As we all know, language undergoes change over time, especially idioms. I remember when “The mother of all X” became a popular U.S. English idiom (to mean “The greatest of all X”, as distinct from its earlier usage, “The origin of all X”). It was a little over 20 years ago, the time of the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein promised us “The mother of all battles”, and it sounded humorously strange. Today, it’s a cliche.

One idiom I see becoming widespread is the use of “It begs the question…”, to mean “It raises the question…”

As with “The mother of all X…”, begging the question has a different, earlier usage. It meant an argument whose outcome you rigged, by simply assuming the conclusion (what you wanted to prove) as one of your argument’s premises. But I see ever more people using the phrase in a different sense, like this:

With the markets breaking all-time highs last week, it begs the question of just how high they can go.

To me, that’s a misuse. No, it doesn’t “beg” the question. It POSES the question. It RAISES the question. Unless the idiom has changed, and I’m just being cranky about it.

Which RAISES (!) the question: When do idioms change? What bell is rung? How much must an idiom be misused, before the grating mis-usage should be accepted as the new, correct usage? Or should some of us just keep pointing out how uneducated people sound, when they misuse it?

I’ve forgotten where I stumbled across this term, Mean World Syndrome, although it was yesterday!

“Mean world syndrome” is a term coined by George Gerbner to describe a phenomenon whereby violence-related content of mass media makes viewers believe that the world is more dangerous than it actually is…”You know, who tells the stories of a culture really governs human behaviour,” [Gerbner] said. “It used to be the parent, the school, the church, the community. Now it’s a handful of global conglomerates that have nothing to tell, but a great deal to sell.”…

…Individuals who watch television infrequently and adolescents who talk to their parents about reality are claimed to have a more accurate view of the real world than those who do not, and they may be able to more accurately assess their vulnerability to violence…

What do y’all think of this idea?

I have only a few scattered fragments of thought about it, so far. First, I’m suspicious of anything that smacks of Behaviorism. But I also notice that this idea isn’t the standard fare, that our violent media culture somehow programs us to do violent crime. It makes a different point: that our violent media culture (and I would count TV News shows, in that) has given us all a darker vision of the world, making most people a little more frightened and suspicious. True/untrue/?

Reader Kurt passes on a link which showing this Manhattan sensation to be of a mind with the Gipper’s (political ideals):

“I believe in a small, decentralized, fiscally responsible federal government,” [}Robert Burck, aka the guy who sings and prances around in his underwear in New York City’s Times Square"] told New York’s CBS affiliate. ”I believe in an economy with free market principals, and I believe in the strongest national defense on Earth. And those are the antithesis of all the things Obama is doing.”

He’s already “filed his vote for Romney in the all-important state of Ohio.”

Saying that he is “by nature an entrepreneur and a small businessman” who’s been successful and he sees “this country as going kind of in the opposite direction of that.”

He’s not the only one.

Yesterday, our reader TGC alerted me to this piece on Queerty which reminded me that I had neglected to write a planned post on Matt Bomer’s coming out:

As the cover story in last week’s Entertainment Weekly reinforced, it’s a different world out there for gay celebrities: We’ve seen Matt Bomer, Zachary Quinto and Jim Parsons come out to little or no controversyHeck, even American Idol and The Voice alum Frenchie Davis just came out in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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The basic point I had intended to make was, well, how little controversy such comings-out excite nowadays.  When Ellen De Generes came out in 1997, it made the cover of Time magazine.  And interestingly, she’s become more of a pop culture presence since publicly identifying as a lesbian.  And by and large, Americans like this out-lesbian.  Her sexuality hasn’t hurt her image.

It is, I believe, a good sign for gay people that today, we pretty much yawn when a celebrity comes out.

“You might think”, reports Oliver Knox  on Yahoo! News

. . .  that Barack Obama’s crazy presidential schedule makes it difficult for him to stay on top of popular culture. You’d be half-right. Quizzed on ABC’s “The View” on Monday, Obama slam-dunked a question about Kim Kardashian . . . .

“Which Kardashian was married for only 72 days?” co-host Joy Behar asked the president.

“That would be Kim,” Obama replied.

