Quote of today — that is, aside from John Adams' historical quote about how the world should never forget July 2.

From Ace of Spades on the collective yawn over the latest rigged "town hall" by the Obama administration that takes presidential stagecraft to new levels:

Hey, remember when a plastic turkey held by a president was worth its own investigative news stories? Those were the days.

Posted here because Twitter has its limitations.

Because John Adams would have wanted it that way.

Our friend Lisa Schmeiser, who appeared on the Ben and Joel Podcast in April, is the newly minted Dollars and Sense columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Congratulations to Lisa on the new gig.

According to a story at The Inquisitr, it reflects very poorly on American society that social networkers have been leaving MySpace in droves and flocking to Facebook.

As The Inquisitr story notes, Danah Boyd, a social media researcher for Microsoft and fellow of the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society, recently delivered the keynote speech during New York’s Democracy forum at Lincoln Center. Boyd said she was disturbed by the possible reasons for mass abandonment of MySpace for the "more cultured" and "less cheesy" social networking site Facebook. The phenomenon apparently exposes a form of digital racism for which America should feel shame.

"We might as well face an uncomfortable reality … what happened was modern day ‘white flight’," Boyd said. "The fact that digital migration is revealing the same social patterns as urban white flight should send warning signals to all of us. It should scare the hell out of us."

Boyd, from the looks of her resume, is the embodiment of the over-educated elite who consider themselves our "cultural betters." Only they have the insight and courage to filter seemingly innocuous social trends through the left's race and class prism and reveal the real truth. That's why she's "scared," and must sound the alarm by referring to MySpace as the "ghetto of the digital landscape."

She said her research has found that MySpace users are more likely to be "brown or black" and espouse a different set of ideals in conflict with those espoused by the teens she surveyed over four years. She said that patterns in migration across social networking sites echoed those of a white exodus from cities in the past.

Ok. Let's play along. Perhaps it's true that a higher percentage of MySpace devotees are more likely to be "brown or black" than Facebook users. Is this proof that a white user is revealing his or her racism by leaving it in favor of Facebook? It is, I suppose, if one confuses correlation with causation — something a serious researcher takes great pains to avoid — and is careful to never venture far from the echo chamber of the academic elite.

Aside from that, Boyd's invocation of "white flight" is beyond absurd. Unlike the "white flight" to the suburbs of decades ago — where poor inner-city "browns and blacks" did not have the economic power to join the exodus to a more comfortable living environment and better public schools — there is no barrier at all to those "left behind" in the "digital ghetto" of MySpace. Migrating to Facebook takes about 30 seconds of computer time. That's one of the great things about the Internet age: It breaks down, rather than erects, racial and socioeconomic barriers. The question to ask is why "browns and blacks" remain at MySpace instead of joining the Facebook community. Voluntary self-segregation, perhaps?

At any rate, MySpace is being abandoned because it's annoying — most pages I'd visit would automatically start playing the host's favorite and obnoxious music, and often quite loudly; many pages are photo-heavy with crazy backgrounds that are hard on the eye and make it difficult to consume; and it is also less intuitive than Facebook. It should also be noted that even Facebook is becoming a victim of its own success, becoming increasingly clunky and annoying to many users (like me) who are now utilizing Twitter as a more streamlined way to socially interact on the Web.

MySpace was, and remains, primarily a social network for teens. MySpace is in the "digital ghetto" only in the sense that its own institutional inertia has resulted in it being lapped by a superior service. To suggest that it is racist for one to leave it behind for better, more mature alternatives is not only silly, but insulting.

But if Microsoft wants to put such a fool on its payroll and Harvard wants to keep subsidizing such "research," that's their business. Who am I to get in the way of them eroding their credibility?

(Cross-posted at The American Culture)

Joel and I spoke with John Temple, the former editor and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News and the man who hired us to moderate RedBlueAmerica.com, about the future of the news media. Temple, who has turned to blogging with gusto, recently wrote a provocative 10-part series on what he would do to revive newspapers' flagging fortunes.

Temple is as provocative in the interview as he is on the blog. "If you're not adding value you shouldn't do it in print," he told us. "Because there's no way you're going to be reporting the news in print, unless you're the one making the news." Among the other questions we tackle in this edition:

• Is it enough for newspapers to merely be newspapers?
• What shouldn't local newspapers be covering?
• Is the crisis that's affecting media organizations merely the result of dumb business decisions?
• What did the glorious failure of RedBlueAmerica teach us?

Music heard in this podcast:

• Excerpts from Ferde Grofe's "Tabloid Suite," including "Run of the News," "Going to Press," and "Sob Sister."

I wrote a review of The Stoning of Soraya M for The American Culture blog. You can read it here, but I thought I'd share some excerpts of my take on this profoundly important and moving film:

The Stoning of Soraya M. is a "Schindler's List" for a new generation — a film that starkly exposes the brutality of a regime that is almost impossible for the modern Western mind to comprehend, but is true nonetheless. It won't be seen as that, I fear, by the elites in modern American culture.

