NEW VOICE COLUMN UP

about Chuck Hagel's nomination and his investigation by citizen journalists. A hilarious amount of it seems to be about mischievously making points by which no normal person would be swayed -- cf. Robert Stacy McCain: "Hagel nomination and Left's dilemma: Do they hate Israel more than they love gays?" har har, as well as "By Any Means Necessary," "they bring a knife, you bring a gun," "The Chicago Way," "If that vicious bastard Andrew Sullivan supports Hagel, this is reason enough for any patriotic American to oppose the Hagel nomination," and -- here's real berserker logic for you -- "the conservative strategy must be aimed at making that 'win' as damaging as possible to the reputation of the Democratic Party," etc. I'm beginning to think McCain's a mole. But who would pay him?

TRY THIS SIMPLE TEST.

Hi. Do you live in America? Ever had a job there? Good. Let me show you something that The Anchoress wrote about why the minimum wage is evil:

Prior to minimum wage laws, a smart employer knew that he could not keep good employees without paying them their worth. Once employers were told what they “must” pay, however, it created a baseline that mentally (and perhaps emotionally) narrowed, rather than broadened an employers sense of what wage was fair or deserved. In fact “fair” and “deserved” went out the window. If all a businessman (or woman) had to do was make sure a minimum wage was being paid, what did fairness or merit have to do with anything?

And that sort of thinking, born of the good-intentions of our own government — is how we get to the reality of a 20-year employee making $8.25 an hour, and having to live a pretty hardscrabble life.

OK, people who've worked for actual bosses, and observed first-hand why they do and don't give raises -- does your assessment suggest to you that employers pay as little as they can get away with because that increases their profit margins? Or does your experience suggest that they pay as little as they can get away with because the government inflicted upon them "a baseline that mentally (and perhaps emotionally) narrowed, rather than broadened an employers sense of what wage was fair or deserved"?

If the former, congratulations, you're a normal human being living in the actual world. If the latter, congratulations, you may have a job as a conservative columnist.

SQUARE PEG.

Victor Davis Hanson goes on for more than 4,200 words about how everybody loves you if you're "hip" -- which in his lexicon is just another word for "liberal" -- and it's just not fair. One of his dozens of examples:

Would Google have had more trouble for all its outsourcing and overseas tax avoidance had it been named American Internet, Inc., or if its founders had grown up together as good ol’ boys in Mobile, Alabama, who still had a nagging propensity for putting patriotic slogans under the Google logo when the browser pops up each morning? Imagine waking and hitting the American Internet, Inc. logo — and then reading “Live free or die” before your search. (How odd that liberals — e.g., “the medium is the message” — always lectured us about advertising-driven false demand, and then became past masters of deceptive branding.)

I thought that's what Bing was for.

The odd thing is, Hanson never seems to grasp how these alleged hip people and things  -- he includes Starbucks, Jay-Z, "Snoop Dogg," Al Gore, and Katie Couric, believe it or not -- acquired whatever cachet they have. Since he hates them, the explanation can include nothing of what they offer the public, which severely limits his options.

Midway through he comes upon an answer that's at least plausible --

Could not Wal-Mart put memorable lines from Shakespeare on its plastic bags, or a Greek hexameter from Homer, or sell vitamin water called Sophos, Kalos, or Logos, or pipe in John Lennon’s “Imagine”?

You're getting warm, Doc -- marketing might have something to do with it. But Wal-Mart has a marketing budget, too, and it eschews Shakespeare for Low Low Prices. I don't hear them crying that they're misunderstood, and I sure don't hear them crying poor.

Alas, this explanation would cost Hanson his opportunity for self-pity, so he avoids it, and retreats thus:

Hip: borrowing became “stimulus”; entitlements, “investments”; and paying it all back became “paying your fair share.” In Obama’s case, he is not just black, but black with an exotic name and a liberal ideology, unlike a Clarence Thomas, who is most unhip...

I predict the first "hip" thing Hanson will adopt will be emo.

IT'S OUR OWN STORY EXACTLY! HE BOLD AS A HAWK, SHE SOFT AS THE DAWN.

Acculturated is a new dispenser of culture war ordnance that yells "WHY POP CULTURE MATTERS" from the masthead.  Connoisseurs of the genre will find it a little bit Culture 11 and a little bit Speculative Rightwing Ladymags The Perfesser Wants Created.

