The year 2015 in review

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment
"Make the word 'orbit' look like it's orbiting."

“Make the word ‘orbit’ look like it’s orbiting.”

Christmas is nigh upon us, and Combat! blog has pretty much succumbed to torpor in its ancestral home. It was 45 and rainy most of the day in Des Moines yesterday, which is unseasonal, but we also got snow, a little hail, 20 mile-an-hour winds, more rain, and finally a hard freeze. You can tell I’ve been in Iowa, because I’m writing about the weather. The only thing more interesting than the weather in Iowa is what happened to me the other day, per this week’s column in the Missoula Independent:

I won’t bore you with the science, but I made a Vine dancing to “Power of Love” in the mirror and then accidentally took a Snapchat of myself watching that Vine, and now I am in the distant future. Everything has changed. Dogs are represented in Congress, almost exclusively, and watches with biometric monitoring systems tell us when to eat. They pretty much tell us everything: where to work, when to get back to work, whom to seize. We never should have invented superintelligent watches.

Thus begins our review of 2015. It was an exciting year in Montana politics, both at the state level and closer to home. From the GOP splitting apart to Mayor Engen enacting Moby-Dick with the water company as the whale to a book about rape called “Missoula,” we had a fine time. My personal year was marked by injury, illness, and death, but all that’s over now. I’ve got it from a reliable source that a savior is coming tomorrow, and nothing bad will ever happen again. So suck up those cookies, ’cause tomorrow you’re off the hook. Merry Christmas, you guys! Happy holidays to everyone.

Trump redefines “schlong;” new meaning is great on day one

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 1 Comment
Move those hands closer together, buddy.

Move those hands closer together, buddy.

The Clinton campaign has accused Donald Trump of sexism after he told an audience in Michigan that Hillary “got schlonged” in the 2008 primary. “Schlong” is Yiddish slang for “penis.” As a New Yorker, Trump has surely heard the word before, probably while being ejected from a bar mitzvah. But I’ve never heard it used as a verb. Neither has benign speculator Steven Pinker, who suggested to the Washington Post that Trump became confused by the many Yiddish terms that begin with “sch-“. I would buy that excuse, except they all mean penis. For his part, the Golden Dome insists that “schlonged” means “badly defeated.” Agreed that many schlongs come to mean that for the men who possess them or, more often, for the men who insist on talking about them.

Oberlin students protest “cultural appropriation” in dining hall food

By Dan Brooks in social problems 1 Comment
Oberlin students protest the shooting of Tamir Rice, an actual injustice.

Oberlin students protest the shooting of Tamir Rice, an actual injustice.

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about the slippery slope between objecting to cultural appropriation and demanding cultural segregation. It’s probably appropriation for Eminem to release two of the three top-selling rap albums of all time, but is it appropriation for white kids to listen to Outkast? It would be appropriation for me to write a play about slavery, but surely I can still eat soul food. Anyway, there’s no point in examining these questions now, because Oberlin students have obliterated the field of inquiry with genius satire. At least I hope it’s satire. Per the New York Times:

[An article] published by The Review in November, detailed what students said were instances of cultural appropriation carried out by [food service provider] Bon Appétit. The culinary culprits included a soggy, pulled-pork-and-coleslaw sandwich that tried to pass itself off as a traditional Vietnamese banh mi sandwich; a Chinese General Tso’s chicken dish made with steamed instead of fried poultry; and some poorly prepared Japanese sushi.

First of all, General Tso’s chicken is hardly authentic Chinese culture, and making sushi poorly isn’t appropriation. Would a just world only allow ethnically Japanese people to make sushi? That sounds structurally similar to old-school racism—a system that makes race a totalizing identity and rigidly enforces separation, just without the normative component that declares one race superior to another. But again, Oberlin students are way ahead of me:

Last week, Oberlin’s black student union issued a list of demands to campus administrators, which include the creation of segregated safe spaces for black students on campus, and an annual 4 percent increase in black student enrollment.

There you go. Finally, after decades of struggle, the civil rights movement might achieve a lunch counter for blacks only. Now is a good time to remember that these are well-intentioned young people whose concerns are probably not as ridiculous as news reports make them sound. But they are also students at a private college, and “justice” in their world is not too different from their own comfort. “The food in the dining hall sucks” has become “the food in the dining hall is immoral.”

A heartening note from a fact-checker

By Dan Brooks in lying 1 Comment
Ted Cruz makes his truth-telling face.

Ted Cruz makes his truth-telling face.

Over at the New York Times, Angie Drobnic Holan has written an interesting guest editorial about her work as a political fact-checker. Holan works for PolitiFact, the Pulitzer-Prize winning project of the Tampa Bay Times to determine the accuracy of public statements. When you think about it, every news organization in America should do that—especially since Holan notes that fact-check stories get a lot of internet traffic after debates and other news events. Now is a good time for fact-checking. “I see accurate information becoming more available and easier for voters to find,” she writes. “By that measure, things are pretty good.”

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Combat! blog is busy

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 4 Comments
The boss needs me to break these computers.

The boss needs me to break these computers.

The holiday travel complaining season nigh approaches, and I’m so busy I didn’t have time to put on my tie this morning. I write you from a furtive break. There is so little Combat! blog today, but even this message smuggled out of my prison of labor—this kite, if you will—is a spendthrift waste of time. Yes, I am spending and wasting time even as I serve it. If you’ve got room in your schedule to lay out that metaphor and unmix it, I invite you to. I, dear reader, am a man of business. While I do deals, how about you read Mike Royko’s infamous column on the unveiling of the Chicago Picasso in 1967? Then you can read Frank Sinatra’s letter to Royko, in which the number-one singer among people without souls calls Royko a “pimp.” Not a compliment back then. But why only savor the written word’s sweet tip, when you can swallow the whole thing and read Donald Barthelme’s list of 81 essential books? Don’t read the actual books; just peruse the list and bring them up at parties. Remember, the first person to mention a book is assumed to have read it. Take the time you would have spent reading Gimpel the Fool and watch this video. I know it’s called “dubstep beatbox” and shot at a kitchen table, but it’s important.

Forgot I lived. Forgot I died. I gotta go!