Via Jim Geraghty.  Meanwhile, at PJMedia, Tom Blumer reports:

An indicator of just how seriously the federal government’s financial situation has deteriorated (combined of course with the establishment press’s clear desire to emphasize “news” which might assist Dear Leader’s reelection effort) is that the dismal 2012 report released by the Social Security system’s trustees on April 23 received little attention. Viewed through that perverse prism, cash deficits which “will average about $66 billion between 2012 and 2018 before rising steeply,” even before considering the $110 billion or so taken from “general (non-existent) revenues” during 2011 and 2012 to make up for the payroll tax cut, pale in comparison to the importance of higher priorities — like working up a 5,400-word report riddled with errors and distortions on what Mitt Romney was doing when he was a teenager.

The sad, under-reported truth is that three years into an alleged “recovery,” the long-term outlook for Social Security continues to crumble at an accelerating rate.

Via Glenn Reynolds.  Could find online any reports about the president’s plan to fix Social Security.  Or address the coming insolvency of Medicare.  Or a plan to put a dent in the national debt.

Picked up Andrew Breitbart’s Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World! while browsing in the Barnes and Noble at the Grove on Saturday and have found it hard to put the book down.  The book provides much food for thought and perhaps some fodder for future blog posts. In defining the “Coulter Threshold,” the author provides some sound advice for conservatives, a recommendation which rings particularly true for gay conservatives:

I had passed what I call the Coulter Threshold: the point where you understand that Ann Coulter and those like her are standing up for what they believe in, feeling the righteousness of living without fear of missing a dinner invite from Tina Brown or fundraisers with Steve Capus or Ben Sherwood or Steven Spielberg or Jeffrey Katzenberg–or worse, the agony of being excoriated by those conservatives who fret that their liberal overlords will start admonishing them for keeping company with you. Feeling the thrill of sending a message to these people that we reject their worldview for the way they reject ours.

More on this anon. In the meanwhile, buy Breitbart’s book. It’s a great read, a great read.

Look, I’m not the first to say it, so I’ll just put this observation out there for your consideration and commentary.  People in LA want to be noticed; they want to be the center of attention.  And many don’t care how they get your attention just as long as they have it.

Charlie Sheen has ours now.  He’s all over the tabloids, in print, pixel and video.  When I got to the gym, I hear people talking to him.  When I go out to eat, even in restaurants outside LA, I hear people talking about him.  Certainly, he seems like he’s off his rocker.  But, is he?  Right now, everyone is paying attention to him.  He’s being noticed.  He has become the number one celebrity this week.

(A google search for “Charlie Sheen” (in quotation marks) results in over 500 million hits.)

To Hollywood celebrities, it used to matter what people thought of them.  Now it only seems to matter that people think about then.  And people are sure thinking about Charlie.

NB:  Moments after posting this, I decided to modify (albeit slightly) the title.

Several years ago, I defined a condition known as Huffingtonistis, in honor of that ubiquitous political celebrity Arianna Huffington:

Huffingtonitis, when one defines his political views and makes public statements in order to win social approval and/or acceptance.

Blogger Roger Simon, whom I cited in that post, offers a different spin on Ms. Huffington’s motivations to sell her eponymous Post to AOL:

Arianna Huffington is a brilliant businesswoman with an extraordinary sense of timing — first riding the feminist wave to write a best seller accusing Picasso of womanizing, then going conservative to marry a multi-millionaire Republican, and then switching to the liberal/progressive side and founding the most successful new media news and opinion site extant. . . .

Arianna has read the tea leaves. Progressivism, which was riding the crest of popularity on the election of Obama, is over. It is no longer good for business. And just as the stock market is said to be a leading indicator on business cycles, I submit Arianna’s track record has shown her to be a leading indicator on the zeitgeist. She knows when to get out. Obama, and by extension progressivism, is fini.

Read the whole thing.  Is Ms. Huffington then more interested in following the zeitgeist (as is the pop star Madonna in following the latest musical fads) than in currying favor with the liberal social and cultural élite who dominant her current hometown?

In such case, she defines her views not in order to win social acceptance, but to head whichever way the wind blows.

