Sen. Robert Menendez marries metaphor

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 0 Comment
Pictures into which dicks must be Photoshopped immediately

Pictures into which dicks must be Photoshopped immediately

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned that his party was entering a “demographic death spiral” by opposing immigration reform. He was likely referring to the conflict between the GOP’s leadership and its base, which two groups are divided between large employers and nativists, i.e. taskmasters v. crackers. Maybe that’s a little strong. You can get into trouble when you commit to a metaphor, as Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) demonstrated in his own remarks:

I would tell my Republican colleagues, both in the House and the Senate, that the road to the White House comes through a road with a pathway to legalization. Without it, there’ll never be a road to the White House for the Republican Party.

Assiduous unpacking after the jump.

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On being banned from Sarah Palin’s Facebook

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 5 Comments

The future (artist’s rendering)

Possibly due to my request that she “please stop,” I have been banned from posting comments on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page. My quote from the New England Journal of Medicine regarding what the IPAB actually does has been deleted, leaving Citizen Palin unchallenged in her assertion that “its purpose all along has been to ‘keep costs down’ by actually denying care via price controls and typically inefficient bureaucracy.” It seems unlikely that the Independent Patient Advisory Board was designed to prevent people from getting health care via inefficiency, but Sarah Palin can say what she wants. I can’t say anything back to her, but she is communicating on her own Facebook wall. That wall belongs to her and to Facebook, so they can delete whom they please.

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Trump reminds us that money is, is not speech

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 0 Comment

Donald Trump and the classiest fuckin' golf club in the world

Those of you looking to divide the Republican Party into old and new need look no further than the public feud between George Will and Donald Trump, whom Will called a “bloviating ignoramus” on television Sunday. Trump responded that Will “may be the dumbest political commentator of all time,” and Will admitted that he was wrong and retired. No, wait—that second part didn’t happen. Instead, Trump flew to Las Vegas and participated in a fundraiser for Mitt Romney, where Romney stood next to him and tried to imply that Trump was dumb with his eyes. The Republican nominee also announced that he “accepts” that President Obama was born in the United States.

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Boom.

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 5 Comments

Last chance to get married before queermos make it impossible to love

Maybe you’ve heard about it, but yesterday the President said that he believes gay people should be allowed to get married. It’s kind of a big deal. Obama is the first sitting President to come out in favor of gay marriage. The last one made a re-election strategy out of opposition to same, and whether it worked or not, yesterday’s announcement is likely to be a branding issue until November. The screencap above—from Fox News’s mad cousin, Fox Nation, which subsequently changed its headline—suggests the kind of discourse we can look forward to. So yeah—probably half the country will say infuriating things while the rest of us address the most pressing civil rights issue of our time.

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A theory of rhetorical ethics

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 4 Comments

Friday afternoon, The Heartland Institute announced that they would stop running this billboard over the Eisenhower Expressway. That’s Ted Kaczynski, who worried about man-made climate change in his manifesto before he rendered the phenomenon nonexistent by mailing bombs to scientists. The ad was to be part of a series featuring public figures who expressed belief in global warming, including Fidel Castro, Osama Bin Laden and Charles Manson. It was to be classy. Then a bunch of debate-team types called in and forced them to cancel it, which—as Heartland’s press release explains—was what they wanted all along. “This provocative billboard was always intended to be an experiment,” Heartland President Joseph Bast said through his press agent. “And after just 24 hours the results are in: It got people’s attention.”

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