Not only is there No Free Lunch, there is also No Free Ice-Cream Truck

It appears that Debbie Schlussel is just the poor woman's Peggy Noonan. Bet you didn't know that, did you? Why, Sadly, Yes! Down below Ahab watches Peggy Noonan wrestling with her ill fitting nostalgia like Bela Lugosi with the rubber octopus in Ed Wood. Over at Sadly, No! they print this nearly identical wail from Debby Schlussel: More...

You have probably been blissfully unaware that the latest tactic being employed by teh Moooslims in their battle to establish a caliphate in the United States and to replace your neighborhood Hooters with a Falafel Hut is going on in Dearborn, Michigan, and involves ice cream trucks. To learn more, we must enter the strange world of Debbie Schlussel where a Mooslim wielding a scimitar lurks behind every potted plant. (obviously that's Sadly, No!--ed)

Some of my fondest memories as a kid, hanging out with my Dad, are when we’d meet up with the neighborhood ice cream truck, during the hot summer, and he’d buy me one of my favorites: The Bomb Pop–red, white, and blue, it was patriotic, yummy, and cool on a hot day. And as you know, the only way to know the truck is coming is to hear its music.

…

And these Muslims–who don’t like American culture and want to shut it, and all American-style fun, down–have now succeeded in getting Dearborn Heights police to enforce old, never enforced noise rules to keep ice cream trucks out. /wingnut out/

Why teh Mooslims have issued a fatwa against ice cream trucks is never explained by Debbie. I assume it must have something to do with the red, white and blue “patriotic” Bomb Pops which steel young boys and girls against the wiles of the jihad. Without those Bomb Pops, American boys and girls will be kneeling on prayer mats and facing Mecca faster than you can say Allahu Akbar. (Sadly, No! again. Just fyi)

Now it ought not to escape any of us that Debbie's plaint is also identical to little miss "liberals took our diving boards" and littlerer even misser "liberals took my husband's balls but I was able to save daddy's from his five wives. " And these all bundled together reveal some kind of mass hallucination or hysterical reaction to modernity. What kind of reaction, I hear you cry? Well, for Peggy Noonan who knows, I try never to get into her head for fear I won't be able to crawl back out to the light. But the other two reduce themselves to this: liberals are fuckin' killjoys who took my children's childhood pleasures. Sane people read these things and think "people got together and thought that maybe inducing small children to run out into traffic at the sound of an icecream truck's music was kind of pointlessly dangerous or "people got together and for reasons of cost or of liability decided that putting up diving boards for young children to kill themselves on wasn't really a necessary part of childhood fun." Underlying both these horrifyingly muslimofascistliberalfunhaters decisions are what sane people call "public policy" that draw on this thing we call "information" and also "cost." See, as a parent I actually like the idea that problems for me and my kids like,hmmm, oh, you know, smog, lead, mercury poisoning, ice cream trucks inducing them to experience the most common form of childhood auto accident known as "mid curb dart out", and also that perennial summer favorite "total paraylisis due to smashed vertebra" are things that my local government is trying its damndest to prevent. I'm really sorry that Debbie Schlussel's kids can't rely on mr. frostee for their summer treats anymore--or at any rate, as closer inspection reveals, simply need to use their eyes instead of their ears to be alerted to the existence of icecream novelties--but the rest of us think the whole damn family is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too over stimulated anyway if her columns are any sign. But no doubt liberals stole her self control, as well.

Can't think of a title, but is it any wonder?

Remember, choosing to care about Tibet--or, hell, Iraq, is a sign that liberals are foolish and ill informed. But choosing to read about Brittany Spears or Obama's terrorist bowling practices over reading dull stuff like Glenn Greenwald on John Yoo and torture memos *signed by the president of the United States* is a valid life style choice. See how that works?

And for the musical version, please don't miss "The Wreck of the Megan McCardle" by the sadlynauts. Truly one of the greats.

Media’s sacred trust is sadly not a sacred trust fund

Don’t I have obligations as a journalist beyond crass money grasping? Haven’t I been invested with a sacred trust that shouldn’t be held hostage to profit? Indeed I have: to report stories that are factually correct and more importantly, to the best of my knowledge and ability, fundamentally true. But I don’t think that I have a duty to lose vast sums of money doing so–I already took quite a hefty paycut when I devoted my MBA to journalism. I gave, as they say, at the office.

The Atlantic Unbound,
Keened a querulous sound,
As a wave broke over the railin’.

So did everyone else who took their college degree into journalism, from editors on down. Nor do newspaper owners exactly mint money.

And everyone knew,
As McArdle did too,
That the best she could do, it was failin’.