Yesterday, I linked to Frank Rich’s column titled, “The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York,”and noted:

But a paradox emerges: does Rich consider “Stalinist” a good or a bad thing? From Duranty copping a Pulitzer by shilling for Uncle Joe himself, to Pinch Sulzberger backing the NVA because “It’s the other guy’s country” to, just last month, Thomas Friedman pining for Communist China, it’s certainly hard to tell.

I wish I had remembered this item as well, from Thomas Friedman in 2000, and amazingly enough, still online in the Times’ archives:

Yup, I gotta confess, that now-famous picture of a U.S. marshal in Miami pointing an automatic weapon toward Donato Dalrymple and ordering him in the name of the U.S. government to turn over Elian Gonzalez warmed my heart.

These days, when not praising totalitarian Cuba and China, Friedman has taken to calling President Obama’s efforts to radically reshape the U.S. economy “nation-building” — a word whose traditional meaning that certainly fell into disfavor in the offices of the Gray Lady for most of the naughts:

Obama has had at least one self-admitted Communist on his payroll in the form of Van Jones, as well as the Mao-quoting Anita Dunn and Ron Bloom. But perhaps one reason why Friedman puts scare quotes around the word “socialist” in the above passage is that Friedman is too enamored of the real thing, and Obama, even with his radical efforts, doesn’t go anywhere nearly far enough, fast enough to satisfy the Timesman in his heart of hearts.

Related: “America’s elite is broken.”

Related: The great Anthony Daniels (who frequently writes as Theodore Dalrymple) on “The Costs Of Abstraction”:

My little collection has led me to the conclusion that the Soviet Union was valued by contemporary intellectuals not for the omelette, but for the broken eggs. They thought that if nothing great could be built without sacrifice, then so great a sacrifice must be building something great. The Soviets had the courage of their abstractions, which are often so much more important to intellectuals than living, breathing human beings.

Read the whole thing.

As part of their annual “State of the Blogosphere” report, Technorati features a lengthy video interview with two of the people who bring it to you — or at least aggregate it up into handy, bite-sized pieces. On the left (nominally so), Eric Olsen, the beneficent founder of Blogcritics, where I’ve contributed a couple of hundred posts since its start in 2009. And on the right, Andrew Breitbart, as part of his recent post-ACORN whirlwind media tour.

Click here to watch. For the 3000 mile overview of the terrain of the Blogosphere, click here.

And for Steve Green’s PJTV video interview with Eric at BlogWorld in Vegas on the new anti-blogger regulation from the FTC, click here.

Over at Reason, Tim Cavanaugh writes:

Christina D. Romer, the Berkeley economist who serves as chairwoman of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers, has a paper out [pdf] called “Back from the Brink.” It’s worth reading as a specimen of the kind of totalitarian logic establishments use to create the illusion of popularity and success for actions that in fact have been imposed by force and have not been successful.

As the title suggests, Romer’s argument is that the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury succeeded in staving off an even Greater Depression that threatened to engulf the U.S. economy after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Since there is no real evidence for this view, Romer relies heavily on gross domestic product, which may or may not have stopped declining. Strangely, in a paper committed to apple/orange comparisons between the 2000s and the 1930s (for example, Romer points out that credit spreads were more dire in 2008 than they were in 1929, without mentioning that Americans had a large positive savings rate in 1929 and a large negative rate in 2008), Romer points out that GDP grew rapidly in the mid-1930s. So how can GDP growth (which Romer believes will go positive again this quarter) be evidence that we’re not in a new Depression?

I am not arguing that we are in a new Depression, but consider that during the period Romer is discussing — with plenty of imagery about pulling back from edges of cliffs — personal bankruptcies have skyrocketed; credit for anybody not named Goldman or Sachs has been virtually non-existent; Fed chairman Ben Bernanke’s March reference to “green shoots” has become a national joke; and real estate, which was, is and will continue to be the heart of the decline, is still plagued by collapsing sales and rental markets, a cratering commercial real estate market, and a vast, still uncharted shadow inventory of defaulting mortgages.

