Combat! blog returns to ancestral home, isn’t useful

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment

Iowa

As you may have gathered, there is no Combat! blog today. I am in Iowa with my wonderful girlfriend, visiting my parents. It’s not scary at all. Every time I think about the natural gravity of such a situation, the gentle constant sound of the wind whispering through the cornfields dead, gray trees reminds me of my carefree midwestern girlhood, and I am soothed. What I am not is blogging. I would instruct you to call me Mister Leisure, but that is already the name of a fugitive sea lion I also find soothing. How about you read about him, and I’ll be back with a real blog on Wednesday? I know, it’s a long way away. In the meantime, you can just keep clicking on the random posts in the left-hand sidebar. Did you know there’s a sidebar on this blog? Some browsers don’t show it, but if you click on the little hash marks in the upper left-hand corner, it will appear. Do that and read weird, probably embarrassing posts from 2010 and whatnot. I’ll see you again soon. I promise.

Billings man opens fire at mall during citizen’s arrest for shoplifting

By Dan Brooks in Self-Promotion 3 Comments

James Newman of Billings

Last month, James Newman of Billings fired six shots across the parking lot of Rimrock Mall while trying to make a citizen’s arrest for shoplifting. Police questioned Newman and released him at the scene, apparently satisfied with his contention that he fired in self-defense. The former Marine had confronted two people he suspected of stealing from JC Penney, insisting they wait with him for the authorities to arrive. When they got in their car, Newman stood behind the parking space in an attempt to block their escape. He drew his weapon. “If you hit me now,” he shouted, “I will [expletive] open fire.”

He wound up opening fire anyway, firing six shots at the car as it drove away. None of these shots hit the mark, which is a sad coda to this story of valor. If only Newman had killed one of the people whom he was trying to arrest for a misdemeanor in his capacity as a private citizen, we would laud him as a hero. As it is, he is just one of Montana’s many responsible handgun owners, who happened to bring his gun to the mall on the same day circumstances happened to force him to take the law into his own hands. You can read my paean to this brave citizen and C-plus marksman in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. We’ll be back tomorrow, perhaps, with Friday links.

Carlson agrees with King: “Nothing racist” about tweet

By Dan Brooks in Fascism 1 Comment

Fox News personality and racism expert Tucker Carlson

Boarding school graduate Tucker Carlson, whose first job out of college was an editorial position at Policy Review, knows something about the relationship between demographics and destiny. His father was George H.W. Bush’s ambassador to the Seychelles and ran the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as Voice of America. His stepmother is the heir to the Swanson frozen food fortune. From these beginnings, Tucker somehow found his way into broadcasting and conservative politics. Yesterday he interviewed Rep. Steve King (R-IA) in this capacity, discussing the congressman’s controversial tweet from this weekend. And he held King’s feet to the fire in his signature, hard-nosed style. Quote:

Everything you said is, I think defensible, and probably right. The problem with the [other peoples’ babies] tweet was it suggested a racial component of American identity.

Yeah, that was the problem, wasn’t it? Fortunately, the two men talked it over, and they agreed there was nothing racist about King’s tweet. Video after the jump.

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Snoop shoots “clown resembling Donald Trump,” unleashes anarchy

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 2 Comments

Wednesday

In the annals of FoxNews.com headlines, “Snoop Dogg shoots clown resembling Donald Trump in new music video” is a low-key classic. You don’t hear about a lot of clowns that resemble Mahatma Gandhi, or clowns resembling the brave men and women who died in 9/11. And “resembling” is such a pleasingly circumspect word, in contrast with the absurdity of everything else in this headline. Now is a fun time to remember that Fox News shares a parent company with The New York Post, who seem not to have reported on this event but would probably have done it differently. Anyway, I want to emphasize that Snoop Dogg shot a clown resembling Donald Trump in a music video, not in real life. That makes it a symbolic act—a message, probably. This theory is supported by S.D. Dogg’s remarks to Billboard:

I feel like it’s a lot of people making cool records, having fun, partying, but nobody’s dealing with the real issue with this fucking clown as president and the shit that we dealing with out here. So I wanted to take time out to push pause on a party record and make one of these records for the time being.

Notice how he assures us he’s working on a party record, too. Snoop has been doing this for a long time. Also, he sucks now. Or does he? This clown video is actually pretty…okay, I’m not willing to say it’s good. But I’m glad I watched it. Video after the jump.

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Rep. King: Can’t “restore civilization” with “somebody else’s babies”

By Dan Brooks in Rhetoric 1 Comment

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) describes a beautiful sandwich only white people can eat.

For the last year or so, Representative Steve King of Iowa has flirted with white nationalism. It’s the kind of flirting where you drink four cocktails and just start talking, although King was presumably sober in October when he tweeted that “cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end.” That was ominous. “Cultural suicide” and “demographic transformation” are vague terms, but the accompanying photo with European ethno-nationalists Frauke Petry and Geert Wilders offered a hint of what he meant. This weekend, the congressman praised Wilders again and got a little more explicit:

To paraphrase an old joke: What do you mean “we,” white man? The tweet raises some obvious questions. Who are we, again? And which babies aren’t ours? While we’re at it, we should probably figure out what the congressman means by “restore civilization,” considering that he is tweeting this message using a cell phone that distributes his words via a worldwide communication network to people who can read. Mad Max it ain’t. The questions about what King means by “we” and “our civilization” and “somebody else” lie at the heart of this tweet and, increasingly, his whole perspective.

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