If you read my review — which is more of a commentary on the larger issues the film raises than a critique — you'll see that my fears have largely been validated. I have some real problems with Roger Ebert's morally vapid review. Anyway, more excerpts:

If The Stoning of Soraya M. has one enduring message, it is that Iran under Sharia Law is as savage, brutal and unfree as any society in modern memory. And the fact that this is happening to women (and men) in Iran, even today, should be an international shame. These atrocities have to end. And it is perhaps divine providence that this film debuts in the same month that young Iranians are taking to the streets and enduring the bullets of their oppressors to topple their barbaric regime. ...

This movie is the most profoundly feminist film I've ever seen. Iranian-born actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her work in The House of Sand and Fog and gave an unforgettable turn in Season 4 of 24, should be nominated again for her performance in this film. The moral center of the film — expressing the shock, fear, outrage and heartbreak of the audience — she landed and delivered the performance of a lifetime for an actress. (She has also been an activist for women in Iran and defeating the Islamofascist regime, having escaped the country during the revolution).

Kindly read the whole thing, and feel free to leave comments both at The American Culture and here at Infinite Monkeys. Reading what Monkey friend Christian Toto has to say about this film is also highly recommended.

A sad, sad day. Billy Mays, a favorite son of my home town of McKees Rocks, PA, was found dead in his home today. The relentlessly cheerful pitchman with the unmistakable Pittsburgh accent is gone.

I wrote about him here and here, and will have more to say later. By all accounts, he was a good man was was about as happy in one's work as one could be.

R.I.P., King of the Informercial.

From Fox News:

DEVELOPING: Television pitchman Billy Mays — who built his fame by appearing on commercials and infomercials promoting household products and gadgets — died Sunday, FOX News confirms.

Mays was found unresponsive by his wife inside his Tampa, Fla., home at 7:45 a.m. on Sunday, according to the Tampa Police Department.

Police said there were no signs of forced entry to May's residence and foul play is not suspected. Authorities said an autopsy should be complete by Monday afternoon.

Mays, 50, was on board a US Airways flight that blew out its front tires as it landed at a Tampa airport on Saturday, MyFOXTampa.com reported.

US Airways spokesman Jim Olson said that none of the 138 passengers and five crew members were injured in the incident, but several passengers reported having bumps and bruises, according to the station.

Authorities have not said whether Mays' death was related to the incident.

"Although Billy lived a public life, we don't anticipate making any public statements over the next couple of days. Our family asks that you respect our privacy during these difficult times," Mays wife, Deborah, said in a statement on Sunday.

Update: Here's Billy Mays, with this "Pitch Man" partner Anthony Sullivan, appearing on Conan O'Brien just last week:

Update: More from the AP:

His ubiquitousness and thumbs-up, in-your-face pitches won Mays plenty of fans. People line up at his personal appearances for autographed color glossies, and strangers stop him in airports to chat about the products.

"I enjoy what I do," Mays told The Associated Press in a 2002 interview. "I think it shows."

Mays liked to tell the story of giving bottles of OxiClean to the 300 guests at his wedding, and doing his ad spiel ("powered by the air we breathe!") on the dance floor at the reception. Visitors to his house typically got bottles of cleaner and housekeeping tips.

Discovery Channel spokeswoman Elizabeth Hillman released a statement Sunday extending sympathy to the Mays family.

"Everyone that knows him was aware of his larger-than-life personality, generosity and warmth," Hillman's statement said. "Billy was a pioneer in his field and helped many people fulfill their dreams. He will be greatly missed as a loyal and compassionate friend."

After taking a little too long to edit, Ben and Joel's June 20 podcast is now available. The dynamic duo consider the following questions:

• How should the U.S. respond to the protests in Iran?
• Are you going to buy the iPhone 3GS?
• How much do we love Spinal Tap?

Music heard in this podcast:

• "I Ran So Far Away," Flock of Seagulls
• "Antenna," Sonic Youth
• "Big Bottom," Spinal Tap

Reenactment: A monkey blessing.I'm a little worried that I'll be blamed for this, since I don't have a solid alibi.

LUSAKA (Reuters) - A monkey urinated on Zambian President Rupiah Banda as he spoke to journalists at a news conference on Wednesday.

Banda softly shouted: "You (monkey) have urinated on my jacket," and paused as he looked up to see the animal playing in a tree just above his chair.

"Perhaps these are blessings," he said continuing his address amid laughter from the audience of journalists and diplomats at the State House presidential offices.

Several monkeys play around the grounds of Banda's residence and his office. There are also many species of antelope and birds in the State House grounds.

I have nothing against Zambia or Mr. Banda, who appears to be a man of good humor. But he can rest assured ... that was a blessing. The flinging of poo? Not a blessing.

Steve Hayward, whose second volume of his political history of the Reagan era hits bookstores in August, makes a point in passing in a post about this Newsweek essay that ought to be tattooed on the right forearms of every would-be conservative in the country: "American conservatism has always been a different animal than European conservatism." (Hayward's emphasis.)

Why is that important? Because it goes to the heart of what it is, exactly, that conservatives are trying to conserve. Hayward quotes approvingly from Patrick Allitt's new book, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History, to underscore the idea: "American conservatism has always had a paradoxical element, entailing a defense of a revolutionary achievement.” Once you wrap your mind around that, you should feel that guilt about neglecting your Burke begin to dissipate and Russell Kirk suddenly sounds less authoritative than he once did. From there, all sorts of possibilities should begin to open in your mind.

