Andrew Sullivan is very angry at 60 Minutes

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 4 Comments

Former CIA Director of National Clandestine Service Jose Rodriguez

Andrew Sullivan begins his screed against Jose Rodriguez and the 60 Minutes producer who blew his chance to ask him if he was maybe a war criminal with some bold assumptions. “There are a couple of things worth knowing about Jose Rodriguez,” Sullivan writes: “that he is a war criminal and that he destroyed the evidence that would prove it without a doubt. The third thing you need to know is that he has no shame about any of this and intends to make money off it.” That’s a good list, but it’s incomplete. It is also worth knowing about Jose Rodriguez that he was Director of the National Clandestine Service of the CIA in 2005, when it destroyed video evidence of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” conducted at a CIA prison in Thailand in 2002. Yes, the CIA has a prison in Thailand, and yes, they waste videotapes there. Rodriguez was also D/NCS in 2007, when people found out about that. Now he is on a book tour, and he has “no regrets.” For example, he does not regret destroying the evidence of what he did.

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Study links conservative politics to “low-effort thinking”

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 5 Comments

Scientists in a lab inspect a readout from the Conservatometer

As a modern, intellectually engaged American, there’s nothing I like better than a study that shows something. Granted, some studies show better stuff than others. When studies show that certain organic compounds affect the reaction rate of ATP synthase, for example, I get extremely bored. But when studies show stuff that I kind of knew anyway—like people in sweatpants are less likely to know where their kids are, or coffee is good for you—I perk right up. Luckily for me, the Huffington Post exists. Yesterday they observed their bimonthly tradition of linking to a scientific study that suggests conservatives are dumber than progressives. The study in question is right here, and it’s worth reading to understand the methodology researchers used to correlate increasingly conservative views with “low-effort thinking.”

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Board to investigate Nobel Peace Prize

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 2 Comments

*cough* blowjob!

Fredrik Heffermehl, a Norwegian activist who has long criticized laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize, has finally convinced someone to investigate how the committee determines its awards. Props to Pete for the link. In an awesome instance of how location still matters in geopolitics, it turns out that the Nobel is supervised by the Stockholm County Administrative Board. Should the SCAB decide that the Peace Prize committee has not carried out the will of Alfred J. Nobel, it will have the legal power to invalidate awards going back three years. Probably that isn’t going to happen. But remember when they gave it to the commander-in-chief of two wars who subsequently used robot planes to incinerate various foreign nationals? It’s possible the Peace Prize has seen some mission creep.

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How to be angry at Maya Angelou

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 11 Comments

Poet laureate Maya Angelou chokes the living shit out of a Muppet.

Common has fucked up. The man who last demonstrated his relevance to contemporary hip hop by performing at the White House has disappointed former United States poet laureate Maya Angelou, by commissioning a poem from her and then using it in a track in which he says the n-word. Maya Angelou does not like the n-word, which is too bad because it’s really fun to picture her saying it to everybody.* Angelou told the Post that she did not believe Common would  “sing the line of least resistance”—although perhaps she is not totally familiar with his work, since on the same track he also expresses his dream to live in Miami with “exquisite thick bitches.” Compare to Angelou’s contribution: “From Africa they lay in the bilge of slave ships / And stood half naked on auction blocks /. . . and still they dreamed.”

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Does culture need an industry?

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 5 Comments

Louis CK, who is selling his recent stand-up special for $5 on his website

Greetings from an unusually relaxed Monday around the Combat! blog offices, where we have been drinking coffee and arranging terrariums to catch some unusual Montana sunlight. Even my relaxation takes the form of compulsion, but at least everything is nourished. As any homosexual shut-in will tell you, plants make food from sun and water. I tend to think culture works the same way, in that out of the dirty, damp business of society grow a few arts, works and artists that are rad. Really, it doesn’t happen like that. Culture comes from a culture industry—or it has for the last sixty-some years.

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