sisu

"A young ballsy girl in pigtails showed why the cowards of ISIS will never win"

Dear @ArianaGrande,
I'm sorry.
Love Piers. https://t.co/BNRQgXhmj6 pic.twitter.com/A3Hkr88mXx

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 5, 2017

"Last night you showed true grit and also why the cowards of ISIS will never win," writes British TV provocateur Piers Morgan in an open letter to U.S. pop star Ariana Grande, who laughed in the face of the Jihadi losers who had terrorized fans outside her original Manchester concert two weeks ago:

Last night I felt a surging sense of pride watching the bigger, better show than the one two weeks ago…

Then I chuckled to myself at the thought of how utterly enraged those pitiful ISIS douchebags must feel to see that their efforts to destroy our way of life, and force us to cower away in hiding, have been so roundly thwarted by a young ballsy girl in pigtails.

"My grandmother used to speak of the ‘Blitz Spirit’ whenever we spoke about her experiences during World War II when she was a young teenage girl," Morgan recalled:

The official dictionary definition is ‘stoicism and determination in a difficult or dangerous situation, especially as displayed by a group of people.’

You displayed that exact same spirit last night.

The inspirational 21st-Century "Blitz Spirit" of Ariana Grande and her mostly young, mostly female fans at the #OneLoveManchester benefit concert last night in the face of a mysogynous, totalitarian death cult called to mind Glenn Reynolds' provocative proposition that Elvis Presley was "The King of Anti-Fascism."

.@instapundit: "After Elvis, commercial culture of rock & roll simply occupied mindspace that totalitarians need" https://t.co/ZnqcOseXXD

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) June 5, 2017

"Hitler used the tools provided by the new technology," Reynolds – AKA Instapundit – wrote back in August of 2002":

But Elvis owned them: radio, television, movies, it didn't matter: he conquered them all. And the changes that he brought about helped to topple totalitarian regimes, and make new ones less likely, for he left behind a changed culture that short-circuited the mechanisms that Hitler had used to secure power - and the mechanisms that other regimes used to maintain it.

Since Elvis, the bonding-and-catharsis element of mass media has expanded to outdo anything that any politician can deliver. We describe an especially popular politician today as looking "like a rock star," rather than the other way around, after all.

After Elvis, the commercial culture of rock and roll simply occupied the mindspace that totalitarians need, and it out-competed them.

The same holds wherever people try to tyrannize the minds of men and women. It's no wonder that the Taliban opposed dancing and Western music, and no wonder that the increasingly desperate mullahs of Iran are flogging people for dancing at birthday parties. They can't compete with the King and his descendants. And they know it.

. @ArianaGrande delivered a message of hope to thousands of fans during her #OneLoveManchester concert. https://t.co/wA1FNPzvY8 pic.twitter.com/pOLPDELMBK

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 5, 2017

Ariana Grande. A Vera Lynn for our time?

Haley Barbour knows what women like

The view across the studio in the early morning light as Haley Barbour disarmed the ever loaded-for-bear Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe, the daybreak show that — like an accident just up ahead on the highway — you can't not watch. Mika wanted to talk "women's issues." Joe, aware of what sets her off, wanted to talk sports. Haley knew the way to postmodern feminist Mika's beating heart: "I want to talk about women." What a charmer. And there's meat on those bones.

"Barack Obama is the great uniter of the Republican party," the brilliant former Mississippi Governor and Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour cut through Mika Brzezinski's "war on women" false narrative on MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning. In Sun Tzu fashion, he slayed the MSNBC dragon without firing a shot. A swooning Mika didn't know what hit her.

Instalanche!

NAOMI WOLF, CALL YOUR OFFICE.

Crossposted at Riehl World News.

"I am big. It's the media that got small." Andrea Mitchell channels Norma Desmond

"A horse got me out of bed ... and living life," Ann Romney told the Ocala Star-Banner recently, referring to how horseback riding, and specifically the art of dressage, has helped her overcome some of the debilitating symptoms of MS. “Horses are great teachers. Horses are great companions. They bring us great joy," she enthused, but you'd have no idea of the depth and richness of her involvment were your primary "news" source MSNBC and Sarah Palin's "lamestream" media. Yes YOU, Lawrence O'Donnell. (CNN photo)

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up," quips Lisa B on Twitter, locating the perfect fictional equivalent of old-media delusions of grandeur in Gloria Swanson's "Sunset Boulevard" portrayal of faded silent-movie star Norma Desmond, descending from denial into madness:

I am big. It's the pictures that got small.

