sisu

Present at the re-creation

Twitter buddy Pete602 caught old-style pols Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Diane Feinstein in the social-media headlights of a newly empowered electorate this morning:

If Schiff and Feinstein want to see "Russian bots" they can look out the window.
We are their "bots" and we have torches and pitchforks.#tcot #pjnet #p2 pic.twitter.com/sixFOhgNBh

— pete602 (@petefrt) January 24, 2018

Like Peter Finch's Howard Beale, we are "mad as hell," but unlike Beale's passive television audience who "do whatever the tube tells you," we deplorables can see behind the curtain and don't have to let fake-news pols get away with their tendentious false narratives any more. Case in point, the power of the twitter hashtag to spread the word. Jim Hoft at GatewayPundit explains:

BOOM! Twitter DESTROYS Adam Schiff and Sen. Feinstein: Internal Analysis Finds NO RUSSIAN BOTS Behind #ReleaseTheMemo.

Last week, the House Intelligence Committee quietly voted to make available to fellow House members “a memo documenting abuse of the FISA program,” reports Fox News’s Chad Pergram.

As TGP’s Cristina Laila reported previously — News of the FISA memo spread like wildfire on social media. Trump supporters pushed a #ReleaseTheMemo campaign after GOP Reps came forward demanding the document be released to the American public.

We were part of that Reynoldsian grassroots Army of Davids that tweeted early and often in the last few days using the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag and inundated Schiff’s office with phone calls confirming we are not Russian bots.

Desperate Democrats like Adam Schiff (above) trotted out their shopworn Russia, Russia, Russia narrative to try to hold back the cascade of truth spilling out over the damn of official lies.

Then came the Democrats' lame attempt to stem the tide:

On Tuesday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) urged Twitter and Facebook to conduct a thorough forensic examination into the #ReleaseTheMemo campaign as ‘potentially an ongoing attack by Kremlin-linked social media actors’ also referred to as “Russian bots.”  

But we weren't buying, and neither was Twitter itself: 

Even The Leftist Daily Beasty Boys Concede: "Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo" https://t.co/d1HDWsAQD4

— Andrew Bostom (@andrewbostom) January 24, 2018

Thanks to the power of social media, You CAN fight City Hall.

Update: Too delicious not to note:

Russian bots might be behind controversial #ReleaseTheMemo campaign, Democrats say https://t.co/soqCdt1gyN pic.twitter.com/oSR7jSnKX4

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) January 24, 2018

"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?

His major coup "was getting women to smoke"

"With no phone to call for help, I used my bobsled push training to break out," quipped Olympian Johnny Quinn this morning, adding his voice to the latest Twitter trending topic, #SochiProblems. We love Quinn's All-American, can-do (pun intended) solution to post-Soviet lavatory logistical problems being encoutered by athletes and visitors alike at the winter Olympics sponsored by former KGB officer Vladimir Putin's Russia.

We're no fan of moral-equivalency guru Noam Chomsky's. But what he had to say a few years back about public relations as propaganda in fancy dress rings true and sheds light on the recent controversy over that Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad with its dreamy cinematography of doe-eyed children singing "America the Beautiful" in seven languages. All sugary innocence. Why did it make us feel as though the good folks at Coke were rubbing our noses in it? Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart explains:

The ad instantly provoked a deeply polarized response on social media, with conservatives ripping the ad for promoting multiculturalism with a deeply patriotic anthem. 

On the multiculti side, there were smug, self-congratulatory sermons scolding melting-pot types like ourselves for xenophobic/racist views we do not hold:

At this point, we shouldn’t be shocked by the intolerance of some towards immigrants and other cultures.  But who could’ve predicted the outrage we saw over the Coca-Cola commercial that aired during last night’s Super Bowl?!

Mosaicist vs assimilationist:

And to be honest, the notion of “E pluribus unum” is more relevant today than it was in 1782 because of our nation’s evolving demographics…

In the years to come, it will be a learning experience for all [of] us as our nation evolves into an even more beautiful mosaic.