This dispatch from Airstrip One puts an appropriately Orwellian spin on screwing a nation’s economy:

At the moment the UK is committed to cutting greenhouse gases by a third by 2020.

However a new report from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research said these targets are inadequate to keep global warming below two degrees C above pre-industrial levels.

The report says the only way to avoid going beyond the dangerous tipping point is to double the target to 70 per cent by 2020.

This would mean reducing the size of the economy through a “planned recession”.

As opposed to the permanent recession that Europe’s economic policies had long since created.

All of which is proof that the Rendezvous With Scarcity painfully trudges on.

Andrew Breitbart stops by the latest edition of PJM Political, to discuss Big Government.com and ACORN. Plus:

• PJTV guest interviewer, National Review.com’s Mark Hemingway surveys the surprisingly diverse crowd at the Washington, DC Tea Party. (Sadly, no interviews with the now-legendary Boob Czar, though.)
• From the Quincy, IL Tea Party, Glenn interviews St. Louis talk radio host Dana Loesch.
• Back in the studio, it’s five Questions For James Lileks, including one on President Obama’s commando attack in Somalia this week.
• The VodkaPundit on former President Jimmy Carter’s ill-conceived reappearance on the national stage.
• Glenn Reynolds interviews fellow Tennessean, Sen. Bob Corker.
• Produced by your humble narrator.

Tune in here to listen!

Great catch by Don Surber:

The original headline for the New York Times read: “Baucus Releases Bipartisan Proposal.”

A reader pointed out that there is no Republican support for Democratic Sen. Max Baucus’s health deform bill, and so the headline became, “Baucus Releases Senate Health Care Proposal.”

But the URL still reads:

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/baucus-releases-bipartisan-proposal/

Well, it’s certainly Thomas Friedman’s definition of bipartisanship.

Not surprisingly, Van Jones’ name went down the memory hole at warp speed with the obsequious White House press corps. But responding to John McWorter’s defense of Trutherism at the once distinguished New Republic (which has only recently gotten over the Scott Beauchamp incident), Rich Lowry writes:

It’s fun to watch liberal bloggers and publications now declare trutherism practically a mainstream Democratic belief for which Van Jones didn’t deserve to be defenestrated. Besides The Nation and that McWhorter piece in TNR, here’s Firedoglake founder Jane Hamsher (h/t JustOneMinute):

Now he’s been thrown under the bus by the White House for signing his name to a petition expressing something that 35% of all Democrats believed as of 2007 — that George Bush knew in advance about the attacks of 9/11.

In early 2003, James Lileks wrote:

Nowadays, if you point out that someone’s a Communist, you might well be accused of – dum dum DUMMMM – McCarthyism. The term has morphed from its original meaning. It no longer means falsely accusing someone of being a Communist. It now includes correctly identifying someone as a Communist, or ascribing a taint to someone because they don’t reject the Communists in their midst. (I’ll admit there’s a significant difference between the two.)

Two or three years later, the left turned the phrase “Swift Vets” into a perjorative, as if a future senator and presidential candidate never slandered American troops in front of a Senate committee in 1971. Today, Andy MacCarthy writes that the word “smear” is now morphing as well:

Didn’t that used to mean falsely accusing someone of saying or doing something awful — something he did not say or do?

I’m reading the Truther Van “smear” protests and I keep looking for the one that says, “He never said that,” or “He never signed that,” or “That audio-tape is phony.” So far, none of that.  Instead we are getting “What’s a little harmless 9/11 truther jibber-jabber among Mumia fans?”

When Ted Kennedy said Bob Bork wanted to drive women to back-alley abortions and black kids to segregated lunch counters, that wasn’t true. Does that distinction matter anymore?

“What is Truth?” the first postmodernist asked.

Update: Newsweek is also surprisingly cool with Truthers, or at least the mindset behind them.