Or, as faded lamestream-media stars like Andrea Mitchell — who was caught by new-media star Sooper Mexican the other day smearing Mitt Romney by twisting his words into the JournoList narrative of choice — might put it:

I am big. It's the media that got small.

She's right. It's those annoying gadflies Juan Williams calls "just bloggers" and our fellow soldiers in Glenn Reynolds's Army of Davids, wielding our rhetorical weapons of choice through social media old and new, who are as mad as hell and are not going to take this any more!

Who is big? The Anchoress twitters the answer in response to a snotty New Yorker whine about Ann Romney's horse sense, "Do we have to cheer for Ann Romney at the Olympics":

What a small question.

Update: Almost forgot. Ms. Mitchell has been honing her journalistic "objectivity" skills for decades: This from "The Tribal Filter on Green News," Insight July 23, 1990:

There was applause from the pressies in conclave assembled, after which Andrea Mitchell, an NBC correspondent, said that "clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you'd have to call it advocacy."

 Update II: Teresa nails it in the comments:

When I saw the story pop up yesterday all I could think was... people still watch MSNBC? Really? Or are a few people listening in so they can grab twitter fodder?

Update III: David Hogberg ponders the question "Which end of the horse is Lawrence O'Donnell":

Surely O’Donnell has assistants who can look this stuff up for him. Or was it just too tempting for him to score cheap political points to bother with the research showing the benefits of hippotherapy on multiple sclerosis?

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Whitney Houston: If I should stay I would only be in your way

Singer Whitney Houston's untimely death at the age of 48 today has derailed the political clown cars off Matt Drudge's top of the fold and filled the Twitter stream with currents of emotional angst revealing more about the twitterers than Houston herself. We'd never thought much about the legendary singer one way or the other till tonight, when we heard of her passing, googled and discovered the transcendence of her Gospel-trained pop sound: I will always love you. We'd heard it before, just never made the connection. Breathtaking.

It was going to be all about Mitt Romney's twofer tonight and tomorrow on the Sunday talk shows — winning the CPAC straw poll and then the Maine caucuses! — but now a transcendent singer has died at 48, and politics will just have to wait. It's Whitney Houston 24/7 till further notice:

Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, died Saturday. She was 48.

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

According to tweeter vbspurs, who notes "Harris Faulkner admits on air that Fox News is reading tweets for breaking news," this is the "last photo of Whitney (a bit macabre, apologies): true Hollywood club, where she performed last night."

"It's a lifetime battle, just like alcoholics anonymous," Fox News forensic expert Michael Baden weighs in on the developing story of what may have happened to precipitate Houston's death "on the eve of the Grammy Awards." Lots of chatter about her allegedly abusive ex, Bobby Brown, who is said to be "beside himself" at the news. A lumper, not a splitter, we're not much interested in the gory details. It's the universal themes, what we can read about ourself in her words: 

The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Fight like a girl because you're not "just" a girl

Lively debate in the radio studio with Peter Ingemi (above) of DaTechGuyblog yesterday morning, then on to a "salon" at Borders Grille in Leominster with lotsa good food and drink and talk with local listeners, bloggers, radio talkers and writers.

"Mummy wanted a girl. At least one woman who didn't want a boy," we wrote our imail correspondent in high dudgeon in response to this bit of conventional wisdom that stuck in our craw this afternoon:

She: YET...for whatever reason, everbody wants a BOY!

We: In some cultures like Chinese, it apparently has to do with money ... inheritance and such ... course where does that come from? And where does it lead? [Not enough women for the men, not enough offspring to replace the old folks. Can you say Eurabia?]

She: Dowry is BIG, but … I feel blessed to have sons. I never had to go shopping at the MALL!!!

Peter invited Tuck into the studio, where he turned out to be a natural talker. Fun stuff. Then on to Borders for what our twitter friend Ginny aka ginthegin calls "Nip &Tuck."

We were discussing, of course, the latest bit of news from our friends on the genome side of the aisle about a new, relatively inexpensive lab test that tells you the sex of your prospective offspring before the life force ever has a chance to breathe free. There is something so wrong about playing God with that information, in our view. You're a married couple wanting a child, and you bypass nature's way to use modrin science to choose? So many unsavory things come tumbling out. The eternal sadness thinking about the little girl that might have been the light of your life. The way things turned out with the little boy who maybe didn't fulfill your dreams of him. Whatever. For us Thoreau's timeless words ring true:

The most alive is the wildest. Not yet tamed by man, it refreshes him.

