Thursday roundup

Compare and contrast two views from the Right on the Comey firing: David French's at NRO and Kurt Schlichter's at Townhall. Feel free to weigh in on which one you deem to be closer to the mark.

At AEI Ideas, James Pethokoukis interviews Yuval Levin on the future of conservatism in the post-November-2016 era. It's not the first such discussion, as you're well aware, but they do bring some fresh insights to the topic.

Is this the worst marketing idea since New Coke?

We’ve probably spent enough time (for now, anyway) poking fun at or despairing over the airline industry, so let’s turn our attention to a different sector of the market. Dove is a well known brand which produces a range of bath and beauty products with marketing campaigns generally designed to cater to the fairer sex. They’ve actually been largely successful in this, encouraging women to love their own bodies and not feel restricted to some impossible standard set by swimsuit models. But their most recent effort seems to have fallen flat, if you’ll pardon the phrasing. The Washington Post covers the rather unenthusiastic reception Dove received when they decided to put out a limited time series of body wash bottles in a variety of suggestive shapes representing the “many shapes” of women.

After years of encouraging women to love their bodies, Dove set out to give its plastic bottles a makeover. The idea: “Just like women, we wanted to show that our iconic bottle can come in all shapes and sizes, too,” the company said on its website.

After just hours of its new advertising campaign, it seems indignation comes in all shapes and sizes, too.

The six shapely bottles — which include curvy, slender and pear-shaped varieties — have attracted ridicule.

“Dove ruined its body image,” the Atlantic declared.” “Dove is running out of ideas,”added the women’s site Jezebel.

Compare and contrast Michael Ledeen's view of the Flynn subpoena  and character at PJ Media with that of  strieff at RedState.

Ledeen:

I’m one of those who believe Mike Flynn to be an extraordinary talent who is being massacred by people still very angry that he showed them up by creating a better intel system in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also believe that President Trump made a big mistake by firing Flynn. Their common enemies concluded, predictably enough, that if they could get Flynn, they could get anyone, from Bannon and Gorka all the way to the Oval Office.

streiff:

 . . . despite an accomplished career as an intelligence officer, Flynn has shown that he has a self-destructive streak fueled by epic hubris that simply can’t be constrained. He really believes he’s the smartest guy in every room and nothing can disabuse him of that notion. The fact that he has already been interviewed by FBI agents without being advised by counsel probably indicates his goose is thoroughly cooked. I simply can’t imagine a guy who thought he could lie on a security clearance and lie to the Vice President not lying to mere rube FBI agents.

My bet is that he and Carter Page end up in prison. 

Again, very divergent views, both emanating from the right. These Trump-era differences in rightie viewpoint are getting rather frequent, no?

Great NRO Kyle Smith essay entitled "The Birth of Hollywood Virtue Signaling." He notes the number of groundbreaking films released in 1967 - Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke - and how the one that won the Oscar for Best Picture, In the Heat of the Night, was not among them. It was rather, as Smith notes, "a cinematically undistinguished, slowly paced police procedural that is not unlike a drawn-out episode of a TV series." It's a finger-wagging exercise, an indulgence in guilt-mongering imposed on an American public that had already largely come to understand that racism is evil and stupid.