Throughout the week, we looked at examples of Orwellian advertising. And elsewhere at Pajamas, Michael Ledeen writes that there’s “a global resurgence of Orwellian newspeak, in which the powers that be rewrite history every day”:

So here’s Comrade Stalin’s grandson,  Mr. Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, who is outraged that anybody could write a story saying that his grandforther “had ordered the killings of Soviet citizens.”  He’s asking for $300,000 from the newspaper Novaya Gazeta and some additional damages from the offending author.  Dzugashvili has found the attorney of his dreams, a Stalinist by the name of Leonid Zhura who is shocked and enraged by the article, which, by the way, was based  on declassified Kremlin documents.

Al Reuters provides a series of quotations from Zhura that are worthy of Mel Brooks’ finest spoofs of the Fuhrer:

“Half a century of lies have been poured over Stalin’s reputation and he cannot defend himself from the grave so this case is essential to put the record straight…We want to rehabilitate Stalin.  He turned populations into peoples, he presided over a golden era in literature and the arts, he was a real leader…”  And Zhura was particularly enraged by the claim that “the secret police committed grave crimes against their own people.”

To which al Reuters adds its own deep thoughts, suitably even-handed for that icon of political correctness:

The many sides of the Stalin myth — bloody tyrant and war leader, pipe-smoking Kremlin puppet master and economic miracle worker — are still the subject of a heated debate in Russia…

I was left scratching at the remaining follicles on my head, wondering about that “economic miracle worker” bit.  So far as I know, Stalin’s most (in)famous economic accomplishment was orchestrating a great famine that killed off million in Ukraine.

You might be tempted to write it off as a Russian aberration, but it isn’t;  it is part of a global resurgence of Orwellian newspeak, in which the powers that be rewrite history every day.  After all, we live in a world where the American president invents all manner of nonsense about Muslim history (all that wonderful toleration in Spain during the Inquisition, the invention of printing, which was actually brought to the Middle East by Jews who published in Hebrew), and where the Iranian president inveighs against the “myth of the Holocaust” and still gets invited to dinner by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Orwell’s seminal “Politics and the English Language” essay from 1946 has never been more relevant.

Back in 1948, a certain Mr. E. Blair wrote:

Winston was smoking a Victory Cigarette which he held carefully horizontal. The new ration did not start till tomorrow and he had only four cigarettes left. For the moment he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes.

As a certain Mr. E. Morrissey quips in 2009, “All hail the jobless recovery!”

What a difference a (D) makes!  In 2003-4, George Bush got derided for talking about economic recovery during the 2004 election campaign while unemployment declined from 6.2% to 5.6%.  Critics derided it as a “jobless recovery,” including the Washington Post.  Now, however, an increase in unemployment has become a measure of improvement in the economy as it goes up to 9.5%:

The big news of the week should be Friday’s employment report, which many analysts suspect will show that the labor market, while still quite bad, continues on a path toward stabilization. Economists are expecting the unemployment rate to rise to 9.5 percent, from 9.4 percent, and for employers to have cut 228,000 net jobs in August, compared with the 247,000 jobs lost in March. That job loss number — or even better, a figure that starts with a “1,” would be strong evidence that improvement in the economy is finally filtering through to the job market in a serious way.

But there are reasons to doubt that will happen. Most notably, the rate of new jobless claims has failed to come down significantly in recent weeks, which suggests businesses are still eager to pare back their payrolls. Thursday, the Labor Department said 570,000 Americans put in new claims for unemployment insurance benefits, down only barely from 580,000 the previous week.

Really!  This is what the Post had to say in a news report from August 2004 about “jobless recovery”:

For President Bush, tax cuts have been an all-purpose elixir, a cure for budget surpluses and a bursting stock bubble, for terrorist attacks and boardroom scandals, for the march to war and a jobless recovery in peacetime.

Now, after three successive tax cuts, and after a record budget surplus has turned to a record deficit, the president faces an unenviable choice. He can either concede that his $1.7 trillion tonic has not worked as advertised, or he can insist that the economy is strong despite the slowdown in growth and job creation.