So says Ross Douthat. He's right about the monkeys. We matter plenty -- even if a dozen people know it. He's only partly right about Mark Helprin's new manifesto, though. Which part? Well, read the review and draw your own conclusions. (The link is to the Kindle edition of the book, by the way.)

I'm indulging the grand Monkey Server at this point. But when I was about 12 or 13 years old, I wanted to be a drummer. That's because I listened to my older brother's Genesis albums — more specifically, Abacab.

Anyway, your humble Jr. Dr. Zaius was so inspired by Phil Collins' percussive prowess that he started working on it. Ended up having the chops to play in the hard-to-qualify-for University of Pittsburgh Drumline — affectionately called "The Crew."

Monkey readers with kids: Teach your kids to drum. They won't regret it. At the very least they will learn rhythm and transfer their knowledge from the hands to the feet and not embarrass themselves at weddings.

Anyway, before I reached high school, I had learned many Rush songs, and had worshiped at the Church of Neal Peart. But I always felt that Phil Collins was great at tuning his percussion in a soulful way with Genesis (with as much soul as you could inject percussively in "prog rock"). And, yes, I studied the great drummers who took part in the Buddy Rich tribute concerts. Studio legend Gregg Bissonette (who drummed for David Lee Roth's Eat 'Em Up and Smile record) was always a favorite. And all who were called to pay tribute to Buddy Rich are without peer.

But the following "Drum Duet" with Phil Collins and Chester Thompson? I must have listened and jammed to it a thousand times before I reached high school. It also came in handy as a lesson on how to feel the groove and play drums with others — and since I wasn't the strongest reader of music (I could get by, though), it came in handy when matching up with several others in the Pitt Drumline.

Monkey Ben, as a fellow drummer, I'm sure he can relate.

And, come to think of it, Bissonette's work is good enough to embed. More than good enough, in fact. He wears his Big Hair mullet not well with his tux. But his bass work is just sick.

While we're at it, here's the master, Buddy Rich — who makes me feel confident about sticking to "traditional grip" drumming as opposed to "match grip." I'm so glad I learned those Haskell Harr fundamentals!

George Harrison. Jeff Lynne. Phil Collins (and, I think, his excellent horn section) ... and is that Elton John on keyboards?

Oh, and Ringo's helping Phil out on drums, too.

Just because ... everyone needs a bit of George once in a while. And just because Dr. Zaius wants to lighten it up a bit around here (yeah, go figure). And, well, we all could use some happy sunshine ....

I got my iPhone 3gs today. My experience was very much like this, except my lunch was different. I also got mine from FedEx (no shipping charge--thanks, Apple!) so I didn't have to go to the mall.

There's been a lot of talk in recent days -- much of it on Andrew Sullivan's blog -- about how invaluable Twitter has been in enabing Iran's protesters to communicate with each other and send news of their situation to the outside word. There's something to it; heck, even the Obama Administration intervened with Twitter to defer some maintenance so the revolution wouldn't end with a "fail whale." Matt Yglesias and Jack Shafer have useful counterarguments to all this: Twitter is a good communications device, but it won't help a revolution succeed if the regime decides to start using guns.

What's interesting to me, though, is the way Twitter has made consuming foreign news a truly interactive affair for the American audience. In the last 24 hours or so, I've seen tons of people "green" their Twitter avatar in support of the demonstrators. Many have used the #iranelection and #cnnfail hashtags to help facilitate -- they think -- communication or call media to account for its failures of coverage. Many Twitterers even changed their location to Tehran in order to try to throw the regime's snoops off the track of real Iranians.

What does all this mean? I have no idea.

But 20 years ago this summer, millions of Americans sat at home on their couches and watched the Tianenmen Square protests and massacre. We felt it deeply. But aside from watching the news and perhaps writing a letter to the editor about our anger, there wasn't much we did or could do.

American Twitterers, meanwhile, have made a personal investment in the Iranian protests. It's not a huge investment -- Americans aren't risking anything with their support of the protests -- but it is real. Perhaps it's a fad that will soon be forgotten; that wouldn't surprise me. But it might also augur a new grassroots American engagement in the world that his simply never been possible until this moment. The possibilities are fascinating.

Rich Lowry at National Review repeats what I think is a common misperception about Obama:

For all the talk of Obama's realism, he is pursuing a policy driven by a fantasy about international affairs—that all disputes can be resolved through negotiations and governments can be talked out of their interests.

Maybe it's not so much a misperception as a cariacature, this idea that the Barack Obama foreign policy can be summed up as: "Let's hug it out, bitch." This might be because the conservatives most prominent in our public discourse have two basic approaches to dealing with America's rivals in the world:

• Giving them the cold shoulder: That is, refusing to talk to them unless they do what we want.

• Punching them in the face. Metaphorically, of course.

We're only a few months into Obama's presidency, so we haven't seen his full range of responses to international crises. But where conservatives suggest that Obama wants to replace America's foreign policy tools -- sanctions, armed force, etc. -- with diplomacy, I think (and hope) the evidence indicates the president sees genuine diplomacy, genuine efforts to talk as one of the tools in the toolbox. Not all disputes can be resolved through negotiations, but some surely can. This attitude isn't a gauzy hope that governments can be talked out of their interests; instead it acknowledges the differences without treating them as automatically illegitimate.

