She's real fluffy, and she wants to disable you just enough that her offspring can learn to kill.
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.
First off, now that the public health care option is dead to everyone but aging elf Henry Waxman (D-Hollow Tree), Bill O’Reilly has come out in support of it. In an exchange on his show with the Heritage Foundation’s Nina Owarchenko, Bill-O asserts that “it’s not going to happen” and then goes on to say that “for working Americans, to have a option, that if they don’t like their health insurance, if it’s too expensive, they can’t afford it, if the government can cobble together a cheaper insurance policy that gives the same benefits, I see that as a plus for the folks.” I think I speak for all of us when I say: gasp. Doesn’t he know that’s what Nazis would do? Much like when Lex Luthor apologizes to Superman and presents him with a large necklace, it’s difficult to take O’Reilly’s remark at face value. Unless he forgot he was on television for a second and said something true, it seems that Papa Bear regards a robust insistence on the public option as the surest way to get health care reform not to pass. Personally, I’m a big fan of the public option and I think it’s the most effective way to lower costs across the board. It’s also the most effective way to make the collective health care industry run a series of terrifying advertisements, so maybe O’Reilly has a plan, here. Maybe, though, he’s just doing some soul-searching after losing the title of World’s Lyin’-est Man.
Mose, loyal reader and perennial contender for World’s Most Honest Man, made mention in yesterday’s Comments section of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the 1886 Supreme Court case responsible for the popular judicial perception that a corporation is a natural citizen entitled to the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment. Those of you willing to rely on Wikipedia for your interpretations of United States law can read about it here. Santa Clara versus Southern Pacific has been responsible for a host of specious legal arguments over the last century, most of them orbiting around corporate entities’ right to, say, pay for political advertisements under the First Amendment. The notion that the Supreme Court would conclude that a corporation is legally indistinguishable from an individual human seems absurd, until you consider that the court rendered its decision in a political environment utterly dominated by railroad money. If you think I’m overstating the historical case, check out this statement by Chief Justice Waite immediately before oral arguments: “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.” It almost reads like a joke. What you may not know is that this remark was not part of the actual opinion issued in the case, and was included in the transcript by the court reporter, J.C. Bancroft Davis—himself a former president of a small railroad—as a sort of fun quote. Subsequent use of it as precedent, therefore, is probably mistaken. Not that that’s going to stop Halliburton from voting in 2012.
For those of you who like your dystopian visions of the future to A) put less emphasis on super-powerful corporations and more emphasis on homosexual bugs, and B) happen in the past, check out this Nike commercial from 1994, featuring Naked Lunch author and probable murderer William S. Burroughs. I was reminded of its existence when I was cleaning out the garage (ah, Des Moines) and found my old copy of Commodify Your Dissent, a fine collection of essays from that mid-nineties gadfly of corporate culture, The Baffler. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. Why Nike felt it could sell more shows by associated itself with a septuagenarian former heroin addict who probably shot his wife in the face is anyone’s guess, but it does encourage some sobering reflection about the ostensible distinction between “mainstream” and “counter-” culture. Whether you think Burroughs was an admirable artist or a wealthy deviant—or, you know, both—in the end, they all sell shoes.
True rebels are hard to find, but in such straitjacketed times as these one can sometimes find a hero simply by turning on one’s local news. Especially if one lives in New York. Those of you who tutored in homes where Fox 5 was regularly watched (despite its obviously deleterious effect on learning) are doubtless familiar with anchorman Ernie Anastos. He’s famous for his sprightly demeanor and devil-may-just-start-saying-stuff attitude, but last night he reached a new high of bafflement. He also said the f-word on the air. My question to you, dear reader, is which one of us is truly insane? Hint: it’s him.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdnXYWSa56w
* Donut, coffee, vengeance additional donut
Asperger’s for Apple Jacks!