One thing the Acculturati like to talk about is Downton Abbey. (Here's a thing where Emily Esfahani Smith twits Simon Schama for calling it "snobbery by the bucketful." "The scenes take place in and out of a manor inhabited by tony aristocrats," sniffs Smith. "Its appeal is aesthetic. As an art history professor, Schama should know this." I'm pretty sure she's not kidding.)

And in case you thought Jonah Goldberg had farted the last word on the subject, get this: Ashley McGuire lets us know up front that she's sophisticated and Has Agency --

I’m no dummy. My last order from Amazon included The Feminine Mystique, Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, and Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics.

-- But she watches crummy TV shows. Why? Not merely to relax; that'd be common.

I simply think that I (like my fellow educated female consumers of garbage television) am looking for intrigue. Intrigue that gives us something to talk about. Something to think about. A framework to ponder our sex. 

Television is a sort of social barometer, and as women we are particularly inclined to take the temperature of our society and it how it views us and treats us.

Those days when you were a kid and imagined TV shows really spoke to you and your generation? That's why you have this coming to you -- McGuire pondering her sex:

It’s a sort of lifeline to any woman drowning in the thick waters of modern culture... 

Indeed, the show evokes wholly contrary thoughts about womanhood and feminism. As I watch the show, I find myself fighting between two selves. One side of me hardly envies the women of the era, when marriage was a woman’s only ticket in life, when the corset still grasped the fashion industry, when one make-out session with an exotic boy could ruin your prospects for life. 

But then one side of me envies the women of Downton ever so slightly. Envies the thought of my husband referring to me as “her ladyship.”

In previous sub-generations, ladies who didn't want to live in Dallas might yet have envied the women of Southfork and dreamed of falling under the spell of courtly if amoral J.R. Ewing. But when the show was over and the Asti Spumante drained, I don't think their fantasies spurred them to social analysis like this:

Are we happy with where we are? Do we demand enough of men? Do we demand enough of ourselves? Can we do better than table flipping in Jersey or ten plastic surgeries? Are we really that much better off today, or are today’s television shows any indication that there is still much work to be done?...

The women of Downton want driving lessons, they want jobs, they want the vote. But are there things from that era that we have thrown away that might have had value?...

If only we had cars and servants with crisp aprons! Clearly society has failed us.

Did respect for a woman’s reputation keep men in check and protect ourselves from winding up like Ethel, pregnant and scared? Did good-old-fashioned esteem for women raise the odds of winding up like Anna and Mary, wives who had been thoroughly woo’ed by good men?    

We'll never know now; there's no time machine to whisk us back to the days when women were thoroughly woo'ed and could do without that spinster's toy, the Vote. Ah well; there's still a little Red Bicyclette left, and a page where one can send eloquent essay-length distress signals that Ross Douthat may pick up. In the words of Martin Mull: It's not that great and it's late and once again, honey, you lose.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS: A VERY SPECIAL JONAH GOLDBERG EDITION.

The Pantload on Downton Abbey:

I do wonder what the left, particularly the British left, thinks of the show. For starters, one of the chief villains is gay.

We can stop right there; you could make a parlor game out of guessing Goldberg's other insights ("the whole point of the show is to sympathize with the landed gentry," "the one fairly radical lefty in the show... remains something of a bore," etc). The thing that defies imagination is: What does he think is going on? Is he trying to using conservative hanky code to find if Abbey's producers would like to provide the entertainment on the next NR Sadcruise? Or is he laying the groundwork for the case that, when the history of early 21st Century conservatism is written, Julian Fellowes will be the Goldwater of the Kulturkampf? (After all, as Goldberg's colleague Jay Nordlinger noticed years ago, Fellowes once complimented America. Maybe he's a mole in the commie arts community, and can be recruited to make movies with Bill Whittle.)

Oh, one more thing, from the aesthetic part of Goldberg's episode review:

Indeed, the whole show felt bizarrely cut up, like they had to put it together at the last minute.

At last he's talking about something he understands. [Farrrt.]