Unemployment at that time: 5.4%, down from 5.5% the prior month.

And yet in spite of their boundless praise for Big Barack’s glorious economic triumphs, as Jennifer Rubin notes, the Post is also “running an advice column for the floundering president: what is to be done?”

Jennifer writes:

Well, it’s never a good sign when mainstream papers are running symposiums to examine what, if anything, can be done to save the remainder of the president’s term.

If the problem is that the president is doing too much and stressing everyone out, then he should follow Donna Brazile’s advice and tell Americans not to worry about deficits, focus on health care (which is going to reduce the deficit or make it worse?), and get back to the bipartisan appeal that worked during the campaign. Harold Ford suggests that Obama downscale health-care reform and work on insurance regulation. But Newt Gingrich gets to the core issue and the real choice for the president:

Obama faces a choice: He can attempt to run a left-wing government against the American people. Or he can govern from the center with a large majority of Americans supporting him. He can have either his left angry or the American people angry. We will know in September which choice he has made.

And that is really what it’s all about. Analysts and pollsters will give suggestions on rhetoric or strategy, but Obama’s dilemma is a philosophical one. He’s shown himself to be a far-Left liberal, and the country doesn’t like it. He can keep at it and try to muscle through the top agenda items on the liberal wish list, putting at risk his congressional majority and his own popularity (what remains of it). Or he can swing back to the center, start over on health care, put aside cap-and-trade, come up with a tax-reform and tax-relief plan, and get serious about spending control. That would require a heartfelt realization that his agenda is too radical and will, over time, erode his standing and potentially render him a one-term president.

I suspect that so long as there are allies and advisers whispering in his ear that all he needs is some rhetorical tweaking, we won’t see anything approaching a substantive revision of his agenda. If the president doesn’t correct course, the voters may do it for him in 2010. But for now, don’t get your hopes up for a swing to the center. After all, Obama is being told, and no doubt believes, that the mantle of liberalism has been passed to him from Ted Kennedy. He won’t give it up—unless the voters force him to.

All of which may be why the American Thinker isn’t wasting any time issuing their assessment of President Obama’s ultimate legacy.

Ronald Bailey of Reason tries to make sense of “Ezra Klein’s Confusion Over ‘Rationing’”; elsewhere, Stacy McCain spots CNN’s Elliott McLaughlin not knowing what the word “refute” means:

This paragraph by CNN’s Elliott McLaughlin has a glaringly bad word choice:

In his national address, Kennedy said he was driving Kopechne to a ferry landing because she was tired. He denied “widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct” and also refuted reports that he was “driving under the influence of liquor.”

Kennedy “refuted” nothing. I understand McLaughlin’s reluctance to use “denied” twice in the same sentence, but “refuted” means to disprove.

Multiple witnesses confirmed that Ted Kennedy had been drinking heavily all day that Saturday. Supplies for the regatta party — attended by six married men and six single women, incidentally — included three half-gallons of vodka, four fifths of scotch, two bottles of rum and two cases of beer. And then there is the rather telling circumstantial evidence that Ted drove off the freaking bridge.

On that night, Kennedy was drunk as a skunk, high as a kite, three sheets to the wind. He was hammered, wasted, soused, tanked, blotto, sloshed. He was, in a word, intoxicated.

I’d go so far as to say he was driving while intoxicated, except that rolling an Oldsmobile off a bridge is not really what most folks down home would call “driving.”

Nothing he said in his subsequent speech “refuted” the fact that Teddy was drunk, nor will it ever.

Or as Scott Johnson of Power Line dubs it, “Ted Kennedy’s Checkers Speech.”

Great moments in PC euphemisms and the continual dumbing down of American culture. Anybody remember the “gang rape” scene in Bye Bye Birdie? No? Neither did I. But as Big Hollywood asks, “Broadway Too PC for ‘Bye, Bye, Birdie’ ‘Rape’ Scene?”