When diplomacy fails though -- and it will, often, because it's hard and time-consuming and not a panacea -- the president will use the other tools. For example: North Korea has (once again) backed out of previous agreements to proceed with work on expanding its nuclear arsenal. There's probably not much the U.S. can do, short of an unthinkable war, to prevent that. But this is what the Obama Administration is doing to prevent North Korea from spreading nuclear technology beyond its borders.

The Obama administration will order the Navy to hail and request permission to inspect North Korean ships at sea suspected of carrying arms or nuclear technology, but will not board them by force, senior administration officials said Monday.

Perhaps that sounds weak to you -- no boarding by force? -- but it's actually tougher and more confrontational than any actions taken by the Bush Administration.

Until now, American interceptions of North Korean ships have been rare. Early in the Bush administration, a shipment of missiles to Yemen was discovered, but the United States permitted the shipment to go through after the Yemenis said they had paid for the missiles and expected delivery.

So what we're seeing from the Obama Administration, so far, is diplomacy backed up with real but not-necessarily war-provoking action. Conservative foreign policy thinkers seem to prefer angry denunciations backed up with A) even more angry denunciations or B) gunplay. I know which approach I prefer.

Joel and I have both pointed out (from different edges of the political spectrum) the hypocrisy of Republicans AND "Big-C" Conservatives in railing against Obama's supposed "socialism" after having spent eight years in virtual silence over Bush 43's profligate spending. The fact is, Bush's party and vocal supporters simply have zero credibility on matters of fiscal responsibility, even if Obama IS outspending them.

Of course, the voices of principled libertarianism (Cato, Reason, Mises, etc.) were not silent during the Bush years, and continue their credible criticism currently. (Once I started alliterating, I just couldn't stop.) This article from the Cato Institute is broadly critical of Obama and the Democrats' policies, while making sure to lay plenty of blame at the feet of the supposedly "small government" party:

So why do politicians keep driving taxes and spending higher? One reason is that most Republicans in Congress have abandoned spending restraint. Consider House Majority Leader John Boehner. He heckles Obama's spending as "one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment." But the president recently challenged him to find specific programs to cut, and the best Boehner and his team could do was a list of cuts worth less than 1 percent of the bloated federal budget. If Obama is a "socialist," then the House Republican leadership is 99 percent socialist.

Amen. Take the hammer and sickle out of your own eye... [or insert your own hypocrisy metaphor here.]

Lame: People Magazine lays on the "glitz," again.Do not click on this link if you've eaten shellfish or a sketchy hoagie. But for those of you who are strong of stomach, I present to you the latest from People Magazine, which is in a furious competition with Newsweek for the most embarrassingly slavish coverage of the Obama White House:

There's a new couple in the White House and seemingly overnight our nation's capital – a town known for filibusters, not fun – is suddenly a magnet for Hollywood starlets, reality TV shows and high-profile idealists wanting to get in on a little high-minded action. Here's a look at some of those beguiled by the Beltway ...

The article treats us to the "rumored" dating life of brilliant Obama speech writer Jon Favreau (no, not the talented Hollywood writer and director, but the guy who groped a Hillary cut-out) and Rashida Jones — C-list celebrity (former supporting player on The Office, daughter of Peggy Lipton and Quincy Jones, and currently playing in NBC's not-quite-funny-enough-yet Parks and Recreation). We're also hipped to the long-known fact that Kal Penn left House to join the Obama administration to be the "Asian outreach" pooh-bah ... or something.

Those are the highlights. Be sure to read the rest to be up to date with the rest of People Magazine's middling celebrity/entertainment EXCLUSIVE! that it has managed to scrounge up. Have we ever seen such coverage of a president, even from the checkout line — especially from what stares back at you when you're in the grocery store checkout line?

You want real Hollywood connections? Ronald Reagan had them — but they were a mark in the "he sucks" ledger. Bush, for what it's worth, had (mostly frightened) support in the entertainment industry. But everyone knows that country singers are soooo out of touch and lame ... unless they're the Dixie Chicks and hatin' on the current occupant of the White House.

They the get heroic coverage in People and (slightly) higher-class gossip mags like Entertainment Weekly.

I'll eat my greasy hoagie tomorrow. Don't have the stomach for it at the moment.

Something that looks like a revolution -- maybe, maybe not -- has been taking place in Iran this weekend, but you wouldn't have known it by watching cable news. While Iranians were marching in the streets, CNN was re-airing an old Larry King interview with the guys from American Chopper. The result? #cnnfail became one of the top trends on Twitter Saturday night, and deservedly so.

Worse than CNN's lame coverage of Iran has been its lame defense of its coverage. Howard Kurtz -- the Washington Post media critic and host of the network's Reliable Sources show -- has been defending CNN on his Facebook page. And I've found myself so irritated by his defenses that, in a rarity for me, I've been arguing right back.

It started Sunday morning with this post from Kurtz:

Howard Kurtz: On Reliable, Gregg Doyel calls Twitter the "teenybopperification" of news. Guess he doesn't know most users are older and (presumably) wiser.

I responded:

Joel Mathis at 11:56am June 14: But... Twitter seems to be more on top of the Iran developments than CNN. Have you seen the #cnnfail trends on Twitter? It seems like a bad day for anybody on the network to mock Twitter's approach to news.

Kurtz, a few hours later:

Howard Kurtz: I'm not getting the argument that CNN fell short on Iran. Christiane Amanpour has been there and the net has devoted hours to the story.