Eye of the beholder, but even among allies there is dispute. When we learned this morning that Coke had belatedly added E pluribus unum to the opening frames of the commercial, we twittered our delight. But some on our side of the aisle were calling the whole thing a distraction, protesting that "making a fuss" over the Coke ad was distracting social-media voices from their primary task of holding Republican leaders' feet to the fire over Obama & Company's "comprehensive immigration" campaign:

I'm all for adding #EPluribusUnum to anything but I can't see making a fuss about a coke ad in the first place @SissyWillis @Drudge_Report

— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) February 8, 2014

Far more important to keep the pressure on @SpeakerBoehner than on coke in terms of the issue @mtranquilnight @SissyWillis @DRUDGE_REPORT

— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) February 8, 2014

Which brings us back to Chomsky and Edward Bernays and the title of this post. Chomsky writes of Bernays:

His major coup, the one that really propelled him into fame in the late 1920s, was getting women to smoke. Women didn't smoke in those days and he ran huge campaigns for Chesterfield. You know all the techniques—models and movie stars with cigarettes coming out of their mouths and that kind of thing. He got enormous praise for that. So he became a leading figure of the industry, and his book was the real manual.

Similarly, those charming hyphenated-American children are trying to get LoFo (low information) Super Bowl viewers to absorb Coke's amnesty agenda:

The controversy surrounding Coca-Cola's Super Bowl ad has focused public attention on the company's pro-amnesty agenda. With the majority of its revenue coming from its international business, the company has long been known for its globalist rather than American world view.

As Andrew Breitbart famously tried to teach conservatives, culture is upstream of politics.

Update:

@mtranquilnight Me too. Tried to broach the subject among friends the other day, and no one was interested :)@DaTechGuyblog

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) February 8, 2014

Amazing Grace: Is Rick Santorum the new Sarah Palin?

"I believe in free people and free markets," Rick Santorum told a spirited and well-informed town hall audience last night in Brentwood, a few miles down the road from our hometown, Exeter, New Hampshire. We caught the event in C-SPAN reruns this morning and were struck once again at the disconnect between old-media caricatures of "Soaring Santorum" and the man himself we're coming to know and admire through a full panoply of media, old and new. More on that below. Program Note: We're heading up to Manchester Saturday for "an evening of ruminating, riffing & debate watching" with National Review's Jonah Goldberg and company.

"The interest was palpable in Santorum’s first New Hampshire event since the caucuses," reports the Boston Globe as the former Pennsylvania senator steps up to the "very short but open window" of opportunity [Dana Perino's words on Fox this morning] to grab the nation's attention in this frenetically condensed primary season. First a few facts and then a bit of commentary:

The former senator from Pennsylvania has been a frequent, if under-the-radar, presence on the stump in New Hampshire for the past four months. But after surging to within eight votes of winning Iowa Tuesday, Santorum faced a standing-room only crowd at the Rockingham County nursing home hall …

The room, which had capacity to seat 160 people, was packed with voters and journalists standing in the aisles and lining the walls. It was a sharp contrast to his 100-plus previous town halls in New Hampshire, some of which attracted just a few dozen people … A campaign aide said Santorum plans to stay in New Hampshire through the primary Tuesday.

"This economy is suffering because this administration is crushing it with regulations," Santorum told town hallers last night. "Why are they doing it?" Because they know better than you. They don't trust you to make those decisions … The principle reason I'm in this race is because of Obamacare because I think Obamacare will turn every American into a dependent American … and the more dependent he can make you, the more power he has over you ….Obamacare is the tipping point." If you have the time, be sure to listen to the whole thing. See also James Pethokoukis's "Santorum vs. Romney is a conflict of conservative visions" for an enlightening discussion of two political world views, "traditional conservatism vs modern, free-market conservatism."  

"It's all about media and momentum," says Fox political analyst Larry Sabato, seemingly troubled that "the process is being rushed. One reason why no big themes are being developed is because there isn't time." But there IS time, Dr. Sabato, and there ARE big themes if you know where to look, that "panoply of media, old and new" where fans of the Shining City can disintermediate the lamestream media narrative at will: C-SPAN, blogs, facebook, twitter, not to mention the town halls themselves, under the radar till Tuesday's "unexpected" Iowa caucus results.

Now a larger audience is getting a taste of this authentic, thoughtful, knowledgeable, deliberative, experienced, articulate, principled, humorous and good-hearted man, very much a formidable opponent in any debate with the current Leader of the Free World. And this "flavor of the week" appears to be sticking to the ribs. As Fox anchor Bret Baier just retweeted:

RT @jeffzeleny Santorum not only draws big crowd, he holds their attention in Northfield. Long answers, but classic NH Q&A voters have been craving. #fitn

Like those NH voters, Tea Partiers like us — behind enemy lines here in Taxachusetts — have been craving "long answers." To our surprise, "Darwinian Libertarian" that we are, we haven't been so energized by a candidate's words and manner since that day in late August of 2008 when Sarah Palin burst onto the national stage.

