Combat! - Page 238 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Could Ke$ha be a prisoner of her own fame?

By Dan Brooks in Department of Irony? December 20, 2012 4 Comments

Ke$ha is forced to work as a zombus on the Louisiana bayou.

Yesterday, vigilant Ke$ha-watcher Ben al-Fowlkes sent me links to two Ke$ha tweets. The first was mysteriously deleted, and the second apologized to anyone “effected by this tragedy,” saying that she understands “why my song is now inappropriate.” It was a puzzlement. I assumed “this tragedy” referred to the music industry that effected her rise to stardom, but it turns out I was thinking of “travesty” and she was thinking of “affected.” Ke$ha was actually apologizing to those affected by the Newtown shootings, which prompted several radio stations to stop playing her single “Die Young.”

Mitt Romney can’t stop doing hilarious rich person stuff

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media December 18, 2012 1 Comment

You don't go crazy and grow a beard either, buddy.

Don’t you go crazy and grow a beard either, buddy.

Even in defeat, the Mitt Romney campaign continues to mismanage itself spectacularly. Gawker reports that nine news outlets have complained to the campaign about exorbitant bills for press events, including an $812 per-reporter meal in October. Props to Ben al-Fowlkes for the link. One can just image the breathless aide telling Candidate Romney that he lost the invoice for the October reporter meals. “Just make something up,” Romney says. “Something plausible—no more than a grand a plate.” Then he flies into the air atop a jet of molten gold, hits a power line and explodes.

Morgan Freeman Newtown Hoax explains contemporary media, makes everyone sad

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media December 17, 2012 9 Comments

Morgan Freeman, midway through a long career explaining things to white people

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argued that the invention of telegraphy changed the definition of news from what was functionally relevant in the reader’s life—city council meetings, various pox outbreaks, horse for sale—to “news from nowhere, addressed to no one in particular…crimes, crashes, fires, floods became the content of what people called ‘the news of the day.’” Postman worried that news, divorced by distance from any functional impact on the lives of people who read it, could too easily become speculation, spectacle, amusement. He had not seen the internet yet. Nor did he see the Morgan Freeman Newtown Hoax, perhaps the exemplar of our bold new age.

Friday links! End of whatever edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links December 14, 2012 0 Comment

Then came the Bird-men, probably because we'd all been fucking birds.

Then came the Bird-men, probably because we’d been fucking birds.

As the biggest assholes in the world remind me on Facebook, now begins the end of the Mayan something or other. Their calendar runs out in like a week, signaling the prophesied end of Mayan civilization. You can tell the calendar was really important to the Mayans, because the only specific part of their end-of-the-world prophecy is the date. In this way it is the opposite of say, Revelation, which tells us in gory detail what will happen but really leaves us hanging re: when. I am forced to conclude that all presently occurring phenomena are signs of the end times, and this week was the ripple that precedes the wave of stable dog/cat roommate situations. Today is Friday—possibly our last. Won’t you scrutinize the heavens with me?