Larison Brings the Funny

Here:
The contrast Homans makes between C11 and Big Hollywood is instructive, and tends to confirm my rather jaundiced view of the inverse relationship between success and quality. Essentially, on one site you would find intelligent cultural criticism, and on the other you would find a lot of the cultural whining that seems especially concentrated among [...]

Democracy Demotion

Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, has some harsh words for critics of democracy promotion:
I’ve seen too many peoples dismissed as not ready for self-government. First it was Asians, and then Latin Americans and Africans were there for a while. I know for a while black Americans were, too.I’ve [...]

Ceasefire!

Speaking of Andrew Sullivan, his latest on gay marriage is quite good:
I have nothing against the voluntary and peaceful activities of any religious group, and regard these organizations as some of the greatest strengths of America. The idea that gay people somehow want to persecute these churches, that we’re out to get you, and hurt [...]

Faking it Through the Day

James Poulos offers a nice tribute to Elliott Smith:
But if some percentage of the hipsters who survived Elliott Smith were themselves amateur blurs, Smith was the town professional, a wastrel who earned his stripes and a hero to the healing and the decaying alike. Over the course of a blotchy career that peaked on that [...]

Savage Reservations

Alan Jacobs has a smart response to Joe Carter’s previous post on libertarianism’s deficiencies:
All that to say that you can have a very low opinion of human nature and still be a libertarian; you just have to believe that our inevitable corruption has less dire consequences when personal freedom is maximized than when the rule [...]

Enough is Enough?

Via Glenn Greenwald, I see that Obama has responded to the “Lipstick Pigs” controversy:

I actually find this pretty persuasive, but, as Greenwald notes, it’s not altogether unprecedented. Here’s Michael Dukakis’s response to George H. W. Bush’s attack ads in 1988:
MICHAEL DUKAKIS: I’m fed up with it. Haven’t seen anything like it [...]