Howard Towt seems to think so. In a thoughtful post on the “What I’ve Learned” interviews in the January, 2011 issue of Esquire magazine, entitled “Establishing Credentials,” he notes that one theme that seems to unite the reflections of the various celebrities interviewed:

Each of these individuals establishes his anti-Republican credentials as a way of validating his remarks with the reader and letting us know that he is a part of our popular culture. It is a reflexive action and is endorsed by Esquire.

On Monday, in the Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary (available by subscription), Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote about how Oliver Stone’s film South of the Border, “which lauds Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez as the nation’s messiah, has flopped spectacularly in, of all places, Venezuela”

To be fair, the film is about more than Mr. Chávez. It also praises the region’s latest crop of left-wing authoritarians, from Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Mr. Stone’s favorite Latin bad boy, Fidel Castro. In Mr. Stone’s mind, however, none is more unjustly maligned than Mr. Chávez. The director pulls no punches in his admiration for the Bolivarian bully. “I think he is an extremely dynamic and charismatic figure,” he told the press last year. “He is open and good-hearted, as well as a fascinating personality.”

And this got me wondering why so many liberals in America’s cultural élite, particularly self-described intellectuals. have become so fascinated with despotic rulers like Chávez and Castro.  (I doubt their views would change if they talked to some of the refugees from those tyrannical paradises, including a number of gay people of my acquaintance.)

For such cultural élitists, a critique of Western society has become admiration for, if not adoration of, its enemies, no matter how diabolical their ideas or record (in office).  These tyrants may preside over systems far worse than those the élite criticize, but so long as they oppose such systems, they are (to the élite at least) by definition, worthy of adulation.

——–

*and other demagogues.

Sonicfrog reports that some of my fellow conservative bloggers are upset that Rima Fakih “Michigan Muslim hottie has won the Miss USA Pageant“.

Now, having seen her pictures, I’m trying figure out what all the fuss is all about.  She’s wearing a bikini not a burkha.  And don’t Islamic radicals want women to cover it all up?

My sense (from what little I know of her) is that she is as far from the ideology of the Islamic extremists as are most Muslims in American society.  This could actually be a very good thing to have her as Miss USA.  Let’s wait and see.  Or it could (as is most likely) just be a big ol’ nothing burger, just another pretty face with a title which gives her headlines and allows her to make public appearances.

Maybe she is dumb as a box of rocks (I have no idea I haven’t heard her speak), but if so, it just shows she has a lot in common with other winners of the title.  From what little I’ve seen of her (on the web), she does carry herself very well–and has a great smile.

She defies the Islamicists who seek to oppress women like her merely by looking beautiful in a bikini and other attire which help bring out her natural beauty.

So, what did y’all think?  I missed it.  Had made enough progress in my dissertation that I treated myself to a fun movie about training your dragon or something.  A lot of fun.  Good score.  Fun animation.

Missed Betty White on Saturday Night Live.  So, a reader suggested a do an open thread.  As per his suggestion, here it is.

Molly Norris, the cartoonist whose poster promoting “Everybody Draw Muhammed Day” on May 20th caused such a stir, has called it quits.

Her home page today shows the following statement:

I make cartoons about current, cultural events. I made a cartoon of a fictional ’poster’ entitled “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” with a nonexistent group’s name — Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor — drawn on the cartoon. It was in specific response to the recent censoring of a South Park episode, a desire to bring home the importance of the first amendment. I did not intend for my cartoon to go viral. I did not intend to be the focus of any ’group’. This particular cartoon has struck a gigantic nerve, something I was totally unprepared for.

Personally I can feel afraid of Muslims because I really have no idea if in their hearts they hate non-Muslims. There are so many interpretations of the religion that I hear told — sometimes it is a very extreme translation (that’s the scary part, the radicals that believe that Westerners should die), then at other times it sounds more peaceful.

I hope for the sake of this country that moderate Muslims will speak out with everyone else against any violent members of that or any other religion. That way I would know that there is a difference. Maybe this cartoon I made, this fictional poster of “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” had such a wildfire effect because it is finally time for Muslims and non-Muslims to understand one another more.

