Sir Elton the Luddite

He admits as much, and also says we should shut the internet down. Why? Because it's killing artistic creativity of course! I liked his old music, but now the diva's lost it; dare we say the fellow's more of a disaster than Billy Joel driving?

I Agree with Susan Estrich

And subsequently, pigs fly. Estrich makes an argument that screwed-up actress Lindsay Lohan should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, both for driving while drunk on a suspended license and for possession of coke (which she claims wasn't hers). This means jail time. I entirely agree - Lohan should be put away for as long as the law allows, given no preferential treatment, and generally reminded that she isn't above the laws of the rest of society. Don't like it? Too bad, your own decisions got you there.

Oh and can we find a way to make celebrity prisoners like Paris and Lindsay pay for their jail time rather than burden the state with it?

And one other thing: no doubt many of these "stars" spill to their publicists when they get on the wrong side of the law. I doubt many of these publicists are lawyers, and thus (I think) could be forced to testify without any claim of any sort of attorney-client privilege. If those clowns who cover for their messed-up bosses want to illegally cover for them, hey, we can always find more room in jail.

Another Reason to Love the New Criterion

I had a little fun with British terminology yesterday, specifically 'yob.' Now someone at the New Criterion (one of their interns I believe), takes aim at the root cause of all this, the British welfare state. A curt, but interesting read.

Michelangelo's "Creation of Man (Adam with a Diet Pepsi)"

Or at least NEA chief Dana Gioia on the destruction of American culture. I never thought I'd agree with a chief of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Oh and I don't think I could name too many living American artists, and it's not because I'm particularly nekulturny - it's because they're not particularly noteworthy.

It's a Mad, Mad World

I didn't bother to blog much on the revelations of the McCain campaign's crash diet or its paltry fundraising success. But this I do find noteworthy: "Republican" [nutjob libertarian] Ron Paul has more cash on hand ($2.4 million) than John McCain does ($2 million).

$2.4M vs. $2M is pretty paltry when the next guy, Romney, is sitting on $12 million. But having more to use than McCain does give Paul a certain credibility, and means that we may have to endure his bizarre opinions for a few more debates. However, it remains to be seen if there is anything behind this - whether his poll numbers jump, whether he's building viable organizations on the ground in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. I'm curious about how much of his fundraising totals came from non-Republicans (in terms of registration), but that's something FEC disclosures won't cover.

Paul also talks about how he feels like he's on the "upslope" compared to some other candidates who are already lagging - McCain - but as I said I don't think there's currently any metrics to determine the veracity of that statement. I do, however, think that all of McCain's recent troubles give more credence to the rumors that he'll quit the race by summer (unless of course Fred pulls out and endorses McCain, though is it possible the opposite could also happen?).

Musical Evidence of South Park Conservatives?

A punk-rap band by the name of Stuck Mojo made waves recently with a music video for their single "Open Season." Basically it's an attack on militant Islam and terrorists invocation of the cloak of Islam as a religion of peace. Check it out.


(h/t LGF)

"Art" in the Loosest Sense of the Word

New Criterion's James Panero has filed two (really three) dispatches from Venice's Biennale, documenting the state of avant-garde art - specifically its anti-American and antisemitic components.
Part one (from the WSJ) is here.
Part two (from NC's blog) here.
Part three here (chronologically the first though most comprehensible in the context of one and two).

Social networking divide: Facebook is for preps, MySpace for the fringe

The title says it all; read it here. Note the author, a Berkeley sociology student, doesn't care to capitalize her name and engages in some pretty Lefty forms of intellectual discourse.