Too Much To Dream

King Babies

When Jonah Goldberg is bad he's horrid, but when he's good he's even better. Jonah on the reaction to the "crushing" of the Dixie Chicks' "dissent" :

The New York Times's Paul Krugman got his dress so high over his head about all of it, he compared some radio-show stunt in a parking lot with Dixie Chick albums to the book burnings which marked the Nazi rise to power. Ah, subtlety, thy name is Krugman.

And here's a sample of what he has to say about Hollyweird's concept of democracy:

Democracy means never being criticized. And, the refusal to sponsor speech you don't like amounts to having one's "right to work" repealed. This is childish. Oh, I don't mean childish as in silly, I mean literally this is childish. This is the way children talk and think, especially in our gitchy-goo self-esteem culture. Not understanding the difference between their desires and rights, they insist they are entitled to do whatever it is they are doing. No matter what they do with their crayons, children expect to be told "That's so good. Good for you." Any criticism elicits a tantrum about the unfairness of it all. Maybe it's because Hollywood types live as King Babies and are never told they're wrong about anything, or maybe their view of democracy is one in which they are the customers of expensive restaurants and the rest of the world are simply waiters. Waiters are supposed to receive criticism with intelligence and geniality but never, ever, talk back.

Posted here mostly because I just wanted to have these quotes within easy reach, to reread and savor.

Adendum: and here's what he has to say about this weekend's hacking of the site:

Speaking of free speech for me but not for thee, you may have heard that NRO was hacked over the weekend by someone who can neither spell well nor tolerate the free expression of views he disagrees with. The homepage went down for part of Sunday and was replaced with a message reading "Hacked by DarkHunter ... Freedom for palestian and Iraq ... gr33tz to #USG and #teso channels." Maybe the radio signals in this guy's fillings garbled the text.

Anyway, I thought about delivering a "we're gonna get you, sucker!" diatribe and a defiant call-to-arms like Cyrus in The Warriors: You can't stop NRO! Caaaaannn youuuuu diiiiigggg itttt!?" But you know what? That's what these date-less wonders want: some attention. I'm sure this guy or someone else with too much time on his hands could hack us again if they were determined to do it. As the old adage goes, you can't stop someone from making a jackass of himself forever. So, good for you DarkHunter, I'm sure your inflatable wife and dog are very impressed.

ROTFL. The guy who hacked Actors Against War was a lot funnier. (And you know, it is curious how these hackings and other internet site problems always seem to happen in groups: my hosting service, Cornerhost, has been having problems -- not hacking, but something else that is as of this moment still keeping SgtStryker.com from being completely up. My site was out a few hours this weekend.)

Posted by Andrea Harris at April 28, 2003 08:02 PM