Peggy Noonan slap-down

To some extent, Peggy Noonan is responsible for the vacuity and empty flag waving and cross bearing of today's political rhetoric. Not that demagoguery are anything new or unique to our time, but today's Bush speeches and Thompson declarations owe as much to her speeches for Reagan as any other influence. Nowadays her posture as some sort of "reasonable" elder statesperson simply because she's not quite as rabid and reactionary as today's bunch of Republican neo-conservatives is incredibly irritating, since she's just as annoying as ever and only benefits by comparison to the likes of Tom Tancredo, Dick Cheney, Ann Coulter, and Michael Savage.

So it's nice to see Glenn Greenwald do a full-on takedown:

What a stupid and vapid woman this is, but respected and admired by our media class because she fits right in with them -- endlessly impressed by her own sophistication, maturity and insight while drooling out platitudes one never hears except in seventh-grade cafeterias and on our political talk shows. As always, this isn't worth noting because the adolescent stupidity on display here is unique to Noonan, but precisely because it isn't. This is how our national elections are decided: by people like her, spewing things like this.

Nice.

Scrambly Fox News Anchors

First, I think it's very interesting in and of itself that a rising Republican is taking on Huckabee's absolutely shameful (sincere–I don't think he's pandering–but shameful) Christmas message. This is a direct slap at those who've elevated religion to a fetish while co-opting the modern Republican Party (who's co-opted who is certainly a matter for discussion).

But what I think is really interesting is what happens at 1:19 into the clip. The Fox talking head is absolutely compelled to interject and "clear up" Paul's fascism jab. Oh, Heaven's no, that's not what he's talking about! Fox, fair and balanced, absolutely no dogs in that fight. Excellent work.

Movies

I have to say that I'm as excited about Walk Hard as I've been about any movie in a long time.

Also, in case you haven't seen it, Transformers sucks yak ass. It's so amazingly terrible that I was sort of stunned. It's complete and utter unmitigated garbage. If you haven't seen it, I beg of you to take that hour and a half of your life and do something constructive with it, like trying to beat a face-shaped indentation into a concrete wall somewhere.