Jon Henke thinks it’s time for the Right to throw out the lunatics:

In the 1960’s, William F. Buckley denounced the John Birch Society leadership for being “so far removed from common sense” and later said “We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner.”

The Birthers are the Birchers of our time, and WorldNetDaily is their pamphlet.  The Right has mostly ignored these embarrassing people and organizations, but some people and organizations inexplicably choose to support WND through advertising and email list rental or other collaboration.

Several of us — notably Melissa Clouthier, Doug Mataconis, and Matt Sheffield — bandied this about on Twitter yesterday.  And while I’m still inclined to agree with Jon that the Republican Party and organized conservative movement should distance itself from the yahoos, I’m not sure how much energy it’s worth.  Aren’t we better off, as Melissa suggests, in focusing “on a positive message all can unite around?”

Casting out the infidels will likely not have much benefit and comes with quite a bit of cost.

As Steve Benen notes, the RNC is among those advertising on WND.  And, while I’d love to see them not legitimate the loons by sponsoring their websites, it’s true that loons vote.  And they’re not going to go away just because the RNC doesn’t give them any money.  Indeed, it may well just prove to them that both parties are corrupt.

The more important criticism is that Jerome Corsi, the loon that sparked Jon to say “Enough” is the yahoo who was behind the Swift Boat Veterans slime group that attacked John Kerry so successfully in 2004.  While some of us on the Right denounced them at the time, most sat by and figured the ends justified the means.

At this point, I’d just be happy if the GOP can find leaders who rise above the Birther and Death Panels fray and put forth principled alternatives to the Obama-Reid-Pelosi programs.  Aside from continuing the status quo, what’s the Republican plan for solving the impending financial collapse of our health care system?  What’s the Republican vision of American security policy?  Does it envision continuing nation-building in every country where Islamist terrorists might live?  How do we pay down the national debt and get back on the road to fiscal sanity?

Ultimately, focusing on that might take the spotlight off the crazies.

Kathryn Jean Lopez informs us that she’s leaving New York and her post as editor of National Review Online and moving to DC to become editor-at-large.  Rich Lowry, who has run NR’s print operation since William F. Buckley, Jr. stepped down in 1997, will be assuming her current duties.

No word on what this means for NRO’s editorial direction.  I’d like to see it take a few steps back in the direction of being the intellectual home of conservatism but that seems vanishingly unlikely.

The leftist commentators thus far, in addition to saying some dreadful things about KLo, seem to think this is an indication that NR is tightening its belt and proof that conservative opinion magazines can’t sustain themselves on the free market.  Given that we have no information about the new pay structure, I see no reason to think the former. The latter is doubtless true but we can strike the modifier “conservative.”  No opinion magazine of any stripe has been profitable in my lifetime; they’re all subsidized in some fashion.

So says E.D. Kain:

Fox News is simply not conservative.  The fact of the matter is, I find NPR and even News Hour more conservative than Fox – but in a different sense, I suppose, than the standard boiler plate conservatism that has so infested American politics.  What I mean to say is that the conservatism of Fox News tends to be wrapped up in loud, divisive, trashy television that is cheap and ugly and reactionary and essentially all things distasteful that conservatives should look at with scorn and antipathy.  The measured, reserved, thoughtful and culturally sensible tone of NPR is far more conservative.  I’d rather my kids listen to it than watch Glenn Beck.  I’d rather they listen to Fresh Air than Rush Limbaugh.  Why have conservatives let go of the high culture war?  Why have they conceded defeat there – in the arts, in literature, in music – trading it instead for trash television and cheap rhetoric?

Now, I’d disagree with the counter-premise that the Left is somehow more highbrow.  I don’t know that MSNBC is any less histrionic than FOX or that lefty talk radio is sweetness and light — or even that every show on FOX is lowbrow (”Special Report” was worth watching in Brit Hume’s day, as was “Fox News Sunday”).  And comparing mainstream NPR programming with unabashedly partisan shows is rather unfair.  But much of what passes for conservative commentary has certainly strayed from the path of William F. Buckley, Jr.

The particular case of Glenn Beck is interesting.  I watched a couple episodes of his Headline News show before growing bored and haven’t seen his Fox show, aside from a handful of clips on the blogs and other television shows.   From what I gather, he comes across as a raving lunatic who’s afraid of his own shadow.