I bet that headline got your attention!  But, as you’ll see a little later in this post, the scene in question is not really a “rape” at all.  But that didn’t keep the NY Daily News from running this headline yesterday:

‘Bye Bye Birdie’ revival on Broadway drops scene for ‘gang rape’ concern

“Just a copy editor trying to get attention by over-exaggerating a story,” you think?  That’s what I thought, too.  But here is the story with Gina Gershon’s quote:

According to Gina Gershon, who stars as Rose in the upcoming revival, the production has said bye bye to a frisky dance sequence that has been in the show since its debut in 1960.  In the scene, Rose, originated on stage by Chita Rivera and on film by Janet Leigh, crashes a Shriners banquet, flirts and cavorts on, around and underneath a table with the fez-heads.  As written, it’s a funny dance showcase. So why is it too hot to handle in 2009? Gershon told The News’ theater critic Joe Dziemianowicz, “It seemed a little too gang rape-y.”

The Daily News takes the words right out of my mouth when it says:

That should come as interesting news to countless high schools, parochial academies and theater camps where this number has been performed for nearly 50 years.

Did the Frankfurt School ever mount a student production? Maybe that’s when the play first ran into trouble. In any case, click over to Big Hollywood for the shocking video of the offending scene, which begins with Chita Rivera cavorting with that infamously aggressive patriarchal heteronormative archetype, Tom Bosley.

Matt Drudge links to this New York Times article under the headline of “LEAN TEAM: Fewer than half of Obama top appointees in place.”

No wonder all the president’s men have been so inefficient and off-message these past few months. Imagine having to get by with such a small, skeleton crew…

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Ann Althouse explores how “conversation” has evolved into “one of those Orwellian words.”

Which is why some conversations are more equal than others in the left’s collective, collectivist mind. Or as Frank Burns of M*A*S*H once said, “Individuality is fine–as long as we all do it together.”

Related: “Obama’s Talking About His Grandmother Again; People Who Listened Last Time Are Now ‘Dishonest.’”

The big show this week features:

• Host Steve Green of VodkaPundit.com on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dubbing health care protesters “evil-mongers.”
• Steve and Ed Driscoll on the passing of Les Paul.
• Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com interviews fellow blogging pioneer Virginia Postrel of the Atlantic, the New York Times and Reason magazine on “Kidneys for Cash: The Bioethical Dilemma of Organ Donation.”
• Steve, Scrappleface’s Scott Ott and Bill Whittle of PJTV debate the “astroturfing” nature of the health protesters.
• Five Questions For James Lileks, including one on Hillary Clinton’s gaffe in the Congo.
• Roger L. Simon on Obama’s “plot against the doctors.”
• Produced by Ed Driscoll.

Tune in here to listen!

In 1951, William F. Buckley made his early rep, and fired the first salvo of modern conservatism, when he accused his alma mater of abandoning the precepts of traditional religion in favor of atheism.

It took them almost 60 years, but as this New York Times article illustrates, Yale finally finds a religion it’s willing to bend over backwards to respect:

Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s “Inferno” that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí…

John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, said by telephone that the decision was difficult, but the recommendation to withdraw the images, including the historical ones of Muhammad, was “overwhelming and unanimous.” The cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words, Mr. Donatich said, so reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.

He noted that he had been involved in publishing other controversial books — like “The King Never Smiles” by Paul M. Handley, a recent unauthorized biography of Thailand’s current monarch — and “I’ve never blinked.” But, he said, “when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question.”

As Hot Air’s “Allahpundit” (source of the bolding in the above-quoted text) adds:

And there you have it. It’s a small mercy, at least, that they’re making no bones about what’s driving this decision; occasionally, this sort of appeasement-by-self-censorship is dressed up as high-minded progressive “cultural sensitivity.” To see just how bad things have gotten, read the entire Times piece (which, thankfully, acknowledges that the paper itself cowered in the face of terrorism by refusing to publish the cartoons when the story broke). Not only were the “expert” recommendations that Yale should suppress the images unanimous, but not a single person quoted in the story offers a full-throated defense of a university’s obligation not to sacrifice knowledge on the altar of totalitarianism. The closest we get is Reza Aslan arguing that it’s “idiotic” to omit the cartoons now that the controversy’s died down and the risk of reprisal is low. If the risk was high, presumably he’d think differently. In lieu of an exit question, let me make a recommendation: If you know a right-wing academic or public intellectual, make sure to bring this item to his or her attention. Hopefully it’ll make them think twice about doing business with Yale in the future.

