Those of you who dimly remember that Combat! blog is supposed to be about oppositional culture (and not All Health Care All the Time) might also remember one of our major theses around here: Consumer culture is not driven by the desire to conform, but rather by the desperate need to individuate. Never has that principle been so on display as in the most recent series of advertisements for Miracle Whip.* Featuring a group of twenty-something urban semi-professionals partying on a roof in slow motion—and occasionally eating sandwiches absolutely slathered in what I assume is Hellman’s mayonnaise—the ads defiantly assert the mantra of a generation: We Will Not Tone It Down. Video after the jump.

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Those of you who relished Barney Frank’s health care town hall as much as I did might remember Griff Jenkins, the Fox News correspondent who narrated the event in a way that, um, confirmed the expectations of Fox News correspondents. Jenkins appears to be a rising star at Fox, and has been the network’s point-man for covering Tea Party rallies, the 9/12 march on Washington, and other carefully orchestrated spontaneous outbursts of populist dissent. After hearing his name, I initially assumed he was a biplane pilot in an educational children’s show. It turns out, though, that Griff Jenkins is a real person who actually does stuff, most of which is hilarious.

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Man oh man, it is a beautiful day in central Iowa. The mist is rising off the (soccer) fields, the little dogs are yipping maniacally, and I am ensconced on my mother’s back porch, drinking coffee and watching the neighbor kid, who has been inexplicably dressed in a tiger suit. In such bucolic suburban milieus, one can easily forget that the world has gone absolutely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs or, if you prefer, retarded for Rice Krispies. Homo for Honeycomb? I digress. The point is, everything sucks and nobody can think except for you. And what are you doing? Sitting in your office reading blogs when you’re supposed to be working? Good. As Super Mario once said, all that is required for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing. If evil were to stop succeeding all of a sudden, Combat! blog would be about what I had for breakfast.* Nobody wants that any more than I do, and I want it very little, so here’s a bunch of stuff to get angry about instead. Coprophagic for Cap’n Crunch? Okay, I’m done.

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