Q:  What separates conservatives from liberals in the Episcopal Church?

A:  The altar rail.

For those not familiar with altar rails, the joke is:  the priests are the liberals, the parishioners are conservatives.

It seems that a similar dynamic is at work in the church of Amazon.com.  Note these two lists of the Top 100 Books of 2009 (h/t Instapundit).  The first is Amazon’s Editors’ Picks, the second are the picks of their customers.  Now it would be unfair to call the Editors’ picks liberal (though it would fit better with the joke).  They’re mostly the usual sort of literary novels that are praised to the skies on publication then deservedly forgotten.  I haven’t read any of them, though I did read the first book in The Girl Who… series which was only okay.

But get a load of the customers’ picks.  Number Two after Dan Brown:  Mark R. Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny.  Number Three:  Glenn Beck’s Common Sense.  Number Fifteen:   Sarah Palin.  Sixteen:  Glenn Beck again.  Seventeen?  Whoa, whattaya know?  Michelle Malkin.  Vince Flynn and Ann Coulter show up later too.

Listen, I love Amazon.  They’re the best.  And I suspect they chose their list for non-controversial literary quality which, really, is fair enough.  But it is amusing to see that the people – the people who read, at least – pick so many conservative books.  And I can’t help wondering how many of the priests of the literary establishment have ever read these books or even know they exist.

Also, in a gamer world that includes stuff like Grand Theft Auto, where you play a punk gangster who pulls innocent people out of their cars and beats them up before jacking the vehicle – I mean, bleah! – it was delightful to play a game about decency and sacrifice.  Even though we are, so to speak, among thieves here, there does seem to be some honor going around.  One of the best levels has a scene where top treasure hunter Nathan Drake helps a guy to safety even though 1) he thereby endangers himself and 2) the guy in question is his rival for a girl’s attention.  If you watch closely, this sacrificial action begins the transformation of one of the other characters from a selfish grave robber to a hero willing to risk life and limb to save the world.

Good story, good fun.  Originality aside, you can’t ask for much more from a video game.

And of course, Mad Men, which just ended its third season.  It’s a terrific show – a little too aimless sometimes, a little too pleased with its own look, and a lot too smug about the superiority of our times to the past – but still, it has a genuine artistic vision of America in the early sixties and, through that vision, a vision of the human condition.  It’s beautifully written and acted.  It’s good stuff.

And it ought to end.  I won’t spoil the finale, but it summed up the series perfectly and took it to its natural conclusion.  Anyone could see it.  And I strongly suspect the show’s creator Matthew Weiner knows it.  But the trouble with TV even in these best of times is that the rewards of continuing a success far outweigh the wisdom of ending it.

The shark is in the water and Mad Men is skiing toward the ramp but how is brother Matthew going to explain it to his broker – let alone his wife – if he doesn’t make the jump?

*Don’t look at me – I’m just an asterisk – find the quotation yourself.

I’ll modify my praise this far:  it’s a small, brilliant crime film, one of the best of its era.  It is kept from being an absolute masterpiece by a single mistake, a change in the plot of the novel by Mark McShane on which it is based.  I can’t give the change away without spoiling it, so I won’t, but if you can find the novel, read it.  It’s also a pleasure.

As for the film, it’s as riveting and suspenseful as I remembered.  Beautifully directed.  And the acting is phenomenal.  For those who only know Richard Attenborough from his later Jurassic Park hambone days, he was, in his prime and in his admittedly limited range, one of the great actors of his generation.  Brighton Rock, 10 Rillington Place, Guns at Batasi–he was absolutely wonderful.  And in this, playing a little Englander trapped between his own desperation and the desires of his disturbed wife (also brilliantly played by Kim Stanley) he’s at his best.

Definitely a top-notch suspenser, disturbing, beautiful and brilliant.

Yes, our top three contributors will receive this lovely statuette depicting The Serpent of Ideology Devouring the Children of Truth…  an exact replica of Wolf Blitzer’s moral compass.

For the entry that made me spray my coffee all over the place in a spit-take reminiscent of early Jim Carrey films, the Blitzy goes to:  #39 Erik Larsen:  “CNN, the number one name in . . . . oh look – balloon boy!!!”  To be fair, this could apply to just about every television news operation.  Still, I’m here to be amused.

For pure cleverness, a statuette to:  #70 Sioux Lady:  “Hear no news.  Speak no news.  Cee No News – CNN.”  I tried to get something like that to work but couldn’t do it.  Sioux’s effortless solution left me bitter and envious.  I’m filling a bucket with pig’s blood and waiting for the prom!

And for combining wit with precision and accuracy, the Blitzy to:  #29 Rick Zalon, “CNN: We beat the Sham-Wow guy with the coveted 18-54 demo in the 3 am timeslot!”  Yes, I’ll just bet they did.

To everyone else, well done.  I really did get a lot of laughs, which is why I’m here.  Have a good weekend and Happy Halloween.

CNN:  We Report, You Turn On FoxNews To Find Out What Really Happened

CNN:  Where Glenn Beck Used To Work

CNN:  The Most Trusted Name In Sniggering Denigrations of Normal Americans

CNN:  Because No News Is Good News

CNN:  The President Likes Us; He Really, Really Likes Us

CNN:  Where You Get All The Rush Limbaugh Quotes You Won’t Get From Rush

CNN:  Saturday Night Live Fears Us!

CNN:  No, Really.  We Used To Have Glenn Beck.

CNN:  When The President’s A Hologram, Shouldn’t The People Who Cover Him Be Holograms Too?

And my personal choice:

Yes, We CNN!

Please feel free to add your own – the best entry will win a free tingle up his or her leg.  But other than that, keep it clean.

My opinion was this: when then-candidate Barack Obama told his adoring throngs that Iraq was a war of choice that had taken our attention and resources away from the necessary war in Afghanistan, he had gotten things almost exactly backwards. The war in Iraq had overthrown a dangerous tyrant poised to acquire weapons of mass destruction the moment UN Sanctions were lifted, as they soon would have been. It had established a bulwark of nascent democracy between the Mad Hatters in Iran and Syria. And it had inspired stirrings of freedom-yearning in Iran and Lebanon. President George W. Bush had been right to go in, right to stick with it, right to win.

The Afghanistan conflict, on the other hand, could have no similar conclusion. While it had been necessary to destroy the Taliban’s terrorist training grounds, there was never a possibility of establishing a free nation in that wilderness of tribes and ancient tribal enmities—not, anyway, at a price in blood and treasure the American people were willing to pay. To me, Afghanistan was, at best, a staging ground from which to harry and destroy Islamic extremists in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and, most especially, to keep the bad guys from getting their hands on Pakistan and its nukes.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Obama was wrong. But one of us has to come up with a policy fast–and guess what: it isn’t me.