Friday links! Radically different worldviews edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 6 Comments

Margie Phelps makes the most of her only life before sliding into oblivion.

One decreasingly fashionable view of colonial history holds that the American Revolution succeeded in part because of ideological consensus—the remarkable tendency of Americans to hold the same basic views on the same foundational ideas. We’re all pretty much committed to the idea of equality before the law, for example. If you explained that concept to a dude in 18th-century Korea, he would A) become obsessed with your cell phone and B) laugh at the notion that every person in a society should obey the same laws. From outside our particular historic paradigm, Americans’ general agreement is mind-blowing. Yet, at this very moment, Rick Santorum is running a campaign based on the idea that this county’s biggest problem is gay dudes. He will never be President, but hundreds of thousands of people agree with him. Get a few conclusions removed from basic principles, and the nutso worldviews of your fellow Americans are breathtaking. It’s Friday, and people across the country can’t wait to recharge by watching some Ghost Whisperer and going to church. Won’t you marvel at their fantastic perspectives with me?

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The man with the very simple plan

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 4 Comments

I think I speak for all of us when I say please God,* let Herman Cain win the Republican nomination for President. He is delightful. Three weeks into his campaign he noted that America needs to lighten up, and he’s among the 50% of GOP candidates who can control when they talk about Jesus. Plus, he might be the only man to make racists consider Barack Obama on his merits. After Cain got annihilated in the general, he could enjoy a beer and a chuckle at how he briefly thought he could be President of the United States. Don’t let Herman Cain become President of the United States. Already he has articulated a specific plan to wreck the government.

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Feel better by disdaining Meghan McCain

By Dan Brooks in Invective 7 Comments

Ethnic friend! Ethnic friend!

Fact: it is okay to be mean to rich people. You probably shouldn’t, since habitually being mean will make you into a bitter, unpleasant person,* but if you must contemn someone it’s better they’re wealthy. Hereditary wealth is the best. To be mean to the self-made millionaire is player hating. To be mean to someone who received wealth (say from her mother’s brewery) and fame/a public platform (say from her father’ failed bid at the presidency) through zero work creates a pleasing symmetry. That person was arbitrarily given a life of absurd privilege, and now she is arbitrarily criticized for failing to be the kid of person who could achieve it on her own. Take Meghan McCain. Her column at the Daily Beast is a weekly anti-advertisement for a Columbia education, and her political analyses combine banal received opinion with false marverickery, like someone ordering off the menu at McDonalds. As Leon Wolf at RedState discovered, she’s ripe for parody. Always remember, though, that rich people have lawyers.

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Rick Perry releases Armageddon 2: Antichrist

By Dan Brooks in Campaign Advertisements 6 Comments

Kaboom! Mitt Rombama has a psychic episode.

A few weeks ago we discussed the terrifyingly cinematic campaign commercial in which Rick Perry teaches a broken America to make jet fighters again. That was back when he was the front runner and logically impelled to demonize the President. Now that the American people have gotten to know him, Perry is trailing fellow suit-mounted jawline Mitt Romney. (Ed.: Who? Who?) The two men couldn’t be more different: one is the millionaire son of a former governor, and the other became a millionaire while he was governor. Also, one of them is basically Barack Obama. In order to make clear which, Perry has produced this 59-second biopic. Props to Micky for the link, and video after the jump.

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Happy Columbus Day

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 3 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bnKGhJDjOk

When I was a kid (1988–Sex & the City 2) I loved PJ O’Rourke. He wrote about politics in a way that made his Reagan-style conservatism make sense, and he was very, very funny. He wrote essays like “Ferrari Refutes Decline of the West”—in which he drives the Ferrari used in the pilot episode of Magnum P.I. across the country—and “How to Drive Fast On Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink,” and he was the first person to warn me away from women who wear either white or black lipstick. Now he sucks. In the video above, Alan Grayson explains what the Occupy Wall Street protestors are so upset about while O’Rourke whinges out a bunch of hippie jokes that would have seemed tired on Laugh-In. I’m not saying that I agree with OWS or even with the proposition that they consciously convey a coherent message, but I am saying that the things you once thought were great can change. More terrifying still, they can stay the same and you can start thinking about them differently. On Columbus Day, the holiday that is so almost not a holiday that every year I can’t decide whether to do a Combat! blog post, that sentiment seemed appropriate.