The reason this fascinates me is that, perhaps three or four years ago, I was a regular listener to his talk radio show, which was on in the afternoons when I was making the 45-minute commute from my then-job to my then-home.  He was a bit more emotional than the typical show host, which I ascribed to his personal story of recovery from a series of poor personal choices, but seemed like a genuinely decent fellow trying to make sense of the world.  This was well after the shock of the 9/11 attacks, so the subsequent stylistic change is not part of the “everything” that changed on that fateful day.   So, I’m honestly flummoxed as to where the current incarnation of Beck came from.

Meanwhile, the leading lights of liberal commentary, comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, are taking the approach pioneered by Rush Limbaugh of making fun of the other side in a way that’s genuinely entertaining.   They don’t come across as afraid of or hating conservatives but as simply bemused by their opponents. [To clarify, I'm not arguing that Stewart and Colbert are Limbaugh imitators; they're not.  But Limbaugh was a pioneer in combining political commentary and humor in a way to attract a mass audience on a weekdaily basis.]

Regardless, I’d have to agree that I’d much rather spend an afternoon with your average NPR host — or, goodness, Stewart or Colbert — than most of the ranting loons passing themselves off as the voice of conservatism these days.

It’s been occasionally remarked in recent years that George McGovern, who lost the 1972 election to Richard Nixon in a landslide because he was so ultra-liberal, became more conservative after leaving public life and starting his own business. A column in today’s WSJ, “Freedom Means Responsibility,” will certainly add another log to that fire.

His thesis is that, “Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior.” He laments that attempts to fix very real problems associated with subprime mortgages, the inability to afford health insurance, and payday loans could well make things worse for a lot of people in order to make things better for a relative few.

Since leaving office I’ve written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I’ve come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.

Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don’t take away cars because we don’t like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don’t operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.

The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.

Now, here’s my question: Has McGovern become that much more conservative? Or have the goalposts of our political discourse simply moved that much.

It’s an honest question rather than a rhetorical one. I vaguely recall going to the polling place in Houston with my parents in 1972 but, being as I was a couple weeks shy of my seventh birthday, I was less attuned to matters of public policy then than now.

From what I’ve gathered since, though, McGovern was a genuine hero during WWII and continued to serve his country admirably for decades. Meanwhile, even aside from his personal shortcomings, Richard Nixon would be a disappointment to most modern conservatives. He imposed wage and price controls, advanced affirmative action and environmental regulation, and appointed Harry Blackmun to the Supreme Court.

At the same time, “conservative” is often a reactionary ideology famously, as the late William F. Buckley put it, “standing astride history yelling Stop!” Modern-day conservatives (and, indeed, modern-day liberals) are much further to the left now than in 1972 on social issues ranging from gay rights to the role of women to what’s appropriate to air on television.

McGovern’s view on Iraq is remarkably similar to his views on Vietnam, so that much hasn’t changed. But he’s more conservative on economic issues and governmental regulation than quite a few modern-day Republicans.

So, which has changed more: George McGovern or the definition of “conservative”?

Photo credit: OffOffOff Opinion via Google

Andrew Sullivan appreciated the late William F. Buckley, Jr.’s civil tone on matters of homosexuality, especially as contrasted with other conservatives of his era, but laments that “Buckley never challenged what he believed was a necessary moral and social injunction against gay love, marriage and sex.”

GayPatriot’s B. Daniel Blatt is more charitable, noting that, “When I was friendly with Marvin Liebman in the mid-1990s, he remembered his friend fondly, noting how their friendship did not change when Liebman came out as gay to Buckley.” But, as Sully observes, “Liebman was indeed a brother in combat, one of the great gay foes of totalitarianism, up there with Whittaker Chambers and Alan Turing. But he was always reminded that his gayness would bar him from full inclusion as an equal in the conservative movement.”

Buckley was, after all, a devout Roman Catholic of a certain age. That brings with it a deontological view of ethics and a fixed view of sin. He could love the sinner but hate the sin. Sullivan quotes his infamous exchange with Gore Vidal, in which he retorted to being called a “cypto-Nazi” by calling his antagonist a “goddamned queer.” Less well known is what happened later:

Buckley apologized to Vidal, but wrote that “the man who in his essays proclaims the normalcy of his affliction [i.e., homosexuality], and in his art the desirability of it, is not to be confused with the man who bears his sorrow quietly. The addict is to be pitied and even respected, not the pusher.”

