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Friday links! Other people’s cultures edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links July 15, 2011 3 Comments

A bunch of furries do their weirdo thing that is, like, of central importance to them.

You know what the best part about contemporary relativism is? Not being a dick anymore, but continuing to privately regard all other cultures as hilarious. For example, I recognize that Judaism is a beautiful tradition responsible for much of what I consider best within us and many of the best among us. But the hats! It’s almost as ridiculous as the Juggalos with their Faygo, or the way World of Warcraft players consider “umadbro” a riposte to any criticism, or like how Jeb Bush thought it was okay to steal. The particulars of a culture seem totally necessary and standard to the people inside it, and so logic dictates* that every other cultural behavior is arbitrary and weird. Restraining the tendency to act on this sensation among the general populace is the great achievement of cosmopolitanism. Recognizing that pretty much everything constitutes a culture is the achievement of postmodernism. But it’s Friday; achievement is behind us, and so I invite you to indulge with me in the achievement of the chimpanzee, by braying loudly at everything but what we’ve got going right here.

Marcus Bachmann presents nation with etiquette problem

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas July 14, 2011 10 Comments

Michele and Marcus Bachmann—which of these people is insufficiently accustomed to making false pledges?

In her ongoing attempt to turn “job creators” into a political meme synonymous with “rich people,” Michele Bachmann has made much of the mental health clinic she founded with her husband, Marcus Bachmann, PhD. Although Marcus and Michele deny it, the Bachmann Clinic has been accused of performing “reparative therapy”—an APA-discounted approach to changing the orientations of homosexuals. Basically, it’s a pray-the-gay-away therapy, in which deeply conflicted homosexuals are told to read the Bible, repress their same-sex attractions and, if necessary, commit to lives of celibacy. Telling people that their romantic impulses are unnatural and possibly the result of a malevolent, supernatural force is clearly the best way for a board-certified psychiatrist to promulgate mental health, so we’re not even going to talk about that. Instead, we’re going to address a stickier, even more deeply throbbing problem, which I think Jon Stewart captures nicely in this video:

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Marcus Bachmann: that man is a homosexual.

McConnell proposes Faustian bargain

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government July 13, 2011 6 Comments

Unless stepmother lets us eat all the cake we want?

As the August 3rd deadline to either raise the federal debt ceiling or submit to our Chinese masters nigh approaches, Mitch McConnell has proposed a new solution: Congress could authorize President Obama to increase the borrowing limit himself. The Senate Minority Leader suggested that the President be given the authority to allow an additional $2.4 trillion in debt over the next year, provided he specifies an equal amount in spending cuts. It’s an odd move, given that negotiations have foundered for weeks on Republican demands that the President agree to cuts before the ceiling is raised. Unless you are a Republican, in which case negotiations have foundered on the President’s insistence that 25% of the increase be covered by taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

A terrible thing that happened when I tried to write the blog today

By Dan Brooks in Baby Boomers July 12, 2011 3 Comments

A clever adult wins an otherwise difficult two-on-one battle by inducing nausea.

The original title of today’s blog post was “Winning the fight against children”—which made the photo caption a lot funnier—and I was having a lot of fun writing it until about 30 seconds ago. It all started when I saw this article in the Huffington Post, about a restaurant in Pennsylvania that has banned children under age 6. I love that kind of thing, as you know, and it happened to dovetail nicely with an article about US marriage and childrearing trends I found while reading the footnotes to The Marriage Vow yesterday. So I wrote this fun intro paragraph:

Despite powerful influence from the likes of Bob Vander Plaats and Bil Keane, American society is gradually reducing the number of children in our midst. Okay, the actual number of children nears an all-time high and grows larger every year, but that’s because there’s also so many of us. By some stroke of luck, long-term growth in the number of adults has kept pace with the growth of children—even exceeded it in some cases, I think, although I’m having trouble finding statistics. So although kids clog our streets and animal-themed pizza arcades, the percentage of children in society has stayed low. According to CBS News, the proportion of American households occupied by married couples with children has dropped to 25%, a development they felt merited the rarely-seen six-deck headline.

Then I wrote this next one:

Close Readings: The Marriage Vow (2nd ed.)

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading July 11, 2011 5 Comments

Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann, standing up for something or other

Last week, when Michele Bachmann and other, less amusing Republican presidential candidates visited Iowa, they were approached by local busybody Bob Vander Plaats and asked to sign something called The Marriage Vow. You may remember Vander Plaats from his infuriatingly successful campaign to recall Iowa Supreme Court justices who said gay marriage was constitutional, or from when he offered to fellate you in a highway rest stop, although that second one is technically libel. Anyway, Bachmann and man-on-dog guy signed the heck out of that pledge, taking the politically risky position that families, children, not cheating on your wife and church are all good. Plus, by deduction: homosexuality is bad. Oh, and also black people had it better under slavery, because more of them were married then.