Friday links! Freedom is a choice edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized 5 Comments
Russians exercise their right to Bully Face.

Russians exercise their right to Bully Face.

Here’s how they do in Moscow: Vladimir Putin puts his enemy in jail, Russians riot, and Putin lets him out again. Meanwhile, in the country that invented freedom, we can’t get into the streets for a universal domestic wiretap. It’s summer, people. Where’s the raucous spirit of American liberty that I am told could not be contained when the people who tell me that were young? Whither the groovy protest summer of ’13? Freedom is a choice, and if you expect to be free by going along with stuff you’re doing it wrong. Today is Friday. The world is full of people who do not personally care if you spend the next 12 years in a secret prison. Won’t you basically do that to yourself via the computer with me?

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And now, to anger everyone

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment
UM quarterback Jordan Johnson, pre-acquittal

UM quarterback Jordan Johnson, pre-acquittal

It’s Thursday, which means it is once again time to show the good people of Missoula how much I like them by making them hate me. I presume that this column about Jordan Johnson’s Best Athlete award in the Missoula Independent will alienate both Griz fans and Indy readers. My only hope is that the mob will also destroy Pizza Hut on the way to my house. If you don’t live in Missoula and cannot compass why this is a big deal, you can read about the Department of Justice’s settlement with the Missoula police department and UM here. Investigation of the county attorney’s office is ongoing, possibly because MCA Fred Van Valkenberg has refused to cooperate with the DOJ. People have strong opinions about this issue. As of press time, however, my review of Yeezus and Magna Carta Holy Grail has received the most irate comments. O, general public.

 

 

Asiana Airlines will not sue Fox affiliate over joke pilot names

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture 0 Comment
Screencap from KTVU's coverage of the crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214

Screencap from KTVU’s coverage of the crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214

Reuters reports this morning that Asiana Airlines has abandoned plans to sue San Francisco Fox affiliate KTVU. In its early coverage of the crash of Flight 214, the station broadcast joke names for the flight’s pilots, which it says were confirmed by the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB blames it on a summer intern. The whole saga makes you feel safe, doesn’t it? The unfolding of this story inspires nothing but confidence—in our news outlets, in our federal safety administrators, in our emergency personnel, and in the corporations that raise us 30,000 feet into the air and, one way or another, return us to the ground. Now please excuse me while I polish my tiara, because I am Marie of Romania. Video after the jump.

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A beautiful gift from Twitter

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture 4 Comments
The usual gift from Twitter

The usual gift from Twitter

For ineffable reasons, Twitter has suggested that I follow this well-to-do child. I will not be following a child via Twitter or any other means, but there is something perfect about the Twitter presence of this particular 17 year-old. As a person who worked with well-to-do high school students, I find The RRP archetypal, even classic. He is cool in exactly the way that an affluent teenager is cool, e.g. his description of himself: “17. Swim. HRA.” A Twitter feed is the willful projection of a personality into the world, and adolescence is the willful projection of a personality into adulthood. These two forces in combination make The RRP’s Twitter more than a collection of country club photos and tales of lost sunglasses. It is a distillation of one type of youth. Also, his picture is priceless. You’ll find it after the jump.

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Jury finds Zimmerman innocent, white

By Dan Brooks in sociopaths 9 Comments
Now all I have to live with is my memory of killing a child.

Phew! Now all I have to live with is my memory of killing a child.

Perhaps you heard already, but George Zimmerman acted in self-defense when he used his gun to kill the unarmed 17 year-old he followed down the street. Contrary to popular perception, Zimmerman’s defense team did not rely on Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which A) allows people to use deadly force when they consider themselves at risk of death or great bodily injury, and B) does not require them to retreat from such threats, even when they might reasonably be able to do so. While most states have adopted the so-called Castle Doctrine, which applies to homes, Florida and several others have extended to any lawfully occupied public place the right to use deadly force rather than retreat. Since they did, they have experienced an average 8% increase in homicides and non-negligent manslaughter.

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