That’s pretty standard Christian theology.

It should be noted, too, that the exchange took place in 1968, an era when liberal peaceniks like Arlo Guthrie threw around the word “faggot” without the slightest hint of venom or embarrassment; times change.

Buckley’s deontological ethics on the subject of gay issues sometimes manifested itself in rather amusing ways. Several of the remembrances I’ve seen since his passing yesterday have mentioned his suggestion that, “Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm to prevent common needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of homosexuals.”

I’d add an exchange I recall from one of his “Firing Line” debates from a quarter century or more ago in which he argued that, for religiously devout parents to urge their children to be abstinent but that, if they couldn’t, they should use condoms to avoid getting AIDS was the equivalent of telling them that stealing was a sin but that, if they decided to commit burglaries, they should by all means wear gloves. Intellectually, it was a brilliant point. And from the perspective of a religious true believer, he was likely right. From any other, though, the moral equivalence of consensual sex and burglary is ridiculous.

Kathryn Jean Lopez has the sad news that “William F. Buckley Jr., died overnight in his study in Stamford, Connecticut. After year of illness, he died while at work.”

Sad news, indeed.

More from AP:

Author and conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. has died at age 82.

His assistant Linda Bridges says Buckley died Wednesday morning at his home in Stamford, Conn. She says he had been ill with emphysema and was found dead by his cook.

Buckley became famous for his intellectual political writings in his magazine, the National Review, and his frequent television appearances, including on his own long-running “Firing Line.”

I grew up on “Firing Line” and read National Review for years until finally tiring of the magazine’s stilted style and assumption that I was an old money Catholic who spoke Latin fluently. I even read and enjoyed Buckley’s Blackford Oakes spy novels. His recent autobiography, Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography, was also well worth a read.

Buckley’s intellectual leadership, judgment, and tone were cornerstones in building the modern conservative movement. His good sense in denouncing the John Birchers and distancing himself from the excesses of Pat Buchanan and others earned him respect on both sides of the aisle.

UPDATE: The New York Times, which presumably keeps obits ready in circumstances like these, has the first long form report I’ve seen.

William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn.

Mr Buckley, 82, suffered from diabetes and emphysema, his son Christopher said, although the exact cause of death was not immediately known. He was found at his desk in the study of his home, his son said. “He might have been working on a column,” Mr. Buckley said.

Mr. Buckley’s winningly capricious personality, replete with ten-dollar words and a darting tongue writers loved to compare with an anteater’s, hosted one of television’s longest-running programs, “Firing Line,” and founded and shepherded the influential conservative magazine, National Review. He also found time to write more than 45 books, ranging from sailing odysseys to spy novels to celebrations of his own dashing daily life, and edit five more. The more than 4.5 million words of his 5,600 biweekly newspaper columns, “On the Right,” would fill 45 more medium-sized books.

Mr. Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just electoral Republicanism, but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable in liberal post-World War II America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who helped nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964, and saw his dreams fulfilled when Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office. To Mr. Buckley’s enormous delight, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the historian, termed him “the scourge of liberalism.”

In remarks at National Review’s 30th anniversary in 1985, President Reagan joked that he picked up his first issue of the magazine in a plain brown wrapper and still anxiously awaited his biweekly edition — “without the wrapper.” “You didn’t just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism,” Mr. Reagan said. “And then, as if that weren’t enough,” the president continued, “you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom.”

Much more at the link.

The Clinton campaign is circulating a 2006 photo of Barack Obama in Somali tribal clothes, playing to the “B. Hussein Obama is a secret Muslim” nonsense, and getting properly excoriated from the left and right alike. Indeed, even Robert Spencer[*] judges the “Obama-Is-Secretly-A-Muslim” rumors to be “a lot of hooey.”

The attack is backfiring on Clinton, feeding into the “she’s desperate and will do anything to win” meme. And the Obama campaign’s reaction is a home run:

On the very day that Senator Clinton is giving a speech about restoring respect for America in the world, her campaign has engaged in the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election. This is part of a disturbing pattern that led her county chairs to resign in Iowa, her campaign chairman to resign in New Hampshire, and it’s exactly the kind of divisive politics that turns away Americans of all parties and diminishes respect for America in the world.

