linked below (original link here) —

for all that post’s merits, I think he’s dead wrong on this:

I discuss below the four most probable lines of attack that committed ideologues are likely to advance, but to my mind basic political considerations make it very unlikely that mainstream Republican politicians will vocally join the criticism.

No way. I mean, this might be true if “mainstream Republican politicians” (I assume he means the typical GOP senator) had any control of the Republican discourse. But of course they don’t, which is precisely why Republicans are in the bind they’re in.

All the organs of Republican opinion are going to go HARD after Sotomayor. They would have gone after any nominee, but Sotomayor they will go after viciously, because their dislike for her is visceral. All that identity politics stuff in that speech she gave — we will hear about that nonstop. They will try to use this pick to racialize Obama, to make him into a Quota King.

It will be impossible for GOP Senators not to be pulled into that discourse, no matter how politically suicidal (long term, with Latinos) such a decision might be.

As the Republicans flail about in desperation these days, there are a lot of moments that one might call scary-funny-scary. A good example is this startling story from Liberty University, which just banned the campus Democrats. If this had happened in, say, 2003 or 2004, with Republicans in power and ascendant, it would have been seriously chilling. But in the tea-party days of 2009, it seems sort of funny: a purposely provocative attempt to ratchet up the rhetoric against the so-called “socialist” Democrats etc. by people who really don’t run anything in Washington right now.

Then, though, it gets chilling again. I mean, everything tends to come around again, and the current Liberty undergrads will probably get their Washington jobs (like they did in spades under Bush) eventually. This is all political theater to the older right-wingers, but is it to the kids? I.e., all of this purifying that’s going on in the Republican party seems so comically hopeless right now — but what if that purified thing is actually what comes back to power?

For calling people “wogs” in a casual manner, a young witness to a shooting in Australia has become an overnight Internet celebrity:

Her video interview attracted more than 100,000 views, a Facebook fan group with over 1800 members has appeared and even t-shirts featuring Clare quotes are available online.

The group, “Clare the Kings Cross bogan fan club”, has spawned internet memes such as ironic motivational posters featuring the young woman and two other people interviewed on the night.

Here’s the video:

UPDATE: When I said “irono-racism” in the headline, I didn’t mean to imply I thought HER racism was ironic — I more was talking about her hordes of Internet fans. (Even there, I suppose there’s some real crossover. But isn’t that what irono-racism is all about?)

and is permitted by the New York Times Book Review to bury it in the back of Clancy Martin’s first novel. I mean c’mon. McCarthy is basically right, but he could have deployed this exact same argument against any number of more established authors, instead of against this clearly talented first-time novelist for whom a crappy review in the NYTBR constitutes a serious blow to his career.

McCarthy’s justification for deploying his ire against Martin is the fact that the book… has overly positive blurbs on it! If only Benjamin Kunkel, that established literary arbiter other first-time novelist, had reined in his praise just a little, then Martin might have snagged the front page after all.