For as long as the Web has been public — we’ll date it from Netscape, since Mosaic was more of a geek plaything — the Fretting Class has fretted that it’s turning us into a nation of lonely sociopaths. The line seems to be that through the Eighties, American society was a marvel of public gatherings, which immediately ceased when online porn became readily available.

Either that, or it wasn’t, and the Web just exacerbated a Disturbing Trend that was crystallized in the landmark 1995 paper “Bowling Alone”. Which, now that we’ve gone to the trouble to find it online, outright lied about its fretspectacular premise:

The most whimsical yet discomfiting bit of evidence of social disengagement in contemporary America that I have discovered is this: more Americans are bowling today than ever before, but bowling in organized leagues has plummeted in the last decade or so. Between 1980 and 1993 the total number of bowlers in America increased by 10 percent, while league bowling decreased by 40 percent… The rise of solo bowling threatens the livelihood of bowling-lane proprietors because those who bowl as members of leagues consume three times as much beer and pizza as solo bowlers, and the money in bowling is in the beer and pizza, not the balls and shoes. The broader social significance, however, lies in the social interaction and even occasionally civic conversations over beer and pizza that solo bowlers forgo.

Did you see that move? If you’re not bowling in a league, you must be bowling by yourself. Untold years of bumper-sticker sociology were based on a false claim. (“Bowling With Friends” would have ruined everything.) Thank god Communitarianism was finally taken out behind the barn and shot.

Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes — lonely sociopaths:

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Governor Palin Applauds ‘American Idol’ For Their Highest Standards [Conservatives4Palin]

“On Thursday, [Fox News Chairman Roger] Ailes apologized to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for describing NPR brass as ‘Nazis.’ He wrote: ‘I was of course ad-libbing and should not have chosen that word but I was angry at the time because of NPR’s willingness to censor Juan Williams for not being liberal enough.'” [Daily Beast]

Mitch McConnell, this morning:

“By preventing the accumulation of excessive power, the Constitution is designed to reduce the risk of tyranny or abuse at either the Federal or state levels,” McConnell told the audience of conservative legal scholars. “The health care bill would remove an important bulwark of this protection.”

Mitch McConnell, 2007:

Indeed, alarmist concerns notwithstanding, the Patriot Act is one of the most important and overdue pieces of legislation in a generation.

Yes, well, Alarmist Concerns about the Fourth Amendment sure are silly, aren’t they? Unlike Alarmist Concerns about the Individual Mandate, which surely will lead to Tyranny.

“Bristol Palin has been featured on ABC’s ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ but Sarah Palin has a few words for Fox’s ‘American Idol.’ She refers to ‘talent-deprived’ contestants who suffer from ‘the cult of self-esteem… No one they have encountered in their lives — from their parents to their teachers to their president — wanted them to feel bad by hearing the truth,’ she writes. ‘So they grew up convinced that they could become big pop stars like Michael Jackson.'” [AP, via Political Wire]

This is the homepage of the Obama campaign’s Fight the Smears website. It was launched to great fanfare as a one-stop shop to counter the scurrilous slurs circulating among opponents and your misguided relatives.

We don’t know how effective it was in practice, but we liked the symbolism: A candidate who wasn’t going to sit back and let smear merchants define the terms of debate. A campaign that would aggressively rebut the wild charges against it.

The website hasn’t been updated since November 2008. Because, as everybody knows, smears against Obama, Democrats, and their policies completely stopped the moment he was elected.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association can’t let a good deed go unpunished:

We have feminized the Medal of Honor.

According to Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, every Medal of Honor awarded during these two conflicts has been awarded for saving life. Not one has been awarded for inflicting casualties on the enemy. Not one…

So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night?

If only our soldiers behaved more like — well, more like Jesus:

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