The consensus of this one hasn’t prevented a few from having some fun with the charges. Hilzoy has an amusing photo of President Bush in Vietnamese costuming with a tongue-in-cheek attack on him as a “secret Vietnamese.”

And perhaps secretly gay as well? The photo is from the 2006 APEC Summit and part of a tradition apparently started in 1993 with this famous photo:

There have been some doozies since, although none have been quite as iconic.

Now, granted, Obama wasn’t attending an international summit meeting and could more easily have gotten out of donning garb that looks silly in a Western context. But playing along with this sort of thing is hardly evidence of anything other than poor fashion judgment.

UPDATE: Via Jonathan Martin, I see that Drudge has added an “EDITOR’S NOTE: Other leaders have worn local costumes” and includes this one:

Glass house, meet Stone.

*UPDATE: I use “even Robert Spencer” here to connote that, as the blogosphere’s guru of all things jihadist, a clean bill of health from him rather settles it instead of “even that nut Robert Spencer isn’t so crazy as to say this.” It’s as if I were to say that, “Even William F. Buckley concedes that John McCain is a conservative.”

John Derbyshire and Andrew Sullivan see great similarity’s between Ron Paul and a young William F. Buckley, Jr. John Podhoretz and Richard Fernandez, though, see more similarities between Paul and Ralph Nader. Ed Morrissey, meanwhile, thinks he’s this years’ Howard Dean.

To the extent he’s following any of those parallels, I’d go with Dean.

As Derbyshire notes, Buckley’s conservatism was founded on anti-Communism as a principle that united otherwise disparate ideologues. Paul’s brand of libertarianism is relatively isolationist and lacks a unifying principle to rally the different parts of the Republican constituency.

Nader ran as an independent to the left of Al Gore and cost his erstwhile party the presidency. I take Paul at his word that, should he not win the Republican nomination, he’ll bow out of the 2008 race. Were he to nonetheless run as an independent, though, it’s far from clear to me that he draws more Republicans than Democrats. While there has been a strong libertarian strain in the GOP since at least Barry Goldwater, there has been a social libertarian strain in the Democratic Party even longer.

Dean, though, strikes me as the likeliest analog. Both raised wild sums of money from a highly energized online constituency and seemed to be the only candidate in their party’s field that sparked genuine excitement. Neither, though, seemed to have the experience or disposition to pass the “gravitas” threshold expected of those who would be president.

The difference between Paul and Dean is that Paul’s campaign is still active and he therefore still has a theoretical chance. He’s got the deepest support of any candidate in the Republican field. Until he wins a primary, though, I’m not likely to be convinced that his support is very broad.

Susie Madrak, under the attention-grabbing headline “No More Dead Bloggers,” laments “the utter injustice of a Democratic political system that is very, very happy to take the money and volunteers the blogosphere sends its way” and yet returns only “Bubkis” to the non-A-listers.

There is not even a little doubt in my mind that, if Rittenhouse Review’s Jim Capozzola had remained a Republican, he’d be alive now. He would have been in a well-paid think tank job, living the high life. (He did, after all, have a masters degree in foreign policy.) Most importantly, he would have had health insurance for the past six years.

I don’t know much about the circumstances of Jim’s death but if he died for want of money, it’s tragic, indeed. That we manage to spend more per capita on health care than any other developed country and yet have people falling through the cracks of the system is surely evidence that we need to fix it.

As a Republican blogger with a doctorate in foreign policy and no well-paid think tank job, however, I’m pretty sure Richard Mellon Scaife and the boys aren’t hunting down Republican bloggers and ensuring we all have health insurance. For that matter, from what I know of think tank jobs, few of them are “well-paid,” at least by D.C. standards, let alone provide the resources for “living the high life,” at least economically speaking.

Furthermore, if the standard is hiring by think tanks and opinion journals, it would seem to me that the Left blogosphere is way ahead of us. Mickey Kaus was the blogger for whom the phrase “take the Boeing” was coined and Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Duncan “Atrios” Black, Oliver Willis, Steve Clemons, and Steve Benen come readily to mind as examples of those who followed.

It’s also rather ironic that Jim Capozzola is being invoked in defense of the position that bloggers should be taken care of by the Establishment. His most famous post, cited in most of the eulogies (including Susie’s) that followed his untimely death was AL GORE AND THE ALPHA GIRLS: The Enduring Power of Cliques in a Post-High-School World.

