly, thoroughly, and well.
Flashback: House IT Aides Fear Suspects In Hill Breach Are Blackmailing Members With Their Own Data.
MORE SPEEDBOAT BLUFF IN THE PERSIAN GULF: Ayatollah Iran’s dangerous and provocative behavior isn’t new. The Khomeini regime declared war on the U.S. in 1979. Obama’s nuclear deal isn’t going to prevent the mullahs from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
RELATED: Two of the U.S. Navy ships involved in the July 25 Persian Gulf confrontation with Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The patrol craft USS Thunderbolt and the AEGIS guided missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf. On July 27 Iran tested a ballistic missile. The Vella Gulf is a ballistic missile defense (BMD) warship. A fanatic’s boat weaving among American warships could disrupt the U.S. formation and cause a collision.