Update: Bruce B. AKA Chickelit in twitter:

Santorum has many of the same archenemies in the media as Palin--so there's that similarity too.

BTW, I think your blogpost took heuvos. I hope you're not attacked.

Update II: Santorum's "Faith, Family & Freedom" tour schedule via our behatted men on the spot, longtime Santorum supporters Stacy McCain and Pete Ingemi. Here's the latest:

Axis of Fedora Update Manchester NH 12:50 p.m.

Greetings From the Granite State!

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Palin Undefeated: It's the crony capitalism, stupid!

This weekend Steve Bannon's Palin documentary ‘The Undefeated’ will be available On Demand and Pay-Per-View from a major cable or satellite company near you. We wrote about the movie — sight unseen — last June in "Palin Undefeated: 'A story of empowerment for modern women and their daughters.'" Now we can put our money where our mouth was, in the comfort of our own home. Above, sugar-and-spice Sarah (center) with her siblings.

Funny how incurious the "intellectually curious" hive mind of the left can be when it comes to all things Sarah Palin. The latest is a classic blinders-on, Journolist-talking-points-in-hand "review" of Steve Bannon's Palin Documentery "The Undefeated." (h/t Tim Graham of News Busters). Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday is the mouthpiece of this particular outpouring of Palin envy. A few excerpts and then our take:

Based on her modest demeanor and record of budget, energy and ethics reform in Alaska, it’s easy to see her appeal to McCain, who called Palin while she was at the Alaska State Fair to ask her to run for veep. What "The Undefeated" doesn’t explain — in addition to the title "Undefeated" when Palin was, actually, defeated in 2008 — is how a woman whose early career had been dedicated to transcending partisan politics became such a ferocious political warrior while on the stump. Instead, Bannon sets Palin up as a victim — of liberals, of establishment conservatives and of the "lamestream media" that his subject has become so skilled at manipulating (a talent the filmmaker strangely neglects to mention).

About that title, "The Undefeated." Ever heard of wordplay, Ms. Hornaday? Sarah Palin may have lost an election, but she fights like a girl! Disintermediating the powers that be, she picked herself up and got back in the race. The words of Sun Tzu come to mind:

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

Then there's Hornaday's fixation with "trascending partisan politics." You see a lot of that from the left, presumably hoping to catch the eye — and poll-tested votes — of the mushy middle. How could a "non-partisan" Palin who rooted out corruption in her OWN PARTY become "such a ferocious political warrior while on the stump"? It's the crony capitalism, stupid. Real Clear Politics has the scoop:

In her speech at the bucolic National Balloon Classic field in Indianola [tomorrow], Palin will lean on loaded phrases like “crony capitalism” and “permanent political class” in laying out her view of the U.S. political system’s deep-rooted ills, according to a source close to Palin and familiar with the content of the speech.

And this from National Review:

“She will also talk, more broadly, about how she is not enamored of the political class, both Republicans and Democrats, who do not deserve to be elected if they only continue the status quo,” the source continues. “She will discuss corporate lobbyists, White House operatives, and others who enable the vested interests.” Many of the themes from her recent Facebook post, “Conquering the Storm,” will be mentioned.

Will she or won't she? Dan Riehl says "yes" on Twitter:

Overseas trip had to be Palin's last check box. She's getting in.

Disintermediate at will:

The former Alaska Governor is scheduled to attend the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, where she will speak alongside global economic leaders like Larry Summers and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The conference begins Oct. 11, the same day as the GOP primary debate hosted by Bloomberg in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Update: Doug Ross Larwyn's Lynx link.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Jedediah Bila: "Elitism is what's eating away at our country"

Like many of her admirers, we first came upon leg-chair lovely Jedediah Bila early one morning in the "take-no-prisoners" parry and thrust of Greg Gutfeld's "Red Eye" on Fox.

"I always have thought that elitism — on the left and the right — is what's eating away at our country," writes "Hot Conservative American" columnist and commentator Jedediah Bila in her new book, Outnumbered: Chronicles of a Manhattan Conservative, an album of anecdotal moments in the making of a "conservative girl with a twist." 

"I followed my heart — as always — and have held dear the wise words of my former college professor to "sit down, trust it, and write” when I feel lost. It never disappoints me," Jedediah explains the eureka moment in March of 2009 when "my focus on writing political commentary was born."