Arrggghhh! We say that as the one-year-younger sister of a totally awesome older brother, best buddies when we were Joe and Mike having kicka fights in the early years, but then went our separate ways for years in the wake of this mentality:

We: I want to do it too. How come he can and I can't?

Mummy: Because you're a girl.

Don't remember the issue, but "because you're a girl" was seared, seared in our memory. We were a Sarah Palin "fight like a girl" gal from day one and never bought in to the boys-are-better narrative. When the Gramscian march through the institutions hijacked the feminist project with the postmodern woman-as-victim narrative, we were horrified. That's probably why we tossed our hat to the sky and shouted for joy: It's a girl? when Sarah Palin sprung onto the national stage three years back.

Update: Bill Quick of Daily Pundit links.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Rep. Weiner: "You and I have different values"

"I hate that stupid picture of me in the blue. I'm standing in the mirror making a weird face, why would anyone use that?" twittered a sadder-but-wiser Gennette Cordova this morning in a series of 140-or-fewer-character expressions of disgust with media distortions of her image, both physical and psychological, since last Friday, when Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism broke the Big Story that came to be known as Weinergate. Above, Photoshopped "mirror" images of Cordova based upon her Twitter avatar.

"If calling out publications for their inaccurate/shoddy journalism is stirring the pot, so be it," twittered justifiably miffed Seattle journalism student Gennette Cordova this morning, attempting to regain her balance in the aftermath of being mugged by the reality of business-as-usual journalistic spin. It was the left-leaning Politico and the right-leaning New York Post who, she said, had spun her own and her mother's words to sensationalize and distort the facts as she knows them in the Weinergate scandal. Salaciousness sells! In the case of Politico, for example, compare the political journal's headline with Cordova's follow-up tweet:

Politico: "Seattle student: Weiner photo meant for porn star."

Cordova on Twitter: "It wasn't an interview. I spoke candidly with someone posing as a photog assistant. And I never said the picture was meant for a porn star. He [Politico reporter] suggested it and I said maybe. I don't know and don't care."

Update Cordova to Reuven Fenton at New York Post: I clearly remember you suggesting the idea about the porn star, as well as me [sic] being "collateral damage."

Sadder but wiser, indeed. A cautionary tale for young lovelies who "just want to have fun" to be wary of the skeevy allure of little big men like "The Ick-arus of Capitol Hill" prowling the internet. A self-described "progressive," Cordova describes the moment "When Gen met Tony":

Actually I became a fan after I saw him demolish Bachmann on Hannity about 2 months ago. It was great.

"You and I have different values. That's what this fight is about," said Congressman Weiner in a rare moment of truthtelling during a March 16 shouting match debate with Rep Michele Bachmann (MN-6) on Hannity. Oh, the irony.

Can you say eye of the beholder? Here on the Tea Party side of the aisle, of course, we saw Bachmann demolish Weiner.

Note: Hats off to Michelle Malkin for turning us on to SnapBird, an invaluable aid in following Twitter conversations:

As an avid Twitter user myself, I use the SnapBird archive to search old tweets You can search anyone’s public tweets through the service.

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

Krauthammer's Complaint

"I want to be the one to walk in the sun," Cyndi Lauper explains in "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," a pop cultural artifact that mystically embodies the spirit of Sarah Palin's fierce determination and authentic American voice that captured the hearts and minds of so many of us burgeoning Tea Partiers way back when. Or so we think.

"Krauthammer cannot 'get out more,'" writes blog buddy Gayle Miller of And you thought YOU were Cranky in the comments to our previous post, "Sarah Palin loves New York!" We were going to mention Gayle's observations in an update, but they're so darned insightful and well expressed that we're giving her top billing:

It would shake his complacently settled view of the world! Much as I adore the man — and his brilliant mind — and much as I am of an age with the Northeast Corridor fuddy duddies, what has happened is that mentally I have remained fresh and young! I revel in the uproar and turmoil attendant since Mrs. Palin's arrival on the scene. May it continue long enough to dispose of all of those fusty mental midgets that the "Elite Media" is trying to foist on the right! The so-called frontrunners are nothing more than the people being promoted in the media right now, much as they promoted John McCain in 2008. Once he had the nomination, they crucified him, and that's what they'll do with the new Republican nominee — if they are permitted to do so.