[W]ebloggers, some of whom I find smarter, more eloquent, and more perceptive than a sizable portion of their professional counterparts, do not share the punditburo’s status anxiety and do not join with the punditboro in enthusiastically casting aside whatever principles they might have in a craven effort to curry favor with their colleagues.

The media’s Betas, in their quest for higher professional status and a more public personal profile, fear nothing more than alienating the industry’s powerful Alphas. And for this reason, Betas hold back, mute their voices, temper their criticisms. Regularly. Consistently. Shamelessly. The Betas know who the gatekeepers are. They know that arguing too strongly against eliminating the estate tax would hurt their chances of appearing in The Wall Street Journal. They know that any hint of recognition that the Palestinians are human beings and not animals will result in their being permanently blackballed by the New Republic. And they know that expressing opposition to school vouchers or the privatization of Social Security will keep them from securing a plumb appointment in the Bush administration. The media consumer is poorly served by this rampant but well hidden journalistic deceit.

He contrasted this with a hypothetical blogger, Sally Smith, who “although a conservative Republican since college, nonetheless recently has become a vocal critic of at least two well-known conservatives, one a high-ranking member of the Bush administration, the other a prominent pundit.”

The hypothetical Smith has a good job, separate and apart from, and wholly unrelated to, her politically oriented blogging project. And she has a full and happy life. It is actually because of this — not despite this — that Smith writes with incomparable fervor about Daniels and Kristol, along with a few other conservatives she finds woefully lacking in intelligence and perspicacity, because she believes passionately in the issues she addresses at her site. More important, because Smith has a good job and a full and happy life, one in which her comments on pundits, commentators, and journalists of varying authenticity have no bearing, she has no reason to fear offending Daniels or Kristol or any person, institution, business, or enterprise with which they are associated, affiliated, or related.

Although Smith is a brilliant thinker and an outstanding writer, she cares not one whit about ever being published in conservative magazines like the Weekly Standard (Kristol’s home base, though one it is obvious is the subject of little of his purportedly brilliant mind’s attention), Commentary, the Public Interest, or City Journal (to name just a few of the little magazines where Daniels, Kristol, Kristol’s father, Irving Kristol, and their friends have influence). Nor does Smith expect or wish ever to appear on the op-ed pages of the New York Post, the Washington Times, or the Washington Post. However, as a conservative, Smith appreciates the Post’s increasingly evident enthusiasm for right-wing writers, both in the editorial section and even more obviously in the “Style” section — that portion of the paper that used to be called “the Lady’s Page,” now home to gossip columnist Lloyd Grove and consummate television-watcher Howard Kurtz.

Smith is not bothered that Pat Buchanan might think she’s too much of an internationalist to warrant calling herself a conservative. Or that William F. Buckley Jr. objects to her criticism of Pope Pius XII. Or that Martin Peretz and William Safire are irritated by her favorable remarks about Israeli Labor Party candidate Amram Mitzna.

Smith doesn’t care that the Heritage Foundation will never come calling. Or that as a judge in southern Vermont she effected a dozen lawful gay unions last year, acts that forever have rendered her persona non grata to the self-appointed high priests and Pharisees of First Things and National Review.

The quintessential political blogger is gainfully employed, well informed, and insulated from the insider culture in which most mainstream journalists dwell. That, as Jim notes, is what made bloggers unique.

It may well be that this has changed, however. While most of the top bloggers have day jobs and would scoff at the low pay of a magazine writing or think tank job, a large number see success as going pro. Darren Rowse has made a career of providing advice to bloggers trying to monetize their sites and many others are following that path. It takes some luck and a lot of work, but many of us are doing it.

Still, as I wrote a few months ago in response to a similar lament,

The A-list bloggers that are making oodles of money from their products are able to do so because they have the combination of traffic and prestige to make it worthwhile for advertisers to pay for the privilege of appearing on their sites. Josh Marshall, Andrew Sullivan, Duncan Black, Markos Moulitsas, Michelle Malkin, and a handful of others have done that so well that they’re making large sums of money and employing others. Others, including John Hawkins and myself, are making a living at it, although at rates far below [the] $10,000 a week [DailyKos reportedly generates].