Howard Kurtz: In fact, CNN stayed with Ahmadinejad's endless rant this morning long after the other cables broke away.

Other commenters pointed out that the King interview and reruns of Campbell Brown's show dominated CNN's Saturday programming in America, not breaking news in a country critical to U.S. security in the Middle East. Meanwhile, CNN International viewers were getting breaking coverage of the Iran situation. I posted another response to Kurtz:

Joel Mathis at 1:00pm June 14: Due respect, Howard, that's kind of lame. CNN missed most of what was happening in the streets -- but hey, at least they spent extra time broadcasting Iran's "official" version? That actually makes the network look worse, not better.

So, Kurtz started to backtrack.

Howard Kurtz: Maybe CNN should have taken CNNi feed last evening. But it was middle of the night in Iran, and even journalists have to rest sometimes.

(Sigh.)

Joel Mathis at 4:53pm June 14: Howard: I hope I'm not coming across as one of these people who nag you constantly. Not my aim.

But Iranians were on their rooftops at 4 am - their time - chanting "Allahu Ackbar!" in protest. You're telling me that journalists had to go to bed when the country itself was awake with protest? I'm not a CNN hater. But this might be a good case for CNN to say: "You know what? We kind of fell down on the job of reporting the most important news story of the weekend. Mistakes happen, but we'll work to prevent a repeat." I would respect that. It's difficult to respect the defenses being offered on CNN's behalf.

And I say that with sincere respect

Another commenter challenged me:

Don Jones: Joel, just curious...what kind of "first hand bureau" reporting by the other 24 Hour News Networks have you seen? And by that I mean not showing the same video loops of rioting taken from Iranian TV or Al Arabia (now banned for a week) or video pulled off the internet...but real life first hand (meaning they shot it, did "stand ups" with demonstrators, talked to opposition politicians) Middle East Bureau reporting.

And my final thoughts, for now:

Joel Mathis at 5:52pm June 14: Don: I haven't seen better from the other news networks. They've all failed, frankly, but it's no laurel to CNN if it failed a little bit less than its competitors.

And we're in the 21st century: Aggregation happens. It would be nice to get more bureau reporting from Teheran, but a good fallback is to do what Andrew Sullivan has spent the last 48 hours doing and collecting information and analysis -- including video, TV's lifeblood -- and kept his readers pretty well abreast of developments. CNN makes a big deal about reading blogs on air and using "citizen journalists" through its IReport program. It seems like they could apply those lessons to a big important news story like this.

I'm embarrassed to admit that until I saw this morning's interview in the Washington Post, I kind of just assumed that Bill Withers was dead. He's responsible for some of the greatest songs ever -- "Ain't No Sunshine" standing prominently atop the list. If he was still alive, wouldn't he be out there on the Golden Oldies circuit, getting Baby Boomers to pay top dollar to hear the songs of their youth one more time?

As it turns out, no.

Instead, it turns out that Withers is the Bo Jackson or Jim Brown of music. Those two men walked away from the game while they could still bring it, realizing there was more to life than football. Withers, it seems, has a similar perspective. I loved the Post's Q&A with him, particularly this:

So you have no interest in a comeback?

There's a time for everything. And at certain times in your life, when you're young enough for that kind of vanity, you draw attention to yourself. And some people can do that into their eighties. It depends on your personality and how you've been socialized. I wasn't socialized in the entertainment business. I was in the Navy for nine years, I had a life outside of this well into my thirties [Withers worked in the aeronautics industry even after "Ain't No Sunshine" became a hit]. You know, this whole music thing was something that came into my life after I was formed socially. So it was fun, it served its purpose, I still like it, but it's not my main focus. In fact, it hasn't been for a long time. There are other requirements. You're somebody's father, you're somebody's husband, you're somebody's friend. And for me, it was important that I not neglect those other requirements just to satisfy some personal need that I might have for approval or attention from people that I don't even know.

Wonderful.

John Wayne: The Duke died on June 11, 1979.

National Review Online features a symposium on the life and legacy of John Wayne, who died 30 years ago today. Included among the experts are novelist Andrew Klavan, Big Hollywood editor John Nolte, S.T. Karnick, and our own Dr. Zaius.

"The fact that the words 'John Wayne' are a slur of the Left, even today, is proof enough that he was a great American," Zaius writes. "Squinting across the plain, The Duke would surely drawl that a man’s character is defined as much by who chooses to be his enemy as by who chooses to be his friend."

Elsewhere in the same symposium comes this bit of provocation from Bill Kauffman, the self-described "front-porch anarchist" and "Little American," whose writings I always look forward to reading in the American Conservative:

His favorite actress, Maureen O’Hara, said as he lay dying, “John Wayne is not just an actor and a very fine actor. John Wayne is the United States of America.” Wrong. John Wayne was California: always moving, never stopping, drunk on booze and possibilities, a chickenhawk though a boon companion, unfaithful to his wives, and neglectful of his children but sincerely regretting it — yet at the same time Wayne created and inhabited the single most enduring and resonant screen presence in the history of American film. I love The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Shootist, but my favorite is True Grit, perhaps because of its source: the great novel of the same title by Charles Portis of Arkansas, one of America’s most underrated writers.