It's a fun and easy read — sweet and savory — and sticks to the ribs. We downloaded Outnumbered onto our desktop Kindle app yesterday morning and finished before cocktail hour, devouring tasty morsels amongst the usual multitaskings of a busy day. Arranged as a series of vignettes based upon everyday encounters with the politically correct multiculturalists of the upperclass milieu she moved in as a Spanish teacher at a Manhattan private school, Jedediah's story is full of aphoristic quotable quotes suitable for promulgating on Twitter. A sampling:

Kids are supposed to go to school to learn HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

I learned that what people say about you has a lot more to do with them than with you.

It's incredible how a mind prone to collectivism will quickly try to impose that same branding on you.

I treasure people who come to this country with big goals, loads of ambition and an inspiring work ethic.

"They felt the need to 'remind' me that Obama is a 'genius,' Palin is an 'idiot,' and anything and everything is George W. Bush’s fault," Jedediah recalled sitting through lockstep faculty-lounge chatter in the aftermath of President Obama's election.

Back to that quote in the title to our post:

I always have thought that elitism — on the left and the right — is what's eating away at our country.

Jedediah's insight resonates in a series of eureka moments of our own dating back, perhaps, to early spring of 2009 when we found our voice as an anti-statist Tea Party activist. As we wrote last year in "Gramsci's long march through the institutions ends at the water's edge":

Then came Angelo Codevilla's palate-cleansing revelation that neither statist democrats nor nominally limited-government republicans gave a darn about the electorate. It was the Ruling Class vs the Country Class. Enter stage right the Tea Party and Barbara Bush's unmasking when she revealed her contempt for you and me. And now the cascade of outrageous intrusions on our Bill of Rights.

"I thought the academic elite were supposed to represent the pinnacle of sophistication?" notes Jedediah in mock surprise:

Oh, wait. That's only when they agree with you.

William Staneski observed the phenomenon — a case of "epistemic closure' in the trendy parlance of the day — as it applies to another of our cultural institutions, the media, in an American Thinker piece awhile back:

It is said that a fish is not aware of the water in which it swims since it is totally immersed in it. This is the way cultural Marxism is taking over our world in its inexorable Gramscian march. We swim in it. It enters every pore of our existence. It is everywhere. We can't escape it. Many people accept this world without even realizing it, just as the fish accepts the water in which it swims. They don't realize it as the left creates new conventional wisdom and new intuitions about truth …

Curiously, whereas the conservative media know they are conservative, much of the liberal media believe themselves to be neutral.

Their constant support for Democratic views has nothing to do with bias, in their minds, but reflects the fact that Democrats just happen to be right about everything. The result is the same: for much of the media, the fact that Republicans keep winning can only be due to the backwardness of much of the country.

“Perhaps Mark Levin said it best when speaking of his dog Sprite in his touching book, Rescuing Sprite: 'But the truth is, Sprite did more for us than we ever could have done for him.' I feel exactly the same way about Emma," Jedediah wrote at her blog a few months back about her precious Maltese Emma, featured in a portfolio of images in the final pages of Outnumbered. "She has taught me more about trust, loyalty, commitment, and honesty than I could ever have dreamt of teaching her."

Update: Maggie's Farm links! Thanks, Bird Dog.

Update: Jedediah links!

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

The Royal Wedding: It's the optics, stupid

 

 "The guys in the office are pretty stoked about the Aston Martin the Royal couple just drove around in," twittered CNN Showbiz Tonight reporter Brittany Kaplan a couple of minutes ago as the newly minted Duke and Duchess of Cambridge motored off from the first royal wedding reception to Clarence house with Prince William at the wheel, the getaway car bedecked with ribbons and trailing balloons. "He's making one of the points they wanted to make," added another CNN commentor on the scene near Buckingham Palace: Amidst all the glamor, "he wants to feel freer, in charge, trying to create a sense of normalcy." A "People's Princess" kind of thing, but with decorum. (AP Photo)

"Most Worthless Breaking News Alert Ever?' headlined Steve L. Taylor at Outside the Beltway, signaling fellow members of the Fuddy-Duddy community that for discerning fellows like himself, the pageantry and romance of Wills's and Kate's royal wedding that had filled the airwaves and swelled hearts and tear ducts around the world — an estimated two billion watched — early morning (ET) were a trivial distraction from more important matters. Like Stacy McCain's little Princess, we ourselves were enraptured, but Taylor and a lot of opinionators out there in the twittersphere, blogosphere and on TV — yes you, Shepard Smith — missed the story: It's the optics, stupid. "It was just so lovely to watch," said one CNN commenter. Swept up in the overwhelming sense of community and good humor amongst well wishers outside Buckingham Palace following the Westminster Abbey ceremony, she got the scoop:

The couple is being seen by so many as England's future.