I am going back to the drawing table now!

Thanks,
Molly

I feel for Molly. She clearly wasn’t ready for all the fame and noteriety that her seemingly (to her) innocuous move made for herself. But there’s something disturbing about her tone here. Unlike many people, including my fellow bloggers and many commenters, sensitivity to cultural differences doesn’t seem to be Molly’s reason for pulling back.

There is clearly a tone of fear in what she’s done. Perhaps she’s simply an introvert and publicity gives her the creeps. Many artists are like that. But my instincts tell me that she’s actually caved because she fears genuinely for her safety.

It’s ironic, and a shame, for this to be the case. Those of us who have taken up this cause did so to mitigate such threats. As Mark Steyn so aptly put it:

If you want to put bounties on all our heads, you better have a great credit line at the Bank of Jihad. If you want to kill us, you’ll have to kill us all.

Fortunately for the First Amendment and other American values, the cause presses on, even without Molly: Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor.

Sometimes you choose to be an icon for unapologietic defense of Free Speech. Sometimes you have it thurst upon you.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

After having dilligently scrubbed through all the posts here in the past three days so as to not run afoul of our intrepid readers , I submit likely one of the most useful things to come from Dan Savage in about a decade. (Not that I don’t like his stuff, but rarely is he this good.)

Over at The Stranger, Dan asks his readers (and I ask ours) to join him for “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” on May 20th in support of my fellow Centennial StatesmenTrey Parker and Matt Stone: (more…)

All at the same time, in fact.

Can we officially declare Kanye West as “Douchebag of the Century”?

And Beyonce as “Goddess of the Century”?  She is talented, smart and classy.

The Leftists that embraced him when he said “President Bush hates black people” should be ashamed of themselves now.  *crickets chirping*

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Back in the late 1970s, just after Howard Hughes passed, people would regularly come forward saying with fantastic stories detailing how they  met the reclusive billionaire, with him promising them part–or all–of his fortune.

Most, if not all of those stories turned out to be fabrications.  As I read the various (and often conflicting) stories on Michael Jackson’s final days (with one report say he was too feeble to rehearse for his upcoming London concerts, while others saying that he was performing in practice at the same level as he had danced in his heyday), I suspect we’ll be subject to the same sort of storytelling about the late King of Pop.

It seems the eccentricity of certain celebrity icons inspires stories even more outlandish than the actual facts of their lives.

CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE:  This idea came to me the other day when reading Jim Geraghty’s, Michael Jackson and the Birth of Celebrity Culture.

One day I’ll have to sort out why I always felt for Michael Jackson, but not for his contemporary (born just two weeks before him), the pop star who calls herself Madonna, whose popularity, like his, derives, in large part from her ability to put on a great show. Both have enjoyed tremendous success in their professional lives (yet her stardom doesn’t even come close to rivaling his), yet never seemed to have found happiness off stage.

A friend told me yesterday that he once heard King of Pop had say he only felt comfortable on stage. No wonder.  Groomed from his earliest childhood to be a public performer, he likely wasn’t equipped to do much else. He just didn’t know how to interact with his fellows in private.

All that said, he and he alone is responsible for the mess that his life became, just as Miss Ciccone is for hers. My sympathy for him would be more complete if he did not have any children, taking responsibility for their upbringing by bringing them into this world (or into his care, as with his youngest).

Many have called his life a tragedy.  And in some sense it was, even if we rely on the original context.  Like a Greek tragic hero, he fell from grace due in large part to a flaw in his character.  For the pop star, it was to seek his solace on stage and to ignore the imperative of making changes in his private life.  A true tragic hero must recognize his flaw, understanding how his own failure to correct it brought about his downfall.

And the recognition lay in the lyrics of one of his best songs:

I’m Starting With The Man In The Mirror
I’m Asking Him To Change His Ways
And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place
(If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place)
Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change

But, he, alas, sought the wrong kind of change.  He worked on changing his appearance and not, to borrow the lyrics of another song, “the mess that’s inside.“  (more…)

When Anna Nicole Smith died, a friend of mine, not himself a fan of the professional celebrity, said he burst out crying.  He “couldn’t help” feeling sad.  And so I felt earlier today, upoing learning of the passing of Michael Jackson.  I did not cry, but felt a certain unfathomable sadness.

