Archives for 2009

The Washington Post published an incoherent screed against Eric Holder written by a man named Edward Whelan today. Whelan is identified as the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (as well as former deputy in the OLC). What is the Ethics and Public Policy Center?

The Ethics and Public Policy Center was established in 1976 to clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues.

Check out their web page. Undiluted batshit craziness. “Pope was right to expose cult of the condom” (referring to opposition to the use of condoms to slow the spread of AIDs in Africa), “Should the University of Notre Dame honor our most anti-life president?”, an article by Rick Santorum, an article that wonders “If Whole Foods is a culture’s answer to the demise of the Sixth Commandment”.

Amazing what Fred Hiatt will publish.

Update. From the comments:

And it’s even more telling that the Post knows that someone who was at OLC during that time has no credibility. They included the note “His portfolio did not include national security matters.” in his bio line. They might have well said that “He worked in the sewer but he wasn’t covered in shit.”

Crazier and crazierPost + Comments (90)

There was a very interesting article about the blog Culture11 in the WashingtonMonthly a few weeks ago (it was the source of a quote about Big Hollywood that John liked a lot). The short story is that a few non-wingnut conservatives decided to start a conservative blog that would attempt to deal with cultural issues in a non-crazy way, founded an aesthetically successful blog (I thought the content on the blog was excellent for a conservative blog), and then failed to find investors or much of an audience, surprise, surprise. And that’s where Big Hollywood comes in:

It was a grimly funny coincidence that around the time Culture11’s financial well was running dry, another Web site sharing its subject matter debuted to much greater fanfare in the right-wing media than Kuo’s project ever received: Big Hollywood, an entertainment and politics blog created by Andrew Breitbart, a conservative Los Angeles–based Internet entrepreneur who helped launch both the Drudge Report and Huffington Post. Beneath an angry vermillion-colored banner, the blog offers recurring features like the “Celebutard of the Week”—tracking the latest vapidly liberal political utterances from the likes of Cher—and clips of the best conservative moments in film interspersed with rote breaking news from the entertainment industry.

The whole article is worth a read. Now, while I support efforts like Culture11 in theory, it’s hard not to note that the Tom Wolfe article that inspired Culture11 was nothing more than a high-brow version of what goes on on Big Hollywood:

Wolfe had gone to the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein’s cocktail party, watched Park Avenue’s finest flatter themselves by sharing hors d’oeurves with Black Panthers, and wrote about it in scathing detail, first in New York magazine—the cover featured three white socialites in glittery cocktail dresses with raised fists—and later in Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. In doing so, Friedersdorf believed, Wolfe had made a far stronger case for conservatism than the collected works of L. Brent Bozell.

Is there anything more to conservative cultural critiques than mockery of liberal celebrities? I suppose they also have those list of “greatest conservative movies” and “greatest conservative songs“, but that’s always seemed like an exercise in futility, like assembling the list of greatest white soul singers, where before you start you’re already beat.

Update. Everyone seems to be having a good time making fun of the Great Conservative Songs list, so I thought I’d bring you this blast from the past from George Will.

I may be the only 43-year-old American so out of the swim that I do not even know what marijuana smoke smells like. Perhaps at the concert I was surrounded by controlled substances. Certainly I was surrounded by orderly young adults earnestly — and correctly — insisting that Springsteen is a wholesome cultural portent.

[…]

I have not got a clue about Springsteen’s politics, if any, but flags get waved at his concerts while he sings songs about hard times. He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seems punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: “Born in the U.S.A.!”

Update #2. In my view, this is the greatest conservative song ever.

(via)

The short happy life of Culture11Post + Comments (114)