I wouldn't call myself a rabid Wayne fan, but I love "Liberty Valance," which includes one of the finest explanations of America's founding ever put on film.

A while back, we libertarian/conservative/free-market loving monkeys raised a bit of a stink about Obama and some Congressional Democrats moving to limit the pay of executives in companies that received bailout money. Joel, our resident liberal, said "Good."

And to anticipate an argument: This isn't interfering with the free market. Once the companies agree to a public bailout, they've already abandoned the "free market."

Well. What about this, though:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration says executive compensation must be better managed to prevent the sort of risk-taking that jeopardizes the economy.

Gene Sperling, who advises Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, said Thursday the administration does not want to impose caps on executive pay. But he also laid out for the House Financial Services Committee a list of guidelines calling on publicly-held companies to link compensation to long-term performance, not short-term gains.

Sperling said in prepared testimony that the administration believes compensation practices "must be better aligned with long-term value and prudent risk management at all firms, and not just for the financial services industry."

Ahhh, the old "we don't want to do this" statement followed by "we'll support this being done" two-step — just like Obama says he doesn't want to run GM while he goes about running GM. And note this is not ambiguous. Not just TARP babies get compensation set by government, "all firms" do. Just like Chrysler's secured bond holders don't get their day in bankruptcy court, they get terms dictated to by Obama and the Smarty Pants (sounds like a great name for a band!), in cahoots with the UAW.

I suspect Joel does think the Obama administration is now wishing to interfere with the free market, since it is clear he wants Congress to set management pay in "all firms." I guess we'll have to see if Joel has a problem with it, and if he stands by his mockery of those of us who saw Obama's socialist tendencies and called him out on it.

But, aside from that, another quick point: The conceit of this administration knows no bounds. Bureaucrats, politicians and other "smart folks" in his administration throw around stuff like this or that "must be better managed" all the time as if they have all the answers. And in this case, it's doubly arrogant.

How, exactly, do executive pay packages at multi-billion-dollar corporations have anything to do with "short-term risk taking," let alone "jeopardize the economy." It's a non sequitur. Would AIG have taken fewer "risks" with their investors' cash if the CEO was making minimum wage? Would GM's CEO have done a better job if he was making the same as the union shop boss?

That lead sentence might as well read: "The Obama administration says lunch room Coke machines should have more caffeine-free selections to prevent the sort of risk-taking that jeopardizes the economy."

Actually that makes more sense. And these are the people who think they can manage our economy back to prosperity. Someone hold a seance in the White House and talk to Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, please!

David Leonhardt attempts to be even-handed by assigning blame to both Democrats and Republicans in his NYT story diagnosing how America's budget surplus became a huge deficit. And it's true: Dems haven't exactly turned their backs on debt since they came to power. But by Leonhardt's own account, most of the blame belongs to ... the very same Republicans who now are weeping and tearing their clothes over fiscal irresponsibility:

The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.

Leonhardt crunches the numbers and assigns the blame like this: 37 percent of the shortfall is attributable to the 2001 and current recessions. Another 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill, and another 3 percent from President Obama's new programs.

But 53 percent comes from policies initiated by the Bush Administration itself. Some of the costly spending has been extended by Obama, yes, but that doesn't change the fact that it originated with Republicans.

There's lots of reasons to be alarmed about the country's growing indebtedness, and a lot of people who genuinely are concerned about the issue. But Republicans have been working furiously to reclaim the brand of the "fiscally responsible" party ever since Obama took office. Recent history proves such claims to be, well, a lie. Democrats are deficit spenders, yes, but they're not uniquely awful in that regard.

And the thing is: We didn't need Leonhardt to prove that to us. We already knew it.

A couple of months ago I earned some ire from my conservative friends when I suggested "the tea parties were one of the biggest displays of sore loserdom seen in recent U.S. history." I have to stand by that assertion: The government was already spending away our children's future before Obama came to office; the tea partiers only decided to gather in the streets afterward. It's easy enough to draw conclusions.

Classy Lady: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin responds to her classless critics with grace.John Ziegler has made his return to Los Angeles talk radio, and he got a good "get" on his second day Tuesday as a host from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on KGIL: Gov. Sarah Palin.

You can listen to Ziegler's interview with Gov. Palin here.

Some highlights:

• Gov. Palin described how the accusation that she plagiarized Newt Gingrich is bogus because she cited her quotations from the former speaker in her remarks (Camp Gingrich, by the way, has also debunked that meme).

• She said David Letterman and his jokes about her looking like a "slutty flight attendant," and joking that her 14-year-old daughter might get "knocked up" by Alex Rodriguez was "pathetic." I'd have used stronger words.

• She continues to praise John McCain, which is better than he could manage when given a national stage.

• She joked that Ziegler's bumper music is "Getting Ziggy With It," and her Down Syndrome child Trig dances and they call it "Getting Triggy With It." God Bless Her.

Near the end, Ziegler asked Gov. Palin how it's like when she "flies commercial." My sister-in-law works for Alaska Airlines and can vouch for how well she treats everyone who recognizes her when she travels.

Sarah Palin is (by all public accounts) a regular person, an outstanding governor, a great national political voice for less government in our lives (it's in the Alaska blood), and the target of the most vicious personal attacks on a politician in the shortest amount of time in our history. She gets it from all sides: The "comedians," the media, the political opposition, the bloggers, and even snobby Republicans.

