The right to lie in Ohio

By Dan Brooks in lying 3 Comments

Mark Miller of Cincinnati, classing it up on a hated streetcar

You narrowly missed having the headline A streetcar named The Liar inflicted upon you this morning, but at long last, it turns out I have some decency.  The man using the Ohio heybuddy to straighten his glasses above is Mark Miller, and he hates a trolley. Last year, when the City of Cincinnati wanted to build and operate several of same, Miller launched a campaign supporting a ballot initiative to stop the project. The New York Times offers an example of one of his rallying tweets:

 15% of Cincinnati’s Fire Dept browned out today to help pay for a streetcar boondoggle. If you think it’s a waste of money, VOTE YES on 48.

How we all hate a boondoggle! Surprisingly, though, Miller found himself in the midst of a donnybrook. In turns out that several of his statements, including the one above, were not what logicians call “true.” It also turns out that Ohio law forbids making false statements in support of a political campaign, and Miller became the object of a complaint with the state election commission. That complaint was dismissed—and Cincinnati is building that damn streetcar—but Miller remains scarred. “I’ve got to second-guess myself every time I sit down in front of a computer,” he told the Times. “Maybe I should moderate my stance, so I don’t get involved in an expensive action.”

Continue reading

Congress outlaws protest near Secret Service-protected

By Dan Brooks in Fascism 8 Comments

Rick Santorum and his imaginary friend, God

The difference between the US President and a king, as any red-blooded American knows, is that you can tell the king of America to fuck himself. He probably won’t do it, but it’s nice to be able to make the recommendation. Living in the United States got a little less nice last week, when the House of Representatives approved HR 347—a bill that The Hill specifically describes as “non-controversial.” The Hill is like the guy at the poker table who looks at his cards, shakes his head, sighs and then calls three hundred dollars. In addition to “clarify[ing] in US law that it is illegal to trespass on White House grounds,” the full text of the HR 347 contains the follwing:

(1) the term ‘restricted buildings or grounds’ means any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area—

(A) of the White House or its grounds, or the Vice President’s official residence or its grounds

(B) of a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting; or

(C) of a building or grounds so restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance;

It is now a felony to glitterbomb Rick Santorum.

Continue reading

Friday links! Power of speech edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 6 Comments

Humans are the only animal with the power of speech. That’s probably good, since you don’t want the dog following you around saying hey, are you hungry? all day. It’s also not really true; lots of animals communicate with sound, from birds to monkeys to weirdo meerkats. But man is the animal whose speech moves through time. We talk not just about whether we see a big snake but also about the time we saw it, about what it means that things were once one way they were and how they should be in the future. The meerkat has little idea of should. Talking is rad, is what I’m saying here, even when other people do it. Today is Friday, I have a brand new bite plate and attendant speech impediment, and I’ve also got some bang-on links re: the power of speech. Won’t you stare silently at a screen with me?

Continue reading

Social conservatives try to make satire fun again

By Dan Brooks in lying 4 Comments

Larry Doyle, former Simpsons writer and author of an "anti-Catholic screed."

One consolation of our progressive national stupefaction is that satire might start fooling people again. Not that Larry Doyle’s recent column on “the Jesus-eating cult of Rick Santorum” is particularly subtle. When Doyle describes himself as a former “Irish-Catholic, the worst kind” and says he discovered a possible connection between the RCC and NAMBLA “after conducting some research on the internet,” we see the flapping flag of irony country. Here lies the problem of satire within an educated society: pretty much everybody is smart enough to get it. That’s good, but it also takes some fun out of the conceit that someone, somewhere, is taking the irony seriously. It’s like a practical joke that everyone is in on; we all have to just look at the cup of pee and imagine how funny it would be if someone drank it. Lucky for us, Tony Perkins cannot resist free lemonade.

Continue reading

And on to Super Tuesday

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 7 Comments

"I regard this outcome as desirable."

Mitt Romney has won the Republican presidential primaries in Arizona and Michigan, handily in the former and maybe less so in his home state. He beat Rick Santorum in Michigan by just over three points, suggesting that people whose unemployment rate stayed over 10% for most of 2011 really are worried that dudes might touch one another’s linuses. Either that, or something about a governor’s son who made up for his criticism of the auto bailout by explaining how many Cadillacs he owns just isn’t connecting with people. Meanwhile, level-twelve poop elemental Newt Gingrich beat Ron Paul up north but was beaten by him out west. Gyn’grrch will now be summoned to Georgia by Sheldon Adelson’s ritual burning of several million dollars.

Continue reading