AROUND THE HORN.

•  I've always enjoyed Armond White's totally insane film criticism, and now that he's at National Review he's gotten even better, leaning more heavily on his culture-warrior malarkey. Since his targets are mostly crap like Maleficent ("All that’s certain is Jolie and Disney’s intention to overturn fundamental moral precepts"), who gives a shit? It's even funnier when White celebrates the "affectionate, often ribald humanity" of... Adam Sandler (who is also the target of the "Lamestream" and its "barely veiled political invective" -- why, do you know, they even call him "tasteless or corny"! Yeah, Adam Sandler!). But in one way it's sad: Once upon a time National Review hired critics like John Simon. Simon was temperamentally conservative (that is, an asshole) and at least as funny in his disapproval as White, but  also interesting when he liked something -- because, for one thing, that happened so rarely, and, for another, he was an astute observer whose tastes were as broad as his standards were high. He could identify and explain the true art in films that wouldn't seem to his tastes -- not only Bergman and Wertmuller, but also, for example, John Avildsen's Joe. Sociopolitical analysis didn't play a big role in his criticism because he focused on the art. It's a shame that no one could expect such a thing of National Review nowadays.

•  Ramesh Ponnuru on Hillary Clinton's age: "Age was a legitimate issue to consider when McCain ran for president. (I wrote an article urging him to allay concerns about his age by pledging to serve one term and picking a reassuring running mate. His campaign let me know my advice was considered, but he went a different way.)" As I am a Christian I want to believe "let me know my advice was considered" is a joke on Ponnuru's part. If so, nice one! There, that's my bipartisanship quota for the month. (Ponnuru's plan for McCain 2008 was sweet reason itself compared to Noah Millman's Palin-resigns-upon-McCain's-death idea. I wonder if the McCain campaign called him back.)

UPDATES.

•  No week is complete without a Jonah Goldberg mouthfart. This one's on the UCSB killings:

And, yes, guns need to be part of that equation. But blanket efforts to ban guns seem like an analogous effort to ban dangerous speech or art.

"Seem like an analogous effort" is the mush-mouth tipoff that Goldberg is lost in the clouds (actually, "blanket efforts to ban guns" is similarly meaningless), but what makes it even dumber is that for years Goldberg's been telling readers that he's in favor of censorship. I guess defending guns after a massacre is such a key part of the National Review mission that he doesn't mind breaking character for it.

•  Oh Christ, Patheos' "Postmodern Conservative" things has been transferred to National Review, and its greatest horror so far is a 2,000-word essay by Carl Eric Scott ("I’m a Gen-X academic arguably too interested in rock") called, I swear to God, "Carl’s Rock Songbook No. 95, Woods, 'Moving to the Left.'" Get a load:

[On some stupid Millenials survey] You don’t need a weathervane to know that those sociological findings predict a leftist direction for politics. 

Conservative columnists Jonah Goldberg and Ross Douthat noted that the report’s results were not exactly comforting to progressives either, as they showed that the habits of trust and involvement vital to any genuinely democratic movement are also in marked decline. When you listen to contemporary rock music, you hear frustrated recognition of this by the millennials themselves. For example, while Mikal Cronin’s “Apathy” provides poetic affirmation of the report’s finding about declining religious identification – old men, sing the song about Jesus, it deadpans at one point – its main message is the repeated refrain I don’t want apathy. Perceptive Millennials fear that many of their peers have fallen into a politically apathetic pattern, and that they could be drawn into the same.

Look what's happening out in the street/ Got to revolution, got to revolution!

...Woods has not been a noticeably political band, but as they’ve always cultivated a hippie-esque sound and image, and as they prominently display a peace symbol on their new album, we can assume their political sympathies are at least somewhat leftist... 

The other possibility is that Earl himself isn’t a good leftist at heart but, as the leader of an artsy Brooklyn rock band, finds the typical bohemian expectation of and faith in leftist social change wearisome.

Another possibility is fuck you.