Couldn't have said it better ourselves.

Update: More good thoughts from elaine in the comments:

I usually like Dr. K, too; but when it comes to Palin or the Tea Party, he, like so many of the beltway in-crowd, has a huge blind spot. Remember how he and his fuddy-duddy pals poo-pooed the TPers when the movement got started? And then kept on poo-pooing them even when it became clear they weren't going away any time soon? Dr. K and his pals like to talk about the electorate, as if they know our minds, but they've been behind the curve the whole way. At every step, they've misjudged. And they're the ones ostensibly on OUR side!!! Dr. K can make all the smarty-smart pronouncements that he likes that Palin isn't electable. Just because he said it doesn't make it so. I'm looking forward to the day when I can say, "Told you so!" to fuds like him …

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

70 years ago today

"Baby inspects roses from Goomp that arrived this morning," we captioned this image six years ago today in our March 25, 2005 post "64 years ago today."

"70 years ago today we drove through snow and sleet to get married. Love, Dad," says the card accompanying a lovely "presentation bouquet" of pink roses — garnished with eucalyptus sprigs, asparagus fern and baby's breath — from Goomp. The occasion? The anniversary of his romantic elopement with our mother when they were just a couple of college kids in love. They drove from Medford, MA to Manchester, NH and returned to their Tufts dormitory rooms the same evening. Their first night together as Mr. and Mrs. had to wait until the following weekend. The rest is history. Thanks, Goomp, for blessing us with your sentimental and enduring love for Mummy.

"I wish she were here," he just i-mailed us a moment ago. As we wrote in our December 7, 2004 post "A most incandescent light":

In her family's heart Mary lives on, beckoning us all to be the best that we can be.

The supporting role of political spouse did not suit Ms. Taylor

"When a man loves a woman . . . Sen. John Warner has no shame, as his absurd marriage to Liz Taylor in 1976 (above) and his pathetic attempt at intimidating Lt. General David Petraeus yesterday attest," we captioned this image of Liz and her sixth back in January of 2007. (©2005 TopFoto / AP)

Chelsea, March 23, 2011. In recognition of the splendiferous, eminently quotable — "I have a woman's body and a child's emotions" — Elizabeth Taylor's passing from this vale of tears this day, a republication of our January 2007 post confirming her sensible decision to divorce Husband #6 John Warner when she realized it was all about him:

Many regarded Ms. Taylor’s glamour as a chief reason for the relatively unknown Warner, a former secretary of the Navy, getting a Senate seat in 1978. The supporting role as political spouse did not suit Ms. Taylor, and she returned to a life where she was undoubtedly the main attraction.

Our four-year-old post resonates. Plus ça change:

Chelsea, January 24, 2007. "Addressing the crisis in leadership among American boys and young men" was the topic of pc-lite Esquire author Tom Chiarella's brave new article last summer, "The Problem with Boys." The soon-to-be commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, Lt. General David Petraeus, was one of the earnest author's expert witnesses. We stumbled upon the thoughtful if somewhat annoyingly naive piece as we were getting up to speed on the man of the hour that Thomas P.M. Barnett in another Esquire article called "the closest thing the Army has to its own Lawrence of Arabia." Chiarella skirts delicately around the edges of the insidious Marxist feminist anti-boys-will-be-boys movement of the last few decades that has turned Mother Nature's "snakes and snails and puppy dogs' tails" into carriers of a "disorder" that must be kept at bay by the administration of Ritalin and other inadequately tested drugs that kill the soul and may precipitate murderous acts [see Columbine]. Speaking of a young, rudderless friend named Gerald, Ciarella -- seemingly channeling John "Stuck-in-Iraq" Kerry -- writes:

He's got no way to grab on to the culture of work. Nowhere to go, except Iraq maybe. They keep raising the bonus for enlistment; they keep tempting him to put himself in the mix. I always think he's a bag of flesh to them, a bullet stopper.

Reading that military-culture-challenged bit of drivel, we gagged and nearly clicked away in disgust, but remembering that Lt. General Petraeus had brought us to the site, we read on and were duly rewarded with Chiarella's reportage of the General's take:

I tell him about the boys I know, about how I'm concerned that the Army may be the only option for a kid like Gerald. "That's the problem," he says. "It may not be an option for him. We have a profile we're looking for; we need high school graduates who are physically fit and driven by the desire for self-improvement. We need men who are prepared to be better soldiers.

