Friday links! Dastardly villains edition

Rush Limbaugh threatens to crush the local orphanage like a pastrami sandwich in which the pastrami is just right, a little fatty but trimmed, with a hot mustard and no mayonnaise, dammit.

One of the most disappointing aspects of adulthood is the shortage of real villains. As a child conditioned by Thundercats and Bubble Tape commercials, I believed that adulthood would be cleanly divided into kind, decent people and cackling devils. Imagine my disappointment. For the most part, maniacal and cruel are in short supply in the actual world, vastly outnumbered by such boring traits as inconsiderate and selfish. Genuine evil is hard to come by. That said, ordinary humans can still reach cartoonish heights of dicketry if they really put their minds to it. Today is Friday, and our link roundup is chockablock with schmucks who suck, along with a brief burst of late-stage heroism. Won’t you stroke a white cat with me?

Having accomplished pretty much everything that can be done in the field, it is possible that Rush Limbaugh is now messing with us. Tuesday on his radio show—which is probably really hard to fill every week—he opined that Bane the Batman villain may be a thinly-veiled attack on Bain Capital:

The thought is that when they start paying attention to the campaign later in the year, and Obama and the Democrats keep talking about Bain, Romney and Bain, that these people will think back to the Batman movie, “Oh, yeah, I know who that is.” (laughing) There are some people who think it’ll work. Others think you’re really underestimating the American people to think that will work.

Really, Rush? There are some people who are reacting to the thing that you just said, like, one second ago who think it’ll work, and others who don’t? It’s a good thing time means nothing to Limbaugh, since the Bane character was created in 1992.

Meanwhile, the Bain that we are supposed to believe is good keeps, uh, nuancing its character. Ben al-Fowlkes sent me this article about Mitt Romney’s tax avoision from Huffington Post, which his dog was reading in the belief that it would expose a conspiracy of raccoons. In 2010, Romney saved himself “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in capital gains taxes by donating several of his personal stock holdings to his own nonprofit organization, the Tyler Charitable Foundation. Then he deducted the value of the stocks as charitable contributions. Tyler need only disburse 5% of its assets each year to maintain its nonprofit status; it’s currently running at 7.8%, thanks to a $1.8 million donation to the Church of Latter-Day Saints in 2008. I wonder what the LDS was up to in 2008? Oh yeah.

Don’t worry—Romney still has plenty of time for a last-minute conversion. Former decent man John McCain returned to his winning ways Wednesday, when he took the Senate floor to defend Huma Abedin. Abedin, you may recall, has been the target of scurrilous accusations from Michele Bachmann, who claims that she is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. McCain said that the “specious and degrading” claim “defames the spirit of our nation, and we all grow poorer because of it.” Bachmann countered by pointing out that Abedin is a Muslim.

You cannot make this stuff up. You can make up pretty much anything else, though, as this fake hijacking of a fake Shell Oil campaign demonstrates. Here is the level of complexity that 2012 internet culture has attained: the false rumor that internet users repurposed the “postcards” feature of a (hoax) Shell website has gone viral. Don’t think about that immediately after reading Simulacra and Simulation or your heart will explode. Also, super negative props—sporps, I guess—to Foster Kamer for writing the sentence, “On a first look, they appear like something Shell put out, but an actual read would make you question if a company like Shell would have the gall to actually put out something like that.” Welcome to the future of journalism, you guys.

Also welcome to the past of being a dick:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkJEt1UsUcs

My god, it is wonderful. In case we haven’t shattered enough treasured childhood images for one Friday, Ben Gabriel sent me this fantastic video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oEYMGL0ZtA

Don’t try to count how many cultural references it relies upon. You’ll only get sad and cut off your weird neck-fringe.

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