Pun Salad

… predicting Marty Robbins:

• Jeff Jacoby was not enough for me to maintain my Boston Globe subscription, but he has a useful summary of Democrat smugness over the past few years, using President Obama's recent gripe that voters are failing to "think clearly" because they're in the icy grip of fear. I noticed:

  Obama is far from alone in looking down his nose at the great unwashed.

  Jacoby must have some sort of psychic connection with Katie Couric of (so I'm told) CBS News, who's getting out of her Manhattan studio:

  That's why Couric has spent recent weeks in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is touring what she calls "this great unwashed middle of the country" in an effort to divine the mood of the midterms.

  Dr. Katie also diagnoses that "voters are slightly schizophrenic". And that thing on the voters' neck? They really should get that looked at.

  Literate Lileks notes that the "great unwashed" comes to us from the pen of the immortal Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

• Everyone else in the dextrosphere has linked to this P. J. O'Rourke article, but just in case you haven't clicked over yet…

  Democrats aren't just dateless dweebs clambering upon the Statue of Liberty carrying a wilted bouquet and trying to cop a feel. Theirs is a different kind of love story. Power, not politics, is what the Democrats love. Politics is merely a way to power's heart. When politics is the technique of seduction, good looks are unnecessary, good morals are unneeded, and good sense is a positive liability. Thus Democrats are the perfect Lotharios. And politics comes with that reliable boost for pathetic egos, a weapon: legal monopoly on force. If persuasion fails to win the day, coercion is always an option.

  Six days to go…

• I don't watch PBS (aka "Commie TV") much, but I really, really, liked the first episode ("A Study in Pink") of Sherlock, a new TV series placing Holmes and Dr. Watson in present-day London. I'm not an obsessive Holmesian, but I remembered enough to enjoy the little parallels between the Victorian original and the update.

  For example, at the very beginning of A Study in Scarlet, Watson mentions that he's just out of rehab after getting shot in Afghanistan. The present-day Watson: pretty much the same. Both Studies have the important clue of "RACHE" scrawled at the crime scene; but the clue's meaning is neatly reversed between "Scarlet" and "Pink".

  And at one point, Watson is confronted by a dapper know-it-all who identifies himself only as Holmes' "arch-enemy". You say, ah, I know who that is! And… no, you don't.

  But best of all: no campaign commercials. They're really getting tedious. I love free speech, but I also value any option that allows me to avoid it.

  So: check your listings, and if you're so inclined, "A Study in Pink" is available online for free viewing here.