As Conservative Poo-Flingers

continue whistling ever louder and fleeing ever faster away from various poo-caked, poo-damaged and poo-destroyed cultural, economic, religious and political institution, the man who for the last two decades has dressed up every morning in a natty poo hat, poo sport coat, poo shoes, poo tie, poo belt, poo glasses, poo silk socks, tighty-brownies. poo spats, poo trench coat (in case of feculent weather), poo tie, French-merde-cuff poo shirt and poo cuff links, made sure his poo wallet had at least a coupla hundred poobucks in it (“In Poo We Trust”) before tucking it into his poo Dockers, grabbed his hand-tooled poocase...

...and then toddled off to work wondering where that poo smell was coming from...

...is giddy again

From the NYT:

[Malcolm] Gladwell’s important new book, “Outliers,” seems at first glance to be a description of exceptionally talented individuals. But in fact, it’s another book about deep patterns. Exceptionally successful people are not lone pioneers who created their own success, he argues. They are the lucky beneficiaries of social arrangements.
...

In Gladwell’s account, individual traits play a smaller role in explaining success while social circumstances play a larger one. As he told Zengerle, “I am explicitly turning my back on, I think, these kind of empty models that say, you know, you can be whatever you want to be. Well, actually, you can’t be whatever you want to be. The world decides what you can and can’t be.”

As usual, Gladwell intelligently captures a larger tendency of thought — the growing appreciation of the power of cultural patterns, social contagions, memes. His book is being received by reviewers as a call to action for the Obama age. It could lead policy makers to finally reject policies built on the assumption that people are coldly rational utility-maximizing individuals. It could cause them to focus more on policies that foster relationships, social bonds and cultures of achievement.
...

Two points.

First, what Bobo-allegedly-channeling-Gladwell breathlessly incants as,

“the growing appreciation of the power of cultural patterns, social contagions, memes”

which creates a world where

“[e]xceptionally successful people are not lone pioneers who created their own success, he argues. They are the lucky beneficiaries of social arrangements.”

we here in Chicago refer to by its more ancient and venerated name:

P-O-L-I-T-I-C-S.

Seriously, after eight years of watching the White House Justice Department become the Joint Liberty University/Regent University/Messiah College Alumni Association and Halfway House ---

While Liberty has not yet matched Regent’s record of getting some 150 of its graduates hired by the Bush administration, that is not stopping it from setting even loftier goals:

Fisher said four Liberty graduates will clerk for judges, one at the appellate level. Such jobs pave the way to a clerkship with the U.S. Supreme Court and beyond, said Staver, a fact of which Falwell was well aware.

"We'd be pleased if we trained up a John Roberts and a Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas and an Antonin Scalia," Falwell told the Tribune, with a wide smile. "We'd feel like we hit a home run."

--- after generations living under the groaning weight of an open and nakedly dynastic, in-group/out-group mentality dominating Big Dollar Gummint, Big Dollar Religion, Big Dollar Media and Big Dollar Plutocracy, is there anyone in the Universe besides Conservative Bootstrap Salesmen that hasn't long ago noticed the direct and blindingly obvious correlation between "who you know" and "how you fare"?

Second, if the Conservative brain-caste has now abandoned the Palinites:

The culture war was so rich and fragrant, you could miss the little civil insurrections: a host of conservative brains detaching themselves from the conservative heartland, which still beat for Sarah.

as batshit-crazy yahoos, bunkered down with Bibles and hand-cannons and screaming into the diaper pail of history...

And if the cryptolibertarian Randite/Small Gummint section of the Republican Symphony Orchestra -- which is entirely based on the merciless ethic that people are “coldly rational utility-maximizing individuals” who just need to be beaten progressively harder until they either become good little Objectivists and prosper, or die and get out of the way – is bunkum...

...then pray tell, Bobo, what exactly is a “Conservative?”

Who remains in your fanstasyland corner of the Right but a tiny clutch of wildly-overpaid white men huddled in Nancy Reagan’s shoe closet, scaring the crap out of each other telling liberal ghost stories (“ …and then they raaaaaised the marginal tax rates…on YOU!” Waughhhh!) ?

For as long as I can remember, the Conservative brain-caste has carried out its ritual duties with a smirk, knowing all the while at some level that its Gods are lumps of dead stone, its sermons are scams for enriching plutocrats and fleecing rubes, and it dogmas are Armageddon’s operating manual.

The intellectuals and opinion-makers on the Right spilled oceans of ink selling this nation into debt and ruin for no other reason than Evil pays better than Good.

Plus, on the Right, as long as you're willing to hawk their movement's toxic product, they let just about anyone wear those

spiffy tall hats.