A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

I think National Review's trying a rethink:

"Meant to be together forever" -- sounds like a Bieber joint, yes? This Jesus cover boy, Christopher West, goes in for the usual Anti Sex League ordnance -- he counsels "infinite bliss" over rim jobs, and asks leading questions like "can’t we see that such a notion of choice is actually the negation of freedom?" But he has a softer, daisy-strewing  side, too, and rhapsodizes that "art is the language of the heart." Kathryn J. Lopez asks him if there's any art around now that he likes; he replies,

I’m not an art critic. I can only speak to what moves me personally. And I’d have to say that today, in the specific sense of right now, I am stunned by the artistry expressed in the movie adaptation of the musical Les Misérables. I saw it three times in its first week of release. Treat yourself and go see this movie.

Roger Scruton he ain't. Instead of having to beg change all the time ("National Review is not a non-profit — we are just not profitable"), NR should just convert to a pictoral format a la Tiger Beat.

UPDATE. Commenter Montag2 directs us to this intriguing 2009 item at the Catholic News Agency:  "Christopher West’s ideas on sexuality ignore ‘tremendous dangers,’ Alice von Hildebrand says." Excerpt:

The news segment showed [West] calling for Catholics to complete “what the sexual revolution began.” He also described “very profound” historical connections between Hugh Hefner and Pope John Paul II. 

West spoke to CNA on Friday, claiming the report somewhat sensationalized his views. He also denied several characterizations conveyed by the news story, explaining that he believed Hefner to be right in rejecting “the disease of Puritanism” but radically wrong in beginning the “pornographic revolution.” 

He had told ABC that Hefner had a "yearning," an "ache" and a "longing" for love, union and intimacy.

Well, clearly Hef's a fan of marriage. I expect after this scare West went and sinned no more, or he'd never have gotten close to K-Lo's inbox. True, he's responsible for provocative titles like The Love That Satisfies, but the Theology of the Body Institute West serves as a "research fellow" seems to have no hot tubs or encounter rooms. Still, his theology stirs some controversy -- for example, there was

the argument between Dr. Scott Hahn and Christopher West on the set of “Franciscan University Presents” which turned Dr. Hahn into a “closet critic” of West and his theology after West disagreed with Hahn when Hahn said the proper response if he was to see his colleague's naked wife's would be to turn his eyes away.

 His colleague's naked wife's what, I'd like to know. Maybe it was something innocent, like a tax-exempt contribution.

UPDATE 2. Oh wait, they explain further down:

... [Dr. Scott Hahn] told West that if he were to see a friend’s wife [the friend being fellow panellist Dr. Regis Martin] naked, it would be his responsibility to look away. West responded, ‘No, it would be to not lust.’ [Hahn] and West took turns repeating themselves until the moderator called for a break in the program.

You gotta admit, it beats This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Also from that same report: "James J. Simons, who by his own admission listened to West over 100 times... argued that it is right to baptize people naked in front of an entire church so everyone can see them and it is right for women to read in church topless." Next time a conservative starts going off about wacky liberal arts courses, I'll bring this up.

UPDATE 3. "And, as if on cue," comments Alexander von Humbug, "Sullivan quotes West approvingly." Looks like there's a big PR push for West among the sort of people who would like him, and I wonder why, as they could disseminate the book as effectively by just handing out copies at David Brooks' parties. It's not like normal people will ever give a shit.

IT'S GOOD FOR YOU.

My old friend Martin Downs, M.P.H. Dartmouth, has embarked on a very interesting project:  "a full picture of sexual health in the United States" based on an index of 26 measures of sexual health. (Full report here.) The fun part of the project is the resulting Sexual Health Rankings™, which finds Vermont, Connecticut, and New Hampshire the most sexually healthy states, and Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas the least healthy. Lots of opportunity for mean regionalist jokes there!

But it's also a sign of where public health's going in general, and how it breaks against cultural tides. The indicators include the expected relative incidence of STDs and rape but, taking off from the World Health Organization's idea of sexual health as "not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction or infirmity," but also "a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence," they also consider access to contraception and abortion, sex education in schools, gender equality (partly measured by "proportion of seats held by women in state legislatures"), and "sexual satisfaction" measured by the "proxy indicators" of percent of population married or partnered, and general good health ("numerous studies show that self-reported health is positively associated with sexual satisfaction, and that worse self-reported health is a strong predictor of sexual dysfunction").

