Combat! - Page 278 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Congress outlaws protest near Secret Service-protected

By Dan Brooks in Fascism March 5, 2012 8 Comments

Rick Santorum and his imaginary friend, God

The difference between the US President and a king, as any red-blooded American knows, is that you can tell the king of America to fuck himself. He probably won’t do it, but it’s nice to be able to make the recommendation. Living in the United States got a little less nice last week, when the House of Representatives approved HR 347—a bill that The Hill specifically describes as “non-controversial.” The Hill is like the guy at the poker table who looks at his cards, shakes his head, sighs and then calls three hundred dollars. In addition to “clarify[ing] in US law that it is illegal to trespass on White House grounds,” the full text of the HR 347 contains the follwing:

(1) the term ‘restricted buildings or grounds’ means any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area—

(A) of the White House or its grounds, or the Vice President’s official residence or its grounds

(B) of a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting; or

(C) of a building or grounds so restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance;

It is now a felony to glitterbomb Rick Santorum.

Friday links! Power of speech edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links March 2, 2012 6 Comments

Humans are the only animal with the power of speech. That’s probably good, since you don’t want the dog following you around saying hey, are you hungry? all day. It’s also not really true; lots of animals communicate with sound, from birds to monkeys to weirdo meerkats. But man is the animal whose speech moves through time. We talk not just about whether we see a big snake but also about the time we saw it, about what it means that things were once one way they were and how they should be in the future. The meerkat has little idea of should. Talking is rad, is what I’m saying here, even when other people do it. Today is Friday, I have a brand new bite plate and attendant speech impediment, and I’ve also got some bang-on links re: the power of speech. Won’t you stare silently at a screen with me?

Social conservatives try to make satire fun again

By Dan Brooks in lying March 1, 2012 4 Comments

Larry Doyle, former Simpsons writer and author of an "anti-Catholic screed."

One consolation of our progressive national stupefaction is that satire might start fooling people again. Not that Larry Doyle’s recent column on “the Jesus-eating cult of Rick Santorum” is particularly subtle. When Doyle describes himself as a former “Irish-Catholic, the worst kind” and says he discovered a possible connection between the RCC and NAMBLA “after conducting some research on the internet,” we see the flapping flag of irony country. Here lies the problem of satire within an educated society: pretty much everybody is smart enough to get it. That’s good, but it also takes some fun out of the conceit that someone, somewhere, is taking the irony seriously. It’s like a practical joke that everyone is in on; we all have to just look at the cup of pee and imagine how funny it would be if someone drank it. Lucky for us, Tony Perkins cannot resist free lemonade.

And on to Super Tuesday

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates February 29, 2012 7 Comments

"I regard this outcome as desirable."

Mitt Romney has won the Republican presidential primaries in Arizona and Michigan, handily in the former and maybe less so in his home state. He beat Rick Santorum in Michigan by just over three points, suggesting that people whose unemployment rate stayed over 10% for most of 2011 really are worried that dudes might touch one another’s linuses. Either that, or something about a governor’s son who made up for his criticism of the auto bailout by explaining how many Cadillacs he owns just isn’t connecting with people. Meanwhile, level-twelve poop elemental Newt Gingrich beat Ron Paul up north but was beaten by him out west. Gyn’grrch will now be summoned to Georgia by Sheldon Adelson’s ritual burning of several million dollars.

Ambivalent: The Iron Sheik’s Twitter feed

By Dan Brooks in Ambivalents February 28, 2012 5 Comments

The Iron Sheik, forced to live in the real world with Beyoncé for some reason

I assume that you are already following The Iron Sheik on Twitter, for the simple reason that I assume you are not Tito Santana. As a quick glance at Sheikie’s recent activity suggests, he and Santana are not friends. Then again, the Sheik’s claim that Santana has “the taco ass” may be kind of ironic. It’s hard to tell. The former Olympic wrestler, WWF heel and bodyguard for the Shah of Iran has presumably always separated his interior and public personae, since his public persona is completely absurd. When you think about The Iron Sheik, you have to do a lot of surmising and presuming. How else to explain six borderline-racist tweets in an hour attacking Santana for no discernible reason? And what beside pure, life-consuming dedication to art could explain tweets like this?

You would have to be dead inside not to appreciate that, and you would have to be an idiot to completely endorse it.