And if that doesn’t, here’s a reminder of what passes for high art at the august institute of higher learning.

Meanwhile, at lesser-known schools, other religions aren’t fairing nearly so well. Maybe Ace of Spades was onto something a couple of years ago, when he pondered if America has a de facto state religion, at least in the minds of the ACLU and academia.

That’s the question Jeff Jacoby asks, in his op-ed titled, “Abortion And The Echo Of Eugenics:”

Not much linked the former president, who died in 1994, and the associate justice now in her 17th year on the Supreme Court. But each was in the news recently with a cringe-inducing comment about abortion. Those comments – one spoken privately long ago, one uttered publicly this month – are a reminder of the ease with which educated elites can decide that some people’s lives have no value.

Nixon was meeting with an aide in the White House on Jan. 23, 1973, when the conversation – recorded on tapes newly released by the Nixon Presidential Library – turned to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision the day before. Though generally against abortion, Nixon said it was “necessary’’ in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies. “There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,’’ he explained. “Or rape.’’

Ginsburg’s words were even creepier.

“Reproductive choice has to be straightened out,’’ she said in a recent New York Times interview. She was referring to the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of Medicaid funds for abortions – a law the Supreme Court upheld in Harris v. McRae in 1980. “Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. . . But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way.’’

Populations that we don’t want to have too many of – who would those be, exactly? Minorities? The poor? The handicapped?

Ginsburg didn’t elaborate and the Times, unaccountably, didn’t ask. Perhaps Ginsburg was describing the opinion of others – but then why speak in the first person (“we’’)? Or maybe she was referring to views held 36 years ago – but then why speak in the present tense (“don’t want’’)?

In One Of Us, his 1991 biography of Nixon, the Gray Lady’s Tom Wicker quoted favorably Pat Moynihan’s assessment  that the Nixon Administration was “‘the most progressive’ of the postwar era.” But Tom and Pat didn’t know the half of it.

Michele Catalano writes, “In the midst of a recession, the New York Times wants to make sure you remember the people most affected by these ‘tough economic times’”:

That’s why they brought us articles like “Parental Lifelines, Frayed to Breaking.” In this down economy, the Times seems to believe that people like Eric Gross deserve to have their plight publicized and to receive your sympathy.

Eric, a 26-year-old construction worker, is reeling from the news that his parents might not be able to help him buy a one-bedroom New York City condo that’s going for $600,000. Let’s all shed a tear for Eric and the trust fund kids of Williamsburg who find themselves having to actually work to pay the exorbitant rents of their hipster neighborhood:

Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements. “They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”

These kids are headed back home to mommy and daddy, unable to make it in a world where they wish to live like kings — kings who have inherited their kingdoms instead of going to war for them — and not realizing they are nothing more than proletariat.

Meanwhile, found via Freeman Hunt, the Frugal Dad Website helps us spot the “Language of the Perpetual Poor.”

Poor being a relative term of course, as Michele’s article explains.

Mollie Hemingway asks the original state-run television network (at least prior to 2008) to “Define religious programming:”

Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi had a solid story about a new PBS ban on religious programming. Basically the board decided to forbid member stations from airing new religious programs but permitted those that already carry “sectarian” shows to continue to do so. It was a compromise from a proposed ban on all religious programming such as local church services or religious lectures.

The story is interesting and discusses five of the member stations that carry religious programming. It also explores an interesting local angle:

The vote also means that WHUT, operated by Howard University in the District, won’t be required to drop its telecasts of “Mass for Shut-Ins,” a weekly Catholic Mass that has aired on the station since 1996 and locally in Washington for more than 50 years.