If, however, one’s part-time writing has not attracted a large readership and a passel of advertisers, why is it that The Powers That Be ought to swoop down and fork over some cash to keep you in business? For one thing, you’re already in business, meaning the return on investment would be rather minimal. Moreover, almost by definition, the net harm to The Cause of your blog’s disappearance from the scene would be negligible.

Moreover, where is the evidence that blogs are going to go away if people can’t make a living from them? Most of us blogged for free for years before making more than minimum wage for the time invested. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs being created every day, including small number of readable ones. Where, exactly, is the blogging crisis?

Further, aside from the question of whether bloggers who are loyal soldiers for the cause somehow deserve to have someone provide health insurance and free laptops, it’s far from clear where the line should be drawn. Surely, not every blogger should get that? And, if traffic levels or linkage are going to be the criteria, then it’s just a matter of creating an A-list, a B-list, and so on. Which is where we are now.

So, yes, let’s figure out a way to make sure that 45-year-olds who have fallen on hard times can get medical treatment. But let’s not turn bloggers into paid drones for the political party machines. That’s the last thing we need.

Patricia Taylor Buckley, longtime wife of conservative intellectual leader William F. Buckley, Jr., has died.

Patricia Taylor Buckley, who died Sunday at age 80, was a true original and a fixture of New York society for more than four decades. Buckley died at Stamford Hospital in Connecticut of an infection following a long illness, according to a statement from her family. Details of a memorial service are still being finalized.

From her love of King Charles Spaniels and gin rummy to her friendships with designers, writers and politicians to her active support for such New York cultural institutions as the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Buckley put her unique stamp on everything. At six feet tall, slim, with her hair always a high-rise confection and dramatic eye shadow, Buckley stood out in any room. “She was one of a kind, like a glass of the most wonderful Champagne,” said Blaine Trump, who recalled that it was through Buckley’s efforts that the Costume Institute gala became a must-have ticket. “She was the kind of woman that inhaled life and when she walked into a room, you knew she was in there. She was a grande dame.”

My condolences to the Buckley family.

via Kathryn Jean Lopez via Ed Morrissey

Last evening, I attended the Media Research Center’s 20th Anniversary Gala as a guest of Matt Sheffield of MRC’s Newsbusters blog. While the festivities went late into the evening, thanks to not starting the presentation until after everyone had finished dessert and a rather rambling performance by substitute presenter Mary Matalin, it was quite fun.

Cal Thomas, Neal Boortz, Herman Cain, Mary Matalin, Michael Steele, G. Gordon Liddy, Pat Sajak, Ward Connerly and “Osama bin Laden” highlighted the presentations and acceptances of the MRC’s “2007 DisHonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2006″ — the showcase of the MRC’s 20th Anniversary Gala — presented on Thursday night, March 29, before an audience of more than 1,000 packed into the Independence Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt hotel in Washington, D.C.

Following the presentation of the DisHonors Awards videos in five categories, a look at some “funny clips” from 2006, a highlight reel of past galas and the audience picking the “Quote of the Year,” the evening was topped off with Rush Limbaugh accepting the MRC’s first annual “William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence.”

New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. won both the “God, I Hate America Award” and the top DisHonor, “Quote of the Year,” for this line from his May 21 graduation address at the State University of New York at New Paltz:

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it’s the rights of immigrants to start a new life, or the rights of gays to marry, or the rights of women to choose. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain. You weren’t. But you are. And for that, I’m sorry.

Here’s the video:

MRC has the videos from the other nominees at their site. So far, no videos of the “acceptance” speeches by substitute guests. Some of them were quite funny while others, notably “Osama bin Laden” accepting for CNN’s Jack Cafferty, were lame. Godfather Pizza CEO and failed Senate candidate Herman Cain, who most people have never heard of but is a rock star at these events, was especially good.

The “Funny Clips,” some of the best video spoofs from “The Tonight Show,” the closing segment of “Fox Special Report,” and elsewhere, were hysterical. I particularly loved the “Endless Love” mashup featuring George Bush and Tony Blair, which is apparently nearly a year old but that I’d never seen before. The clips aren’t yet up on the MRC site–there’s a placeholder for them, so I expect they’re forthcoming–but I found an abridged version of that one at YouTube:

There was a lot of red meat and hyperbole directed at the mainstream media in particular and liberals generally, as one might expect at this sort of thing.

Potential controversy was averted as Ann Coulter, an invited presenter, called in sick at the last minute, along with Sean Hannity. This meant not only did we not get to see whether there would be some sort of protest but we were treated to several suggestive jokes about the coincidence.