You may quibble with some of the metrics; I'm not sure how well you can track sexual satisfaction in the aggregate, short of a Masters and Johnson version of Nielsen Ratings or a test panel made of these. But I like the idea of defining sexual health more humanely than would, say, medical authorities at an Army induction center. Old-fashioned as I am, I still tend to think of public health as reactive, eradicating abnormalities clearly identified as disease -- as in, hmm, people in this village are dying of cholera, let's see if we can stop it. But in some communities, the appearance of such agents of death was once so commonplace as to be considered the norm; it's only when somebody began to think that it didn't have to be that way, and that it could be changed by something other than prayers and mumbo-jumbo, that human health progressed.

Now we see folks turning this approach to conditions no one considered public health issues before -- obesity, for example. Because our general fatty-fat-fatness doesn't look like cholera, and can't be fixed by replacing the town water pump, we are slow to identify it as disease. There's also a better reason: Because the nobs then might determine that we must be saved from ourselves, and try to keep us from having eating barbecue potato chips and onion dip because we must not know what we're doing to ourselves.  Lord knows I've felt resistance myself in the face of Mayor Bloomberg's nannying on the soda tax and all that.

Maybe the problem there is that we're Americans, and everything having to do with pleasure confuses us. Maybe we stuff ourselves with junk because we're missing something in our lives, and our leaders try to take these palliatives away from us without any genuine concern for us except as cogs in their machine and reflections of their own enlightenment, and offer us nothing in return except good citizenship medals.

But with this sex thing I don't see a downside. Gender equality?  Access to women's health services? "Pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence"?  That doesn't sound like health nazidom to me. Maybe that's because it's about giving access to more choices instead of fewer, and normalizing pleasure instead of restricting it. In any event, I'd sure rather have that than a healthy snack.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the alleged end of the culture war. Both rightwingers and leftwingers have suggested it's done, but I say this is America, where no grift stops until it runs out of suckers -- and this one's not even close to running out.

I should mention that the white-flag-waver with whom I started the column, Matt K. Lewis, has in a follow-up hedged on his original claim that "The culture war is over, and conservatives lost." Now he thinks there's a chance. Among his proof points:

The good news for cultural conservatives is that a new generation, aided by new technology, might finally conspire to change things. Young conservatives like R.J. Moeller — the man who brought comedian Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager together — are dedicating their lives to ideas and culture, not overt partisanship.

Apart from creating the headline lounge act in Hell, this is what Moeller's about.  I'm sure he can get people to pay him for it, but it hardly seems like a way to win hearts and minds.

UPDATE. In comments Spaghetti Lee has an angle:

I think the overtly churchy, you're-going-to-hell culture warriors are going to fade out, honestly. Who the hell is going to replace Pat Robertson or Maggie Gallagher when they bite the big one? I think we're going to see/are already seeing a rise in its more insidious cousin, the libertarian conservatives who are too hip and cool and with it for things like making sure 90% of the country actually has livable incomes and that the air and water supplies aren't full of poison...

He numbers among them the Randroid priest who can talk to kids.

HOW'RE YOU GONNA KEEP 'EM DOWN ON THE FARM AFTER THEY'VE SEEN THE FARM?

Some guy at Ace of Spades is excited about Atlas Van Lines' map of what states have more mover-outers and what states have more mover-inners:

Frankly, I'm surprised that CA and MI are treading water on that chart but then again it is only one source and does not indicate what type of people are moving in and out (i.e. producers or takers).

The idea (or "narrative," as these dinks like to put it) is that big bad blue states are bleeding "producer" population, and soon will be overtaken by Workers' Paradises like North Dakota. Similarly, Some Other Guy at RedState headlines his story about another mover's poll (United Van Lines'), "Unchanged: Americans Are Still Fleeing High-Tax, Forced-Unionism States With Good Reason," followed by lots of hurp-durp about lousy blue states boy won't they be sorry.

Well, it's always instructive to do what rightblogger readers are unlikely to do, and click the links. At the United Van Lines site:

I'll be durned -- Americans are flocking to Washington, D.C., even though such geniuses as Ole Perfesser Instapundit, Nick Gillespie and David Brooks were just telling us it's the moocher capital of the evil Hunger Games empire.

And the United Van Lines item the RedState link takes you to is sub-headed, "Washington D.C. the Most Popular Destination During the Election Year." Guess America's really Obama-depraved after all!

Don't worry -- it looks like there'll be plenty of room in DickCheneyland for them all to Go Galt in.