David Brooks and the nihilism of contemporary conservatism

By Dan Brooks in conservatism, corporatocracy, new york times, populism, Uncategorized 2 Comments
OM NOM NOM NOM NOM. OM NOM NOM. I know we've used this photo before—with basically this joke—but it pleases me so.

Seriously, does anybody want it? I'm going to eat it if nobody wants it. Michelle? You've had two already. Okay, we'll cut it in half.

Don’t get me wrong: I like David Brooks as much as the next guy. I realize I sound like I’m about to tell a David Brooks-ist joke—and if my grandpa asks you how you keep David Brooks out of your watermelon patch, just don’t respond—but I really do think that he provides sober, interesting analysis on a fairly consistent basis, provided that basis does not occur during campaign season, when he becomes insane. Generally, though, he’s a reasonable man. He employs logic and persuasive rhetoric in his columns, as if he were addressing people who did not necessarily agree with him before they started reading, which makes him something of a rarity among commentators on the right. As a result, his lucidity affords a valuable insight into the reasoning behind contemporary conservative thinking—a reasoning that is often obscured in the provocative (read: insane) rhetoric of a Beck, a Limbaugh or a Malkin.

Still, just because it’s valuable insight doesn’t mean it won’t be sad. Brooks’s column in today’s New York Times, in which he criticizes the Obama administration’s decision to limit executive compensation at banks and investment firms that received federal bailout money, exposes the nihilism at the heart of contemporary conservatism. Worse yet, it contradicts what he was saying one year ago at this time.

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Obama forces Beck to oppose volunteering

By Dan Brooks in glenn beck, obama, specious Chinese history, Uncategorized 2 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQVqIpqA80Y

Remember the Superman cartoon where Bizarro Superman is running wild in Metropolis and nobody can figure out how to stop him, until Superman realizes that Bizarro will automatically oppose anything Superman says or does, so all he has to do to save the city is tell Bizarro he loves him? It’s possible that was just a dream I had, or an early-childhood experience. Anyway, Glenn Beck is the Bizarro Obama. If Obama says “Merry Christmas,” Beck has to wish us all a happy Fourth of July. If Obama likes cake, Beck has to go on TV and say, “No—me hate cake so much!” while eating handfuls of broccoli. It’s a professional obligation, and as the video above shows us, it sometimes puts him in a difficult position.

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Friday links! Public option edition

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment
Once you've made Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp, you don't really need to protect the dignity of the project.

Once you've made Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp, you don't really need to protect the dignity of the project.

It’s easy sometimes, when you’re sitting in Starbucks listening to the woman at the next table rhapsodize into her cell phone about Couples Retreat while her many children shriek and bat at each other’s genitals with rulers, to think that maybe you’re outnumbered. We at Combat! blog spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about oppositional culture, and in that context one can fall into the trap of believing there is a massive, sluggish chunk of humanity arbitrarily opposed to anything one tries to accomplish. I mean, there is, but there aren’t as many of them as you might think.

Take the recent poll suggesting that 57 percent of Americans support a public health insurance option. After months of news telling us it was dead, of political analysts declaring that it was legislative poison, of John Boehner claiming he couldn’t find one person outside Washington who supported it, I was under the impression that, you know, people didn’t like it. It turns out that those who favor the public option outnumber those who oppose it by seventeen points—a margin far greater than the 53-to-49 margin Barack Obama enjoyed over John McCain in the popular vote. Of course, that was landslide victory; 17 points on a public option (or 30, in the case of states that don’t have affordable private options) is a slim margin to the national press. Which begs the question: Why isn’t the widespread pubic support for—and legislative opposition to—the public option the biggest news story in America right now? What happened to that liberal media bias I was raised on? Is it possible that the American people aren’t actually the problem with this one?

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Virtual fashion economy booming, says virtual news story

By Dan Brooks in consumerism, counterculture, inevitability of death, Internet, oppositional culture 4 Comments
In real life she's an utterly empty shrew, too, but she's kind of fatter.

In real life she's an utterly empty shrew, too, but kind of fatter.

The copy of a screenshot of the virtual version of a person at right is Angie Mornington, host of a weekly fashion show on Treet TV, the television station of the avatar-driven social networking platform Second Life. I find that sentence confusing, too. If you want to depress yourself, think about how 15,000 people a week use their fantasy lives in a 3-D computer world to watch television—and the virtual television equivalent of The Home Shopping Network, at that. If you want to depress me, point out how that’s about 300 times the readership of my blog.

All this information—okay, not the last sentence—comes from a trend piece in today’s Times about luxury spending in virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com and IMVU. For those of you unfamiliar with the ever-narrowing canyon between geek and sexual fetish culture that is Second Life, it’s a free-form, virtual world in which players own land and consumer goods, run businesses, interact socially and live out lies of computer-modeled desperation through their avatars, which are invariably both disturbing and attractive in roughly the same way as Angelina Jolie. Membership in these sites is free, but the money you spend there—Lindens in Second Life, Therebucks in There—has to be purchased with actual United States or foreign currency. Which—especially after you hear that such virtual worlds enjoy economies whose “avatar-to-avatar transactions [are] estimated at between $1 billion and $2 billion a year in real dollars,”—begs a question: Why?

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I got bored when I didn’t have a band: The Hold Steady in Bozeman, MT

By Dan Brooks in counterculture, hipsters, oppositional culture, punk rock, shows 6 Comments
The Hold Steady-CBGB

See how you're looking at the camera instead of at the band? That's why you don't have a boyfriend.

Liking The Hold Steady is not going to get you laid. All the indie vampires consider them passé or, worse, a novelty band, and girls in Kings of Leon hoodies have not heard of them. You can put on “The Swish” at a party, but someone will hit skip when it becomes evident that it doesn’t have a chorus, at which point two dudes in the corner will go “Aww!” They will be the oldest guys at the party. The Hold Steady is late-twenties music, about weird keggers and not going to certain clubs anymore and the uncertainty that starts to creep into a life spent listening to bands like The Hold Steady. It is for people who have already been through a Xanax thing. It is for guys who know where to get High Life in cans and will bring the High Life in cans to your party and drink it on the porch while wearing metal shirts, despite the fact that they are totally like 30. In other words, The Hold Steady is for people who have not yet given up on life. They’re for people who like rock, not because it’s cool—since it really isn’t anymore, given how old it is and how old we are—but because it rocks. Last night they brought their yelling, guitar soloing, whoa-ing show to The Filling Station in Bozeman, Montana, and 50 college kids came out to see them, plus 300 people who were suspiciously old to be drinking on a Tuesday night.

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