On Wednesday, Taki’s Magazine ran a series of articles from “National Disgrace Online,” a satirical counterpart to National Review Online. An amusing conceit—but the critique underlying the satire falls short.  Take the mock letter to President Obama by “Jonah Goldberg.” The letter—which is consistent with Paul Gottfried’s theories of mainstream movement perfidy—ridicules NR for things that either are not ridiculous or … [Read More]

I’m always glad to see the proliferation of websites and blogs of the “Alternative Right” (broadly defined), and I was thus delighted to learn of the launching of “Front-Porch Republic.” My initial sense was that it might capture some of the spirit of the “front-porch anarchists” Bill Kauffman (who’s a contributing editor) went searching for in Look Homeward, America. The editors … [Read More]

On 3rd February, it was announced that Margaret Thatcher’s daughter Carol would no longer be used to present reports on BBC television’s weekday magazine programme, “The One Show.” The decision was made because of a remark she made off-air, when she referred to Franco-Congolese tennis player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga as a “golliwog frog.” Her remark was made in a BBC hospitality suite … [Read More]

The webzine Culture11 officially closed up shop last week, ending a four month run as the web’s alternative conservative destination.  Late last summer, I first heard rumors that there was a new well-funded conservative webzine in the works, which at the time was billed as “LibertyWire—the conservative answer to Slate”! The name soon morphed into “The Culture,” settling eventually on the … [Read More]

If you want to boost TV ratings, nothing does the trick like teen sex. Just think of poor Chris Hansen, who spent years building a respectable career as a TV newsman but since 2004 has become forever typecast as the guy who busts Internet perverts on NBC’s To Catch a Predator—with “What are you doing here?” as his “you’re busted” calling … [Read More]

Metaphor of the month: Jack Shafer, in Slate, writes: “Nobody in TV news stir-fries his ideas and serves them to the audience faster than MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Drawing from a larder filled with old anecdotes, unreliable metaphors, wacky intuition, and superficial observations, the always-animated Matthews steers whatever’s handy into the hot wok that is his brain. The sizzling free-associations skitter through … [Read More]

Say what you like against us Australians, there is one activity where we excel, and that is, in producing artistic hoaxers. The nonexistent modernist poetic genius “Ern Malley” in the 1940s; a subsequent platoon of “Aboriginal” creators (“B. Wongar”, “Wanda Koolmatrie”, “Eddie Burrup”) who invariably turned out to be about as “Aboriginal” as Nicole Kidman; a nonexistent Ukrainian novelist named “Helen … [Read More]

In his new incarnation as a born-again peacenik, Andrew Sullivan—pictured here, scratching his ass on national television—is eager to play the same role he assumed when he was in the vanguard of the War Party – policeman. Back in the day, you’ll recall, he even called poets on the carpet for the political content of their verses – and now he’s … [Read More]

David Frum has been purged off into the sunset at NR... He’s leaving his NRO blogging gig at the end of the year and plans to start up a new website called “NewMajority.com” We could, of course, indulge in a little Schadenfreude with Frumy—the man who tried to purge the conservative movement of the antiwar Right is now getting his comeuppance, … [Read More]

Perhaps the only institution in America whose approval rating is beneath that of Congress is the media. Both have won their reputations the hard way. They earned them. Consider the fawning indulgence shown insider Joe Biden with the dripping contempt visited on outsider Sarah Palin. Twice last weekend, Biden grimly warned at closed-door meetings that a great crisis is coming early … [Read More]