The evening closed, around 11:30, with the presentation of the first annual “William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence” to Rush Limbaugh. While Limbaugh is undoubtedly a very divisive figure, and I find that his over-the-top style sometimes sabotages the message he’s trying to deliver, he’s undeniably the seminal figure in the New Media movement of the last twenty years. Were there no Rush Limbaugh, talk radio as we know it simply would not exist. He was, as usual in these situations, funny, humble, and gracious. I’ve uploaded the acceptance video to YouTube (with permission) but it’s not there yet. In the meantime, you can watch it here.

I sat next to David All of the eponymous Group, who dubbed the event the “conservative Oscars.” Mary Katharine Ham prefers the “Red Meat Awards.”

Our tablemate Kathryn Jean Lopez gives her thoughts on the gala here and on Limbaugh here.

Below is video of a debate between Noam Chomsky and William F. Buckley, Jr. from 1969, presumably on the latter’s long running “Firing Line” program about American interventionism, terrorism, and other issues which are still with us.

Andrew Sullivan observes wistfully, “There used to be television like this; and people used to watch it.” My inclination was to share his sentiment. Until I actually watched it.

Even with only four channels from which to choose, I don’t know how people sat through an hour of this. Buckley and Chomsky are undeniably brilliant but the exchange is pedantic and the delivery virtually unintelligible. It’s as if we’re dropping in on the middle of a conversation in a faculty lounge, with the participants unaware that there’s a microphone, let alone an audience.

William F. Buckley, Jr.: “The charge by assorted gentry that James Webb is not qualified to serve as a U.S. senator from Virginia because there are lewdnesses in his published fiction rattles one’s faith in democracy.”

Indeed.

Of course, anyone who has read any of Buckley’s Blackford Oakes spy novels would expect this reaction given the number of explicit sex scenes that the protagonist engages in. I read an amusing critique of Buckley’s awkwardness in writing about sex on a blog some time back. (I thought it was at Crooked Timber but find no such reference in my searches.)

via Steven Taylor

I pose this question to you, dear readers, because John Podhoretz and Glenn Reynolds are charging that he is and site this column in which he calls Israel’s action against Hezbollah and Lebanon “un-Christian” as proof. Here’s the quotation in its context, plus a little more from the column that I think goes to the question:

But what Israel is doing is imposing deliberate suffering on civilians, collective punishment on innocent people, to force them to do something they are powerless to do: disarm the gunmen among them. Such a policy violates international law and comports neither with our values nor our interests. It is un-American and un-Christian.

[...]

That Tel Aviv is maneuvering us to fight its wars is understandable. That Americans are ignorant of, or complicit in this, is deplorable.

Already, Bush is ranting about Syria being behind the Hezbollah capture of the Israeli soldiers. But where is the proof?

Who is whispering in his ear? The same people who told him Iraq was maybe months away from an atom bomb, that an invasion would be a “cakewalk,” that he would be Churchill, that U.S. troops would be greeted with candy and flowers, that democracy would break out across the region, that Palestinians and Israelis would then sit down and make peace?

How much must America pay for the education of this man?

Alright, let’s hear it; what do you think? I know where I come down and I’ll join in the discussion in the comments.

UPDATE (James Joyner): In a long-ago issue-length essay in National Review ["In Search of Anti-Semitism" December 31, 1991], subsequently made the cornerstone of a book, William F. Buckley, Jr. concluded, reluctantly, that Buchanan was indeed an anti-Semite. More precisely:

I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism, whatever it was that drove him to say and do it: most probably, an iconoclastic temperament.

The problem, however, with the question in general is that we seem unable to distinguish anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism or even the idea that “What’s good for Israel isn’t necessarily good for America.” Buckley attempts to differentiate these aspects but finds it quite tricky, indeed.

Thomas Ricks is embedded with the 101st Airborne in “the forwardmost American position in the so-called Triangle of Death southwest of Baghdad.” He has a long page one piece in today’s WaPo arguing that the war has gone through three distinct phases and remarkably different that three years ago, substantially better in some ways and worse in others.

