Good essay rebutting the charge that the 1950s were a Conformist-Culture Wasteland -- in fact, large numbers of people, from the Middle Class and Working Class, took an interest in High Culture.

The interesting thing about this was that the "elites" objected at the time -- they actually were opposed to The Stupid Masses (as they thought of them) becoming cultured.

The essay is about several things (it's lengthy) and I can't digest it all. But let me just hit that one part.

Macdonald made himself the chief critic of the cultural category he dubbed the “middlebrow.” The great danger to America, he argued in his most famous essay, “Masscult and Midcult,” was the effort by the masses to elevate themselves culturally. Because of the middlebrow impulse, he said, book clubs had spread across the country like so much “ooze.” The result, Macdonald believed, could only be the pollution of high culture and its degradation in becoming popular culture. “Two cultures have developed in this country,” insisted Macdonald, and “it is to the national interest to keep them separate.”

His words were vicious. “Already we have far too much of this insipidity—masses of people who are half breeds” daring to partake of “the American culture of the cheap newspaper, the movies, the popular song, the ubiquitous automobile” and creating “hordes of men and women without a spiritual country…without taste, without standards but those of the mob.”

That was, Macdonald explained, because “the masses are not people, they are not The Man in the Street or The Average Man, they are not even that figment of liberal condescension, The Common Man. The masses are, rather, man as non-man.” He quoted the author Roger Fry approvingly as saying Americans “have lost the power to be individuals. They have become social insects like bees and ants.”

MacDonald turned out to be a great fan of the New Left of the 1960s.

Dwight Macdonald, who spat on the ambitions of the midcult man, took an interesting journey himself in the 1960s. He became a movie critic and later a contributor to the Today show. When student radicals took over buildings on the campus of Columbia University, Macdonald celebrated them and responded mildly when members of the Students for a Democratic Society (which gave birth to the terrorist Weathermen) literally set fire to the manuscript of a professor. The man who had denounced the barbarism of the American middle saw true barbarism in practice and found it wonderfully stimulating.

I've written a lot about the not-so-secret yearning of supposedly pro-"Common Man" liberals to reinforce class distinctions, thus carving out for themselves a New Aristocracy class.
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Posted by: Ace at 12:53 PM | Comments (386)
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I watched all week. The gap shrunk slightly to +6 but now is back up to +7.

The Weekend Effect should be cleared from the results, except for Sunday.

I'm really not panicked because I still think the fundamentals mean that Obama loses the election. But I thought I should note that my prediction was wrong.

Meanwhile, there's always Rasmussen, showing Romney with an MoE one point edge over Obama in Florida.

Posted by: Ace at 12:41 PM | Comments (141)
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Video of the falling bear.

From @laurww (LauraW.), a fun meme. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (258)
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In the LAT. Over the air at Fox, Megyn Kelley said the plan was to file it unless Holder begins complying with document requests.

Republican House leaders have drafted a proposed contempt of Congress citation against Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. in which they charge that he and his Justice Department have repeatedly "obstructed and slowed" the Capitol Hill investigation into [Fast & Furious].

...

If adopted by the GOP-led House, the contempt resolution would be sent to the U.S. attorney's office in Washington or perhaps an independent counsel in an attempt to force the Justice Department to provide tens of thousands of internal documents to the committee.

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (231)
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Via @gabriel_malor and @drewmtips...

Drew points out that if you click through, the headline on the actual article (that is, not the headline on the main NPR page) asks if moderate growth is good for the economy.

Top Ten: Toss me some Top Ten NPR headline gags. I'll use them or adapt them for a list.

Top Ten Rejected NPR Headlines

10. Did Hitler Get a Bad Rap?

9. Should I tell my husband I'm cheating on him? And planning to murder him?

8. What's so Morbid about Morbid Obesity?

7. Should I bait this rat-hole with my penis? If not, why not?

6. Is thirteen really too young?

5. Should I eat a knife?

4. Who's afraid of late-stage Hanta virus?

3. Candy From Strangers: Are we teaching our children to be ungrateful?

2. Hey, anyone want to see the new Woody Allen movie?

...and the number one rejected NPR headline...

1. Your Mouth: Why it pays to be trusting about what will or won't happen there

Thanks to alexthechick.

Thanks to everyone for their headlines. I tried to do most of this one myself.

It turns out it's a harder category than I imagined.

Posted by: Ace at 08:37 AM | Comments (620)
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Obama's new ad claims he made a call others wouldn't, and includes an out of context quote by Romney suggesting that Romney wouldn't have made the call.

Here is the out-of-context quote, which, if you search for it on Google, you'll find thousands of times, without context. You have to page forward a lot to find the context.

"It's not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

This got pushed by McCain back in the primary of 2007. The late great Dean Barnett inquired into the actual context of the quote (AP only reported what's above) and found that AP was distorting Romney's meaning.

Our own Matt Lewis, showing the innate industriousness that sets Townhall contributors apart, contacted the Romney campaign and got the full text of the interview. Surprise, surprise- turns out the AP did miss some context. The exchange between Romney and reporter Liz Sidoti went as follows:

LIZ SIDOTI: "Why haven't we caught bin Laden in your opinion?"

GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: "I think, I wouldn't want to over-concentrate on Bin Laden. He's one of many, many people who are involved in this global Jihadist effort. He's by no means the only leader. It's a very diverse group – Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and of course different names throughout the world. It's not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person. It is worth fashioning and
executing an effective strategy to defeat global, violent Jihad and I have a plan for doing that."

So Romney's quote was intended to suggest that we need to do more, not less, in the war on Jihad, and that killing a single man was useful but not sufficient.

This is being turned into "Romney doesn't care about bin Ladin."

Democrats have long urged limited war aims (actually, no war at all, but that's "limited.") The argument through the war has been minimalist versus maximalist. I'm not confident in Bush's version of maximalism any longer (I do not want to use our troops to nation build, ever), but it's absurd to turn a quote by Romney urging a maximalist response -- kill bin Ladin, yes, but don't focus only on that; we have a much larger war to win -- as somehow suggesting he wouldn't even do the minimum.

Barnett continues:

SIDOTI: "But would the world be safer if bin laden were caught?"

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: "Yes, but by a small percentage increase – a very insignificant increase in safety by virtue of replacing bin Laden with someone else. Zarqawi – we celebrated the killing of Zarqawi, but he was quickly replaced. Global Jihad is not an effort that is being populated by a handful or even a football stadium full of people. It is – it involves millions of people and is going to require a far more comprehensive strategy than a targeted approach for bin laden or a few of his associates."

SIDOTI: "Do you fault the administration for not catching him though? I mean, they've had quite a few years going after him."

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: "There are many things that have not been done perfectly in any conduct of war. In the Second World War, we paratroopered in our troops further than they were supposed to be from the beaches. We landed in places on the beaches that weren't anticipated. Do I fault Eisenhower? No, he won. And I'm nowhere near as consumed with bin Laden as I am concerned about global Jihadist efforts."

Another bit of context that must be understood: At the time, the media and the liberal Democrats (but I repeat myself) was attempting to claim the War on Terror was a failure due to the single variable "Have we got bin Ladin?" (Of course, had Bush gotten him, they would have changed the premise to "The war is a failure unless we get Zarqawi," or whoever was left.)

Bush's political strategy at the time was reminding people that this wasn't just some global posse set to arrest or kill a single man-- that terror was not the work of a single man, Al Qaeda was not the work of a single man, 9/11 was not the work of a single man, but rather of a million-plus strong movement and ideology, and that that ideology -- not a singe standard-bearer -- had to be defeated.

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Posted by: Ace at 07:59 AM | Comments (179)
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4th quarter 2011's growth rate was 3.0%.

First quarter 2012 is 2.2%. Unexpectedly.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but when it comes to gangbusters growth and economic activity, Obama peaked too soon.

Watch CNBC spin this to make it sound as if this rate beats expectations:

While that was below economists' expectations for a 2.5 percent pace, a surge in consumer spending took some of the sting from the report. However, growth was still stronger than analysts' predictions early in the quarter for an expansion below 1.5 percent.

So it was below expectations, but really, earlier in the quarter less-accurate predictions were for it to be lower than it turned out to be, so, going by those dated predictions, we're really looking good.

Posted by: Ace at 06:51 AM | Comments (226)
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Have fun, dearest Morons! But take it easy. Ace is still 'under the weather' from last weekend. This was him, last Saturday morning.

Brought to you by Jägermeister.

MAN!! If I had a nickel for every time I was shot out of a tree...I'd have, what? Seventy-five cents? Something like that. Dang.

AOSHQ PSA: It's a crappy way to start a day, guys. They don't always put a mattress under there.

Take it easy and have a good weekend.

Thanks to Dave in Texas for the pic. Clicking it links to the story, if you're curious about the bear.

Open thread.

Posted by: LauraW at 06:42 AM | Comments (107)
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FRIDAY!!

A judge in Florida has blocked Gov. Scott's order that state workers get drug tested. The judge found that there was no evidence of a drug problem at state agencies and so no basis for the testing.

Lava spirals spotted on Mars, and they're much larger than lava spirals here on Earth. I'm assuming that gravity plays a role.

At least three bombs have gone off in eastern Ukrainian city Dnipropetrovsk. Twitter reports say there's been a fourth bomb. At least 15 are injured.

Judge rejects request to order Obama to release the Osama bin Laden photos. The CIA, which is apparently in possession of the photos (DOD said it didn't have them), says it cannot release them for reasons of national security. The judge won't second-guess the CIA.

The only legal bright spots yesterday were a judge in Illinois, who found the state's tax on internet sales to be unconstitutional and preempted by federal law. Also, the Army judge overseeing the Bradley Manning court martial refused to throw out the charge of aiding the enemy. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (346)
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Well I'm still kinda sick and also under multiple deadlines. So tonight you're gonna get The Sandwich. And like it.

Because it's got bacon.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:02 PM | Comments (528)
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