Thursday December 06, 2007

A MATTER OF TASTE. Ace O'Spades, no fan of Mike Huckabee, declares that "MSM ♥ Huckabee" and that if he were to declare for Huckabee, "I think I might as well declare my party as 'Democratic' while I'm at it. Why not? Why not cut out the middleman?"

Huckabee, we remind our readers, is against universal health care, gay marriage, and abortion, and is an Iraq bitter-ender. But Mr. O'Spades supports Fred Thompson for the nomination, so Huckabee is a de facto Democrat.

As I've said before, the old lefty slogan, "The personal is the political," has been adopted wholesale by the Right. Whatever they like -- movies, football teams, choc-o-mut ice creams -- is conservative, and whatever they dislike is liberal. That makes it hard to take them seriously when they write, for example, that liberalism is fascism -- it basically just means that they think liberals, and fascists, are like some band they think is boring or some girl who frosted them at a party. The tragedy is, if they restricted themselves to suitable topics, both they and we would probably be more content.

UPDATE. In comments, Chad says that liberals do the same thing. He means the first part -- the damning of insufficiently-pure Democratic candidates as Republicans manques. I have both seen and done something like that in respect to our hated Hillary.

But to get a real equivalent to O'Spades' complaint, you'd have to find somebody who thought Dennis Kucinich isn't anti-war enough because he doesn't use the debates as opportunities to whip out a gun, take Hillary Clinton hostage, and threaten to kill her if the troops don't come home. And was a supporter of Chris Dodd.

As to the second part, I always want to believe the worst of my fellow man, but I don't see liberals doing the everything-I-like-is-liberal thing so much. I don't see Matthew Yglesias making lists of Top Ten Liberal DJs or Scott Lemieux giving space to any embarrassingly burned-out and incoherent celebrity just because of the celebrity's liberal cred. But prominent conservative outlets do this sort of thing all the time.

UPDATE 2. Q.E.D.: The Perfesser points to "December movie trailer reviews." A normal person would be hoping for something like this. Seasoned readers of the Perfesser, alas, will have their low expectations met:

No Country for Old Men - By all appearances, a twisted but well-made movie with a deficit of moral fortitude, more or less in the vein of Pulp Fiction. Which is to say, it will probably win multiple Academy Awards from Hollywood liberals.

The rest of it is basically the guy saying, "That looks good, I think I might go see that." More grist for the Konservetkult style guide.