Several aspects make this third phase different from the war of a year or two ago:

• The U.S. effort now is characterized by a more careful, purposeful style that extends even to how Humvees are driven in the streets. For years, “the standard was to haul ass,” noted Lt. Col. Gian P. Gentile, commander of the 8th Squadron of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, which is based near a bomb-infested highway south of Baghdad. Now his convoy drivers are ordered to move at 15 mph. “I’m a firm believer in slow, deliberate movement,” he said. “You can observe better, if there’s IEDs [improvised explosive devices] on the road.” It also is less disruptive to Iraqis and sends a message of calm control, he noted.
• U.S. commanders spend their time differently. Where they once devoted much of their efforts to Iraqi politics and infrastructure, they now focus more on training and supporting the Iraqi police and army. “I spent the last month talking to ISF [Iraqi security force] commanders,” noted Gentile, who holds a doctorate in American history from Stanford. “Two years ago I would have spent all my time talking to sheiks.”
• Real progress is being made in training Iraqi forces, especially its army, according to every U.S. officer asked about the issue. One of the surprises, they say, has been that an Iraqi soldier, even one who is overweight and undertrained, is more effective standing on an Iraqi street corner than the most disciplined U.S. Army Ranger. “They get intelligence we would never get,” noted Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East. “They sense the environment in a way that we never could.”

[...]

The biggest difference in Baghdad from two or three years ago is the nearly total absence of U.S. troops on its streets. In a major gamble, the city largely has been turned over to Iraqi police and army troops. If those Iraqi forces falter, leaving a vacuum, U.S. pressure elsewhere could push the insurgency into the capital. “I think they’re going to go to Baghdad” next, worried [Maj. Daniel] Morgan [a battalion operations officer]. But other U.S. officers argued that such a move is unlikely because it is more difficult to intimidate a city of 5 million than a rural village.

The streets of the capital already feel as unsafe as at any time since the 2003 invasion. As one U.S. major put it, Baghdad now resembles a pure Hobbesian state where all are at war against all others and any security is self-provided.

Army Reserve Capt. A. Heather Coyne, an outspoken former White House counterterrorism official, said, “There is a total lack of security in the streets, partly because of the insurgents, partly because of criminals, and partly because the security forces can be dangerous to Iraqi citizens too.” When this reporter was permitted to review an in-depth classified intelligence summary of recent “significant acts” occurring in the capital, it appeared surprisingly incomplete, generally listing only two sorts of events: anything that affected U.S. troops, and the killing of Iraqis. Other actions affecting Iraqis — kidnappings, rapes, robberies, bombs that don’t kill anyone, and a variety of forms of intimidation — don’t appear to be on the U.S. military’s radar screen. As one soldier put it, that’s all “background noise.”

The last year plus has focused on getting Iraqi forces ready to handle their own security. They’ve had excellent training under the supervision of General Abizaid. While they are becoming much more professional and are much less apt to cut and run than in the early days, they are still not up to the rather daunting job ahead of them, it appears. The one Iraqi battalion deemed fully capable of fighting on its own has been downgraded, although several have moved up to the tier just below that.

According to the congressionally mandated Iraq security report released Friday, there are 53 Iraqi battalions at level two status, up from 36 in October. There are 45 battalions at level three, according to the report. Overall, Pentagon officials said close to 100 Iraqi army battalions are operational, and more than 100 Iraq Security Force battalions are operational at levels two or three. The security force operations are under the direction of the Iraqi government

The combination of this upsetting news and the potential disaster sparked by last week’s mosque bombing has many war proponents in deep dispair. Conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. has deemed the war a failure. Even leading neo-con Bill Kristol is throwing his hands up in disgust.

This thing is still winnable, in my view, but we’ve known for some time now that it was not going to be won by U.S. forces but by Iraqis. There’s not much time left before they are going to have to do it on their own. If civil war breaks out, we can not fight it for them.

We accomplished our short-term objective, regime change, in three weeks and at a cost of fewer than 200 American dead.

We accomplished our second objective, which was to lay the ground for and hold democratic elections.

The ultimate goal, though, was much more than that: a thriving secular Iraq that would be a catalyst for an Arab Middle East hostile to terrorists. Success looked like a distinct possiblility mere months ago; it’s not looking very likely now. That could change rapidly, too, if the current ceasefire holds. Indeed, the havok of the last few days could be an eye opener in the way that the Cuban Missile Crisis was for both sides in the Cold War and cause everyone to back away from the edge. It could, just as easily, be the precursor to civil war.