But, warned by PBS of the upcoming review, WHUT put the program’s producer, the Archdiocese of Washington, on notice that it would drop the program if the PBS board voted to ban religious programs. The archdiocese then made alternative arrangements, negotiating a contract with WDCW (Channel 50) to pick up the half-hour program on Sunday mornings.

Moving the program, which is broadcast free by WHUT, will be disruptive to viewers, said Susan Gibbs, the archdiocese’s spokeswoman, and expensive — the contract with WDCW will cost $60,000 per year.

I never knew that PBS affiliates broadcast masses or other local religious programming but the thing that surprised me the most about this story was that it doesn’t mention the religious figure I most closely associate with PBS: Deepak Chopra, the New Age spiritualist author and periodical host of programs on PBS. What happens to the Chopra programming? Or what about Eckhart Tolle? I caught one of his PBS specials a year or so ago and was shocked that it was considered appropriate for public broadcasting. Does the PBS board think that New age lectures are fine but liturgies aren’t?

Of course, efforts to immanentize the eschaton are always welcome on PBS.

While we’re on the subject of Oceania, Ingsoc and Airstrip One, at Jewish World Review (H/T: OJ) Rabbi Yonason Goldson rifles through 1984’s Newspeak Dictionary (referencing one of its ever-thinner newest editions) to explore “The Language of Confusion.”

And speaking of old media’s Newspeak dictionary, as Mark Finklestein writes, and as his screen cap of the Chyron from an CBS Early Show segment confirms, when are gay rights groups ideologically labeled during TV appearances, let alone being dubbed “Far-Left”? “When They Criticize Obama”, Finklestein writes.

(That this label simultaneously and subtly helps to triangulate — at least as CBS sees it and decrees it, to borrow an old Ratherism — the equally far left President Obama in the center is an added bonus, Mark astutely notes.)

Update: That “Far Left” label mentioned above was the the first on CBS “in more than two years”, according to Newsbusters’ Rich Noyes. Which makes sense: in the “objective” legacy media, labeling normally only flows in the opposite direction to begin with.

Update: The Professor spots more triangulation and heretofore unexpected labeling occurring:

WALPIN UPDATE: Fired Inspector General: I Want Congressional Hearings, Dammit! Interestingly, Greg Sargent uses the words “on the right” an awful lot in this short piece. Compare the treatment to that of Bush-era scandals, where those seeking investigation were merely dedicated good citizens . . . .

More or less related thoughts at the Exurban League.

Last week we linked to David Pryce Jones’ post on the 60th anniversary of the first publication of George Orwell’s 1984. So what’s happening on the island Orwell dubbed Airstrip One, where INGSOC — English Socialism run amok — is the law of the land?

“British cops stop and hassle thousands to ‘balance racial statistics.’”

Meanwhile, “Mark Steyn on why the fascists are winning in Europe”, from the latest issue of Macleans magazine (which I picked up yesterday at the Vancouver airport to read on the flight back from Alaska).

Update: Steve Green writes:

When the s*** hits the fan, for more than two centuries the best people in the world have been able to count on one thing: escaping to America.

Steve’s article is titled “Once Upon a Time in America” — and it may soon be “Lights Out” for that vision of America, to coin a phrase.

David Pryce Jones writes, “Sixty years ago, George Orwell published 1984, and I can think of no work of fiction in the past century with a comparable influence right across the world”:

At that time, France and Italy appeared likely to go Communist, and in both countries extremists in the Party were ready for a coup. The Soviets occupied East Germany, were isolating West Germany, provoking the Berlin airlift, and opening the whole German future to doubt. The fact that the worst did not happen does not detract from Orwell’s vision. 1984, it seems to me, had the effect of saving the English-speaking intelligentsia from the Communist snares and delusions rampant on the continent of Europe, and any future totalitarian society will be obliged to ban it just as the Soviet Union did. That’s an immortal achievement.

Read the whole thing.

(Via the Corner.)