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In modernity with H. Lewis

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized May 16, 2013 0 Comment

Not pictured: the News

Regular readers of Combat! blog are familiar with this genius video, in which Huey Lewis recreates the iconic scene from American Psycho wherein killer yuppie Patrick Bateman speaks rapturously of one H. Lewis. I got to interview Huey Lewis last week, because shit is weird, and my surefire interview question was “how did you feel when you saw American Psycho for the first time?” He said he read the book. This and other sweet assertions can be found in my featurette about the 30th anniversary of Sports, which I am posting this morning instead of writing in the blog. After many, many delays, my transition to summer work patterns begins today. Combat! blog won’t be different, but the rest of my day will. For example, I am taking the rest of today off, since A) all those delays of summer work patterns were lucrative, and B) everything is permitted because nothing is true. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

41% of Republicans say Benghazi is “biggest political scandal in American history”

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media May 15, 2013 1 Comment

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK,) who called Benghazi more “egregious” than Watergate

I tried to link to a news article about this week’s Congressional hearings regarding the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, but I had a hard time finding an unbiased source. Benghazi appears to be the most important story in the world for the Daily Caller, Fox News and the Washington Times (official motto: Not the Good Washington Paper) and invisible to everyone else. My theory is supported by this poll in which a mere 44% of Americans say they are following the hearings and, in a more complicated way, by this one, in which 41% of Republicans say they consider Benghazi “the biggest scandal in American history.” So suck it, Peggy Eaton Affair.

How funny does satire have to be?

By Dan Brooks in Rhetoric May 14, 2013 6 Comments

Jonathan Swift: hilarious

A. Ron Galbraith recently brought to my attention this post in Politico arguing that The Daily Currant is not funny. You may have heard of The Daily Currant in connection with this mistake by the Drudge Report, or possibly this one by the Washington Post. According to founder and editor Daniel Barkeley, the Currant produces a “style of satire [that] is as old as literature itself, but hasn’t recently been applied to news articles.” Apparently one of the satirical conceits over at the Currant is that The Onion doesn’t exist, but that is orthogonal to our discussion. Barkeley’s position is that several of the Currant’s satires have been mistaken for news because what he’s doing is so new. At Politco, Dylan Byers’s argument is that Currant articles keep being taken for real because they aren’t funny. Which brings us to an important question: how funny does satire have to be?

Gingrich fascinated by nameless, internet-capable phone

By Dan Brooks in Department of Irony? May 13, 2013 4 Comments

“We’re really puzzled,” Newt Gingrich says. “Here at Gingrich Productions, we’ve spent weeks trying to figure out: what do you call this?” Then he holds up a smartphone. It appears to be an iPhone, but it’s definitely some kind of touch-screen, internet-capable personal communications device, known in circulars and strip malls across America as a smartphone. The term “smartphone” was first used by Ericsson in 1997, but Gingrich seems genuinely not to know it, spending three minutes in rapturous speculation on what such a device might be called. “If it’s taking pictures, it’s a not a cell phone,” he opines. “If it has a McDonald’s app to tell you where McDonald’s is based on your GPS location, that’s not a cell phone. If you can get Wikipedia or go to Google, that’s not a cell phone.” Props to Aaron Galbraith for the video, which is 2:53 of uncut dramatic irony that you can watch after the jump.

Friday links! Striking discrepancies edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links May 10, 2013 1 Comment

A 1939 photo of Harlem containing a man who looks strikingly like Jay-Z

That is not Jay-Z in old-timey photographer Sid Grossman’s picture of Harlem, sent to me by old-timey pornographer Ben al-Fowlkes. It sure looks like Jay-Z, though. Either I am some kind of hair-toucher who does not notice subtle facial distinctions among people of other races, or that Depression-era Harlemite looks uncannily like Hov. The already alarmingly low level of can is reduced even further by the familiar idea of Jay-Z dressing up in old-fashioned luxury clothes to evoke a particular period in black history. Appearing in a wool suit and newsboy cap in Harlem is not something he did do, exactly, but it sure is the kind of thing he might do. Today is Friday, and the world is full of striking discrepancies. Most of it fits, and then one detail blows the whole thing into weirdo territory. Won’t you demand an impossible consistency with me?