He was, quite simply, one of the (if not the) most gifted musical peformers of our time.  He was born with a talent that individuals spend a fortune in money and countless hours of their own time to acquire, only never to distinguish themselves in any memorable manner.  This is not say that Jackson did not work hard; there is abundant that he did.

Indeed, the strenuous rehearsals for his upcoming London comeback shows may have caused the cardiac arrest which took his life.  We know from stories of his childhood that he spent so much time rehearsing, recording and performing with the Jackson 5 that he could not do what most children did, hang out with their friends and play with their toys, living in a world of their imaginations.

He didn’t have time to dream, performing as he did in a successful band and dealing with the fame brought about by its success.

That ban was successful large part due to his own talents which his father recognized early on–and pushed him to develop.  Joe Jackson dominated young Michael’s life until, in his early adulthood, he set out on his own.  In a matter of months, Michael experienced a transformation that takes years, if not decades, for most of us, from being in thrall to his parents to being in control of a vast entertainment empire.  And just as he was achieving success on his own, music videos, the perefect medium for communicating his talent to mass audiences, were coming to the fore. (more…)

As many of you know, Carrie Prejean was dethroned earlier this week as Miss California and replaced by someone whose name will be forgotten as soon as the publicity over her recent crowning subsides.  If it is true that Miss Prejean breached her contractual obligations, as pageant executives contend, then this action was entirely justified.

Given, however, that the pageant executive quoted in most news reports, Keith Lewis, has not concealed his animus against Miss Prejean, I was initially skeptical of his claim that, “This was a decision based solely on contract violations.” Methinks he may have been a bit overeager to find such violations.  That said, Donald Trump who has shown himself to be incredibly even-handed in this hullabaloo, did sign off on the dethronement, saying that Prejean did not honor her contract.

If she wasn’t doing her job, she deserved the boot.

Lewis seemed determined to dethrone Prejean.  And if Trump is right, then she gave her adversary the proverbial robe he used to hang her.  He did seem to have a vendetta against her.  When I saw him on Larry King Live with the new Miss California, he was practically gloating.  He had to wreak vengeance because she hurt his feelings when offering a different point of view on gay marriage at odds with his own.

Well, it looks like he won’t be too happy with Prejean’s replacement, Tami Farrell, as she also believes marriage is between a man and a woman.  But, to Miss Prejean’s advesaries, they probably won’t matter too much.  They had made it all about her.  And she just had to be defeated.

So, they got their pound of flesh.  And the former Miss California may well have made it easier for them to take.

When it comes to Carrie Prejean, sometimes I feel like Al Pacino in the Godfather Part III, “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.” I had thought I was done blogging about her, but then, someone on the left will just try to extend this woman’s fifteen minutes of fame. And I’ll feel I’ve just got to chime in, even if to repeat a point I’ve already made.

They’re just not taking my advice to ignore her.

Now, we’ve got the some web-site snooping around in her parents’ divorce record to uncover the origins of her homophobia. While I’ve read more than I care to about this controversy, I have yet to find one statement she has made showing a fear (“phobia”) of homosexuals or showing any animosity whatsoever against gay people. All I’ve heard her is express the viewpoint of a majority of Americans, including the Democratic President of the United States about the meaning of marriage.

Sorry, fellas, that’s just not homophobia.

So, now this website’s staff has rooted around in her parents’ divorce records, learned of some strange accusations lobbed between the parties to ask whether “Carrie believe gays broke up her parents’ marriage.” They’ve truly become obsessed with this woman.

Yet, the more they investigate her, the more they malign her, the stronger will grow her support among social conservatives. She will become their poster child to showcase the left’s intolerance of people favoring the traditional definition of marriage.

Should Miss Prejean lose her title over her “nudie” pictures (as appears possible), she won’t lose her fame. Few will know the name of her replacement as Miss California. Indeed, few will know the name of the woman who bested her for the Miss USA crown. But, they will know who Carrie Prejean is.

The uproar of her adversaries has secured her fame.

(more…)