"I see the same things you do. The numbers are declining among boys," he says, clearing his throat. "I always call them men.

"What boys need," says Petraeus, "are role models, parental supervision, encouragement to pursue excellence in all that they do, especially in education, where we must do whatever is necessary to keep them in school." Old stuff, but tried and true and often lost amidst today's multiculti pc cacaphony:

They need direction to stay on the straight and narrow, a push to participate in athletics and extracurricular activities, help to pursue a healthy lifestyle, recognition that they must be accountable for their actions, and reinforcement of good performance.

We couldn't help but think of those aging Peter-Pan boys -- and girls -- in the Senate who made such fools of themselves yesterday when they bypassed the opportunity to ask General Petraeus to educate them -- and us -- with his vast store of knowledge about the subject at hand, the "way forward" in Iraq. Instead they used the opportunity of Petraeus's confirmation hearing to -- what else? -- grandstand at will. Our favorite exchange came after Sen. Lieberman asked Petraeus whether Senate resolutions condemning White House Iraq policy "would give the enemy some comfort":

Petraeus agreed they would, saying, "That's correct, sir."

Liz Taylor's ex, Sen. John Warner, went ballistic, warning Petraeus not to step on prima donnas' toes:

We're not a division here today of patriots who support the troops and those who are making statements and working on resolutions that could be translated as aiding and abetting the enemy. We're trying to exercise the fundamental responsibilities of our democracy and how this nation has two co-equal branches of the government, each bearing its own responsibilities.

I hope that this colloquy has not entrapped you into some responses that you might later regret. I wonder if you would just give me the assurance that you'll go back and examine the transcript as to what you replied with respect to certain of these questions and review it, because we want you to succeed.

We expect intimidation from the left and from campaign finance "reform" types like John McCain. How disappointing to see John Warner going wobbly when the going gets tough. As Gen. Petraeus told Esquire author Tom Chiarella, "We have a profile we're looking for." Would that our fellow citizens who vote these people into office had such standards.

Update: The Anchoress links.

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

Palin Envy, a freudian diagnosis for our cojones-challenged GOP establishment?

"I'm interested in the gratuitous disparagement of men whose looks and personal style fail to track the masculine stereotype," Ann Althouse (above) took Rush Limbaugh to task this morning over his sissy-laced rant about Wikileaker Julian Assange: "I like Rush Limbaugh and have defended him many times, in front of people who tend to hate you if you say anything good about him, so I think my opinion on the subject has special weight … And let me invite Rush to … diavlog with me about the so-called chickification problems that plague our world today." Video here.

"Loved this that you told the Big Guy," we wrote in the comments of Althouse's incandescent, must-experience video-post "Here I am listening — for the first time — to Rush Limbaugh talking about me":

To say men are like women when they're being cowardly and weak. I don't like it ... Also, some chickification is a good thing. Women have a lot to offer. Think about it.

Exactly. As we wrote a few months back about the so-called feminization of our culture:

It isn't "feminization" at all, but, rather, postmodern, identity-politics "feminism" — one of a cascade of unfortunate byproducts of the Gramscian march through the institutions — that has given us an increasingly impotent chattering class of credulous Chris Matthewses of both sexes.

Twittering this morning about the latest effluence from that impotent chattering class — MSNBC's "house conservative" Joe Scarborough's Journolist/Cabalist temper tantrum about Sarah Palin's "anti-intellectual" and "dopey dream" of being president, and how come nobody's paying attention to me!? (h/t Dan Riehl) — we stumbled upon this seductive metaphor from Lisa B:

Now we have a new psychological disorder in addition to Palin Derangement Syndrome. Palin Envy is rampant! Paging Dr. Sigmund Freud! :)

As we said in response:

Your Freudian "PALIN ENVY" is brilliant, by the way, given the cojones-challenged state of our GOP establishment. :)

Update: Scarborough tantrum top story on Memeorandum.

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update III: Larwyn's Linx links.

Update IV: Althouse talks back in "Sissy on 'sissy'":

Yesterday, I had a problem with Rush Limbaugh using the word "sissy" over and over again to express his feelings about Julian Assange. That, understandably, caught the attention of Sissy Willis. Because she's a Sissy but not a sissy, she did not react with I Feel Bad About My Name: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman. She wrote to riff on something I said in my listening-to-Rush-Limbaugh video.

Be sure to check out the comments, a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly:

You've got to admire Sissy Willis's ovaries.

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.