I had forgotten all about James Lileks  figuring that he had either tumbled into the Well of Obscurity or possibly he was the victim of a tragic matchbook collection showing gone horribly (and possibly, upon further review, hilariously) awry. But I was right on the first count, because he’s doing his Shecky of the Prairie routine over at Pajama’s Media.

Yes. Sad. I know.

Anyway, Lileks accuses Contessa Brewer of acting “morally superior” towards the hicks (oh, noes!) because Contessa is  frustrated that the Times Square FailBomber turned out to be a Muslim and that just feeds into the continuous loop of God-given common-sense prairie-wisdom of the bitter clingers  who believe deep in their hearts that all brown people are Satan’s swarthy emissaries come to presage The Rapture.

Lileks eases into it, starting off with a joke:

This may be a big moment for Contessa Brewer, since it’s brought her a wider audience — and while some may wonder if her name means she’s like Budweiser Royalty or something…

Bah-dump-dump! Tish! “Thanks. I’ll be here all week, try the lutefisk. No. Really.”

Lileks continues on, adopting  the quaint hoi poloi patois of his peers  for comical effect:

To Ms. Brewer, these are simply the sentiments of a thinking, caring, decent, fair-minded person. If you react otherwise, you’re a squinty-eyed Bubba who thinks this here country started goin’ downhill (spit) since we started lettin’ Veetner-mesians (spit) come in and run restaurants. Not saying they don’t make good rice because they do ‘n all, but this all here’s a Christian nation. And ah say that in full reee-cog-nition of the Deism of some Founders, inasmuch you can place Deism outside of the bound’ry of angnostercism and link it to yer monotheistic assumptions.

Those are the people who rush to judgment. They hear there’s been a terrorist attack, perform some twisted calculation based on stories from Fox’s highly rated “Jihadis in Your Garage” daily update, and figure it might have something to do with Islamists. Shame! Good people not only don’t judge before-hand, they want to refrain from judging after-hand, so they can theoretically judge someone who didn’t do it, but might.

Yes, shame! And then there are those rare circumstances when there is a terrorist attack and people rush to judgment and blame an Islamist country and then attack that Islamist country which, it turns out didn’t do it…but might have if we hadn’t, you know, gone in and treated their country like David Vitter treats a diaper.

And when one of those Islamists points out that, hey!, you burned down his house, killed his family, and fucked his dog for no good reason,  you have to draw upon all of your moral superiority and explain that you did too have good reason, which is that you did it for his own good.

Like this guy:

Hey, Salam? Fuck you. I know you’re the famous giggly blogger who gave us all a riveting view of the inner circle before the war, and thus know more about the situation than I do. Granted. But there’s a picture on the front page of my local paper today: third Minnesotan killed in Iraq. He died doing what you never had the stones to do: pick up a rifle and face the Ba’athists. You owe him.

Let me explain this in simple terms, habibi. You would have spent the rest of your life under Ba’athist rule. You might have gotten some nice architectural commissions to do a house for someone whose aroma was temporarily acceptable to the Tikriti mob. You might have worked your international connections, made it back to Vienna, lived a comfy exile’s life. What’s certain is that none of your pals would ever have gotten rid of that “scary guy without the hideous moustache” (as if his greatest sin was somehow a fashion faux pas) and the Saddam regime would have prospered into the next generation precisely because of people like you. People who would rather have lived their life in low-level fear than change your situation. I understand; I would have done the same. I’m not brave enough to start a revolution. I wouldn’t have grabbed a gun and charged a palace. I would lived like you. Head down, eyes wary. When the man’s too strong, the man’s too strong. But let me quote from a Guardian story on your life:

“Like all Iraqis, Salam was familiar with the dangers. At least four of his relatives had gone missing. In the past year, for no apparent reason, one of his friends was summarily executed, shot in the head as he sat in his car, and two others were arrested; one was later freed and another, a close friend, has never returned.”

The rug was soaked before we got there, friend. Cut the clever café pose; drop the sneer. That “Rambo” crap is old. Iraq needs grown-ups. Be one.

Harsh, yes. But it was for Salam’s own good.

Bless his heart, the fuckin’ ingrate…