Yet she handles it all with grace. She may not be the future of a Republican restoration, but the contenders could learn a lot from her.

Rest easy, American Muslims. The long national nightmare is over.

The President's pledge for a new beginning between the United States and the Muslim community takes root here in the Justice Department where we are committed to using criminal and civil rights laws to protect Muslim Americans. A top priority of this Justice Department is a return to robust civil rights enforcement and outreach in defending religious freedoms and other fundamental rights of all of our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the housing market, in our schools and in the voting booth.

There are those who will continue to want to divide by fear - to pit our national security against our civil liberties - but that is a false choice. We have a solemn responsibility to protect our people while we also protect our principles.

I know. I know. Don't be so sensitive, Doc. Why can't you just laugh stuff like this off?
Obama: The smug moral preener.

I'll tell you why. It's frickin' annoying to hear this administration, on almost a daily basis, take the cheapest of potshots on "the last eight years" just to boost Obama's personal image. It's low class. It's petty. It's distasteful moral preening. It spreads lies about America to the world. And it unprecedented in scale from a new chief executive. Bush 43 did not feel the need to run Clinton down to feel better about himself. Then again, Bush was comfortable in his own skin — which proved to be quite thick.

We were constantly told during the campaign that The One was above such divisive nonsense. Obama is The Great Unifier. How is the unification project served by constantly and disingenuously running down one's predecessor — making people who supported the previous president feel like they were (at best) passive abettors to (a fantasy world) of oppression, intimidation and even the trampling of the civil rights of Muslims in America?

Even on the substance, this statement from Attorney General Eric Holder is nonsense riding a mule. Always — always — with this administration's rhetoric, there is the "false choice" canard. "False," naturally, is defined as anything that conflicts with The One's views. Care to provide any evidence that the Bush administration didn't protect the civil rights of Muslims in this country? Or that the previous administration was not, say, respectful enough of Islam? For Pete's sake, if Bush said "Islam is the religion of peace" once, he said it a thousand times. He visited a mosque in the hours after the 9/11 attacks. Maybe few anti-Muslim hate crimes were pursued in the last eight years because there was ... well ... no "backlash" against Muslims in America of any significance.

I'm tempted to ask: Does Obama truly believe this crap he and his staffers are peddling? I'm almost afraid to know the answer.

Does the Obama administration have any shame? To that question, we surely know the answer.

(HT: Powerline)

No partisan point to make, really, about this dispatch from the Agence France-Presse. Although I'm morbidly curious whether past presidents employed a taster in their security entourages. I wonder if it's a Secret Service agent who draws the short straw or a full-time employee with a job description and everything? And what does the position pay?

I was a guest for an hour on Dimitri Vassilaros Saturday night show on Pittsburgh's mighty KDKA radio yesterday.

Monkeys and monkey friends who have yet to hear my voice, or see my handsome mugshot, may listen by going here.

John Hinderaker at Powerline alerts us to a quote by long-time MSM potentate and "Newsweek" pooh-bah Evan Thomas' comments on Obama-crazy MSNBC's "Hardball" about Obama's latest trip into the breezy fields of the international community.

THOMAS: ... Obama is 'we are above that now.' We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something - I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above - above the world, he's sort of God. He's-

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

THOMAS: He's going to bring all different sides together.

Good Lord! Or, should that be Good Obama! ... blessings be upon him. Standing "above ... (gulp ... gasp ... wipe forehead to fend off the vapors ... ) above the world!" saying ... well ... America sucks. Some "god." And I love that "yeah" from Chris Matthews. I'm surprised he could utter an intelligible word with his lips around Obama's ...

Sorry about that. Evil, sinful thoughts! Must pray and repent to The One for forgiveness. Now, where did I leave my Obama iconography ... Oh yeah ... here it is ...

This is all getting just a little out of hand on the left/MSM. As much as I admired Reagan, and still do, Reaganites didn't worship him and consider him "sort of God." Maybe it's because many on the left largely reject God and organized religion? Gotta latch on to something, eh? Organize something else to fill the void? This obsessive adulation of Obama is starting to defy any other rational explanation.

Yes. Newsweek has shed its decades-long objective pretenses and "rebooted" itself as a partisan, liberal magazine. It is no longer a serious magazine. But I defy anyone to find a quote in National Review as sycophantic, and just ... well, creepy as Evan Thomas' comment. This is beyond Beatlemania wailing and panty peeing. It's something else — something that should be a international embarrassment to an American press corps that likes to think of itself as the best — or at least the most important — in the world.

Speaking of National Review, the great Rob Long has penned a "tribute" to Newsweek's coverage of Obama:

Can't wait for that issue of NR to hit my mailbox.

(HT to the original source: Newsbusters, where you can see Evan Thomas utter that nonsense for yourself. I can't bear to embed the video.)

Ronald Reagan died five years ago today. Most conservatives will remember where they were when they heard. Monkey Ben shared with me on Twitter a little while ago that he got a call at his son's second birthday party. I don't remember where I was when I heard the news, I must admit. But I do remember being on a dinner date with friends in Alexandria, Va., when Reagan's casket made it to his final resting place on June 11. I remember looking at the TV in a bar, the sun approaching the horizon of Pacific Ocean as the last of his eulogizers paid their respects.

