Shed Nary a Tear

Most Americans have finally concluded that John Edwards is in fact the creep he always was.  Therefore, they'll likely give his looming trial the attention it deserves, i.e., none.

But, believe it or not, some, like the the Washington Post, cling to the twisted notion that there is something tragic about the rise and fall of the former senator, presidential, and vice-presidential candidate.  Not so says the always reliable Mona Charen:

In fact, John Edwards,...who, in his own words, “represent[ed] people who were in very difficult places in their lives and tr[ied] to give them a shot,” made his fortune as an ambulance chaser. No one who examined his career as a fortune-hunting, slick, and unscrupulous trial lawyer should find any inconsistency in his later incarnation as a manipulative, mendacious, and morally bankrupt politician.

The Future of Feminism?

With absolutely no sense of irony, Jessica Valenti reports on what she deems "the most successful feminist action of the past 20 years":  SlutWalks

Read to believe.

The Government We Deserve

I haven't yet weighed-in on the Anthony Weiner Show, mostly because the puns are too easy and the spectacle of this punk self-destructing too delicious.  (It's true, I praised him in a post some time back, but that was only as an example of the kind of tough political in-fighter the GOP seems never to produce.)

If you have ears to hear, the "meaning" of this latest episode of a politician involved in some fashion or another in lewd and illicit sexual behavior and then clumsily lying about it is not that the sort of men attracted to politics display well-above-the-mean libidos.  Rather, it is that we, yes, we, persist in electing arrested adolescents to high office.  This is what bugged me most about Bill Clinton.  Weiner, like Clinton, is a teenage boy.

And it's not just in the area of sex.  Early on in the 2000 campaign, one of the things that troubled me about George W. Bush was his regularly calling attention to and bragging about his 7-minute miles.  I winced.  Why would a 50 or so year-old governor of Texas, with a host of other accomplishments and credentials to garnish his already prominent name, feel the need to brag about this of all things?  Because, in some sense, he was still a teenage boy, insecure, eager to please, craving attention, etc.  (By the way, I think George W. Bush very much grew up while in office.  If you have any character at all, something like 9/11 will do that to you.)

But this post is not about them, it's about us.  Why do we persist in electing teenage boys to high office?  Why do we elect them to high office and then act surprised when they behave like teenage boys?  Or, more to the point, why do we elect teenage boys to high office and then expect them to govern like grown men?    

The Worst Form of Government Except...

As long as I'm praising witty writers, consider this mot juste from the pen of Florence King:

Democracy elevates by turning ordinary people into extraordinary ordinary people called celebrities.

Wish I'd written that.

My Victim is Bigger Than Yours

If you haven't yet read anything by James Lileks of National Review Magazine, you really need to.  He gives Jonah Goldberg and Mark Steyn a run for their money when it comes to laugh-out-loud political commentary.

In the latest issue of the aforementioned periodical, he has penned a piece about the trouble a group of San Francisco moms are in for forming a club for, well, moms only.  They're being challenged for their illiberal exclusivity by, are you ready, gay fathers.

As Lileks says, "This complicates matters..."  Why?  Lileks:

This complicates matters, since the calculus involved in the Grievance Equations are baffling to the layperson.  Feminism usually trumps everything, unless there's multiculturalism involved, in which case Islam trumps discussion of women's rights, lest you be Islamophobic, which is racist.  Unless you're gay!  Wild card.  But you'd better not be one of those apostates like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born socially liberal critic of Islam, because she encourages the wrong people.  You know, the "some of my best friends are Dutch-nationality apostates living under a death threat" types who really hate Muslims.  You wish there were a smartphone app for it all--just punch in the groups, and let the phone connect to a vast database of New York Times editorials and NPR feature stories and tell you who's right.

I love it.  Such superb mockery of the liberal prison of which we are all, unfortunately, inmates--"you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave"--is hard to find.  But, while there appears to be no escape, there is, thank God, relief.  You'll find some in the musings of James Lileks.  Look for him.

American Exceptionalism Defined

I've mentioned this before, but among the many things that drive me nuts about liberals is their fetish about self-esteem, that is, self-esteem over achievement, or better, self-esteem despite the lack of achievement.  However, they abandon this concern when it comes to their country.  Here, anything that even smacks of self-esteem, you know, like American exceptionalism, is positively dangerous.

Anyway, Clifford May over at NRO does a solid job of defining American exceptionalism by contrasting his understanding with that recently proffered by the very liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.

Check it out.

Say What?

By now you've heard the report of what Democrat National Committee Chairwoman and Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said about Republicans and illegal immigration, but just in case:

“We have 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country that are part of the backbone of our economy and this is not only a reality but a necessity,...And that it would be harmful--the Republican solution that I’ve seen in the last three years is that we should just pack them all up and ship them back to their own countries and that in fact it should be a crime and we should arrest them all.”

And still many on our side feel the need to apologize for Sarah Palin.