And despite a sluggish economy and the indignities of socialized medicine, that future's looking up. We're reminded of the Duke of Cambridge's great grandmother, the  Queen Mother Elizabeth, who "helped the House of Windsor survive the abdication crisis and cheered Britons on through the horrors of World War II." They say young William has learned from the experience of his parents, tragically exploited throughout their ill-fated marriage by a predatory media. We liked Monica Crowley's take:

The fact that the marriage of Diana and Charles collapsed most spectacularly has a lot of us rooting for his son and his new bride. Kate is adorable, and the two of them look like they really are marrying for love and not for some palace-directed purpose.

There is a lot of hate flying around these days. It's nice to see some true love once in a while. It exists. It was on our televisions (very) early this morning. President Obama once talked of "hope and change." I think William and Kate represent it more truly: hope that their union survives and thrives, and a generational change to a hopelessly stuffy monarchy.

Update: Astute observations from our dear friend Miss Kelly in the comments:

As a good Catholic, I enjoy and respect pageantry, and this event had it in spades. The beautiful music, the architecture of the cathedral, the happy and orderly crowds, the attire and varied uniforms all signifying order, hierarchy, symmetry, beauty - it's the sort of event that says there is order in the world and the adults are in charge again.

Update II: Couldn't resist our British twitterfriend The Aged P's "Reflections":

The sheer enthusiasm and goodwill of the people who came to watch disarmed my pessimism … They came as individuals, families, neighbours and friends of their own free will to celebrate a joyous event. They came with banners, flags and placards that proclaimed a patriotic pride and messages of affection and goodwill for two young people who were about to make a public pledge of love and commitment … It augurs well for the future, I fancy … This is a woman who comes from a loving family and therefore knows how to love.

They sound kinda like Tea Party folks on this side of the pond.

Update III: CNN's Brit corrrespondent Richard Quest has the last word:

This was the restoration of the House of Windsor!

Update IV: Instalanche:

Is it all about the optics?

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Where Eagles Care

Can't get enough of the Decorah Bald Eagle family drama — "The most alive is the wildest" — available for your viewing pleasure here. Reading into the couple's every encounter. So intense, so devoted to each other and their brood but not without moments of "Come on, honey, give me a break." They're just like us.

Changing of the guard in the early morning light.

Hey, girl, I've been out predating for hours.

Light of my life, but give me some down time on the nest, sweetbeak.

When love comes so strong …

Firsthatched moved beyond the brooding breast this afternoon toward the outer parts of the nest to peck away at the carcass of the crow brought in yesterday without the intercession of the parental beak to beak. They grow up so fast. Two eaglets, one egg to go.

The Social Network: Deconstructing "centuries' worth of privilege and access"

"Fading in from black, an ethereal female chorus sings 'I don't care if it hurts/I want to have control/Iwant a perfect body/Iwant a perfect soul/I want you to notice/When I'm not around … I don't belong here,' building intensity alongside a haunting solo piano" in the trailer to "The Social Network." We haven't seen it yet (tomorrow!), but already it occupies our perfect body and our perfect soul. It resonates with the ur theme of our blog, the importance of being noticed by the other members of the tribe: Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in the trailer: "I need to do something substantial in order to get the attention of the clubs."

"It's about the ability of a new media class to deconstruct centuries' worth of privilege and access that would've won in every other generation but now," writes Frank Chi at HuffPo, reviewing the movie that's the talk of the "sphere." First a bit about TSN itself, and then a bit of analysis. Now playing at a theater near you, David Fincher's "lightning-fast dramatization of the disputatious founding of Facebook" is "a grandly entertaining reminder of everything we used to go to the movies for (and still can’t get online)," writes Joshua Rothkopf at TimeOut New York:

… sparkling dialogue, thorny situations, soulful performances, and an unusually open-ended and relevant engagement with a major social issue of the day: how we (dis)connect. Forget about damage control — if I were billionaire site exec Mark Zuckerberg, I’d be down on my knees in gratitude for an origin story this brainy, suggestive and, yes, flattering. Sort of … 

The Social Network zings along like nothing attempted since the heady days of Paddy Chayefsky. (We might be looking at the heir to his darkly dazzling Network.)