You can read a collection of eulogies for Ronald Reagan here. Margaret Thatcher's eulogy was moving, and a bit is worth sharing — especially considering the state of the world today.

Ronald Reagan also embodied another great cause - what Arnold Bennett once called 'the great cause of cheering us all up'. His politics had a freshness and optimism that won converts from every class and every nation - and ultimately from the very heart of the evil empire.

Yet his humour often had a purpose beyond humour. In the terrible hours after the attempt on his life, his easy jokes gave reassurance to an anxious world. They were evidence that in the aftermath of terror and in the midst of hysteria, one great heart at least remained sane and jocular. They were truly grace under pressure.

And perhaps they signified grace of a deeper kind. Ronnie himself certainly believed that he had been given back his life for a purpose. As he told a priest after his recovery 'Whatever time I've got left now belongs to the Big Fella Upstairs'.

And surely it is hard to deny that Ronald Reagan's life was providential, when we look at what he achieved in the eight years that followed.

Others prophesied the decline of the West; he inspired America and its allies with renewed faith in their mission of freedom.

Others saw only limits to growth; he transformed a stagnant economy into an engine of opportunity.

Others hoped, at best, for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union; he won the Cold War - not only without firing a shot, but also by inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends.

I cannot imagine how any diplomat, or any dramatist, could improve on his words to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva summit: 'Let me tell you why it is we distrust you.' Those words are candid and tough and they cannot have been easy to hear. But they are also a clear invitation to a new beginning and a new relationship that would be rooted in trust.

We live today in the world that Ronald Reagan began to reshape with those words. It is a very different world with different challenges and new dangers. All in all, however, it is one of greater freedom and prosperity, one more hopeful than the world he inherited on becoming president.

The freedom and prosperity (yes, even in a global recession, Americans live better than most people even of the Western World) are the birthright of every American. And as Reagan well knew, that inheritance must be constantly cultivated, lest it wither and die.

As Reagan said in the great "Time for Choosing" speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater on Oct. 27, 1964:

(Click "read more" at the end of the string of words just below the little icons)

A few quick booze items before I go make myself a cocktail:
Fond of things Italiano? Try a sip of Galliano!: The original recipe of the Harvey Wallbanger cocktail's essential ingredient is available again in U.S. liquor stores.
• Galliano has apparently quietly reintroduced the original formula to the United States. I say "quietly" because apparently they made a big deal in Europe about it, but I've hardly heard it mentioned here, though I guess there was some kind of launch event. I have a really old bottle my neighbor gave me, so when I get a bottle of the new I'll report on it. I prefer Licor 43, though.

• I'm into tiki drinks right now, and was disappointed that all of Beachbum Berry's books seem to be out of print. Apparently they'll be back this fall, but I was happy to discover the Tiki+ app for the iPhone, which is from the same folks who do Cocktails+. (Read Ben's Macworld review of Cocktails+ and other drink-related iPhone apps.) It has almost all of Beachbum Berry's recipes, painstakingly researched from the history of tiki culture.

• Last, Monkey Brad recently asked for a good margarita recipe on Twitter. It took me a while, but let me weigh in. Ben suggests a 3-2-1 ratio of reposado tequila, Cointreau and fresh lime juice. I tend to prefer silver tequila, which is why that might be too strong for me. I think the absolute best margarita I've ever had was from the best Mexican restaurants I've ever been to, Topolobampo & Frontera Grill in Chicago.

Here's my adaptation of that recipe:

• 1 cup good tequila (silver or reposado)*
• 1/2 cup Cointreau (Gran Torres orange liqueur or Grand Marnier work here but use less or it's too sweet)
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup fresh lime juice (about 3 large limes)
• Finely grated zest of two limes
• 5 Tablespoons sugar
• Lime wedges
• Coarse salt**

1. Steep the mixture. Dissolve sugar in lime juice and 1 cup water, then add orange liqueur, tequila and lime zest (or use a mixture of water and crushed ice to make a bit more than 1 cup, but then you'll have to add it last or the sugar won't dissolve). You can also use that fancy new agave syrup instead of sugar, so dissolving isn't a problem. Prickly pear syrup would also be great, but I can't find the stuff since I left Phoenix. Don't use Splenda (Brad).

Put the mixture in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours (but no more than 24 hours). This time is really worth is, trust me. After the time is up, strain into another pitcher.

2. Rub the rims of martini or other glasses with lime, then dip in course or kosher salt. You should get 6-8 margaritas out of this mix depending on how much you drink. I consider this recipe "serves two," but that's how I roll. If you have more than 4 people, do double the recipe.

Now, pour the margarita in the glasses, either up or on the rocks (I do think this margarita benefits from some dilution, but if you're serving it on the rocks, you might want to use a bit less than 1 cup of water in the first step).

It will be the best margarita you've ever had.

* You can use Cuervo Gold here if you want, just be aware that it will probably induce Tijuana-memory gagging for anyone who went to college in San Diego. I use Milagro silver a lot.

** One tip on the salt: rub the lime on the outside of the glass, not the top of the rim, and roll in salt (this can be a bit tricky with a martini glass, so you'll probably need to put the salt on the end of your cutting board). This is so you taste the salt, but it doesn't fall in your glass. Refrigerating the glasses at the same time as the mixture is also a nice touch.