An heir to Chayefsky's "darkly dazzling Network," indeed. It's in the air. This from Dan, who's been pounding the idea forever, often to deaf ears in the upper reaches of the GOP:

Thanks in large part to new media, politics as usual will not continue to be usual in the future … The system is broken, and it needs to be broken up.

As usual, Glenn Harlan Reynolds is primi inter pares, from his cyberancient Army of Davids (2006) to his latest must-read Washington Examiner column, "Tea Party dominance was inevitable — and I told you so." He quotes a prescient April 15, 2009 column on the topic:

General disgust has drawn a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena …

This influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation. The mainstream Republican Party still seems limp and disorganized. This grassroots effort may revitalize it. Or the tea-party movement may lead to a new third party that may replace the GOP, just as the GOP replaced the fractured and hapless Whigs.

"Really, that was only last year? Seems like it's been around for three years, anyway," says Tuck as we reminisce about our first Boston Tea Party on that same April day last year. Meanwhile, a clueless Thomas Friedman gets the "disgust" vs "rage" distinction but continues to be astounded:

I continue to be astounded by the level of disgust with Washington, D.C., and our two-party system — so much so that I am ready to hazard a prediction: Barring a transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties, there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her — one definitely big enough to impact the election’s outcome.

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update II: Trending on Memeorandum.

Update III: Instalanche!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Bristol Palin is following in her mother's footsteps, embracing and exploiting social media in new ways

The chemistry between an ebullient Bristol Palin and her gallant partner Mark Ballas trumped all the glitz and glamour of "Dancing with the Stars" Monday night as the enchanted couple's joyous two-step consummated in a sweet and sassy "eskimo kiss" (above). As we wrote in the comments of Cubachi's must-read "Bristol Palin: Opening the door for conservatives in pop culture?" at Riehl World View, "Bristol is following in her mother's footsteps, embracing and exploiting social media in new ways that allow these stalwart, spirited women to bypass the tired gateway media and shape "the narrative" — in words and images — in their own image." See also Cubachi's latest exegesis of Palin Derangement Syndrome: "As Rush said, the liberals will tell you who they fear the most."

"What is this 'neutral journalism' of which you speak?" we just wrote in the comments of Ben Smith's history-challenged "On Fox, where's the outrage?" Like the President himself, Smith has chosen to deal with the unpleasant reality of having lost control of "the narrative" by spinning tales of an idealized past and projecting his own tribe's unself-aware cheerleading for the left onto Fox News' "fair and balanced" hearing for the right:

I'm not sure expressions of "outrage" at the hijacking of what was, for a time, a more neutral form are all that useful. After all, neutral journalism is a historical blip. But certainly, reporters don't have to take Fox at its word on its own "balance" any more than we have to take a politician at his word.

Indeed. Any more than WE have to take an effete and flailing legacy media at its word. As we continued in Smith's comments:

I'm guessing you share the President's fantasy of a "golden age of an objective press [Journolist/Cabalist lives!] that was a pretty narrow span of time in our history." Narrow, indeed. It never existed. The gateway media's heyday in the1960s and 1970s, when Walter Cronkite was "the most trusted man in America," was dominated by a left-biased point of view. Now that new media have enabled us unwashed over here on the right side of the aisle to disintermediate the powers that be via the internet, the legacy media is reinventing history.

"Coverage that treats Fox as an observer, not a player, will miss much of the point," concludes Smith. Welcome to the club, sir. We've been a dues-paying member for years. Tigerhawk — cited in our October 2006 post "If they were wrong about Vietnam, their entire worldview is in question" — put his finger on the power dynamics at play in those halcyon days of "neutral journalism":

At the time the media perceived and promoted the Tet offensive as a great victory for the enemy. In an age when the network anchors deployed truly awesome power, Walter Cronkite destroyed Lyndon Johnson's chances for re-election when he editorialized that we were "mired in stalemate." President Johnson declared "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America" and withdrew from the 1968 presidential campaign.

Tet, however, was not a military disaster for the United States.

Truly awesome power? Isn't that what the Declaration and Constitution were all about cutting down to size? Are we not "God's almost chosen people," energized and made whole by spirited dissent to keep the powers that be in check? What's with this "golden age of an objective press," fergossake?

Update: Conservatives 4 Palin links.

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link.

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