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Friday links! Extremely smart edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links March 10, 2017 1 Comment

A Smart Car

Statistically, the smartest human being who ever lived probably couldn’t read. Anatomically modern humans appeared about 200,000 years ago, meaning that for 95% of human history, written language didn’t even exist. The smartest human might easily have been born before spoken language. Perhaps she died of cholera in the 18th century, when the most brilliant minds of the western hemisphere agreed on the miasma theory of disease. Or maybe she lived in Kansas circa 1906, when only 6 percent of Americans graduated from high school. Perhaps she made terrible decisions about her life, routinely burned her hand while cooking, tripped over the threshold on her way out the door each morning and was just preternaturally good at playing the harpsichord. Today is Friday, and “smart” is a term so vague and relative as to bear no meaning. Won’t you look out for what’s dumb with me?

Representative Commander Ryan Zinke, R-Montana, a career

By Dan Brooks in Self-Promotion March 9, 2017 0 Comment

Ryan Zinke accidentally wanders in front of a flag while wearing a cowboy hat.

Montana sends only one delegate to the United States House of Representatives, and for the last two years it was Republican and former Navy SEAL Commander Ryan Zinke. Zinke won re-election in November, but he vacated his seat last week after the Senate confirmed him as President Trump’s Secretary of the Interior. Until we pick a new one via special election in May, Montana will go without representation in the House. This situation turns out to be not so different from the one we enjoyed already.

Zinke ends his career as a congressman having sponsored no bills that actually became law. That’s not so unusual for a freshman representative. What set him apart was his flair for the dramatic—his ability to present a wild caricature of Montana values while, again, not actually expressing those values in the form of legislation. But who cares about influencing the US government when your representative used to be a Navy SEAL? Sure, he missed 80 of 99 House votes after he was nominated for Interior. But he also gave us this photograph:

God, I’m going to miss that. Remember when he said President Obama shouldn’t have attended the Paris Climate Summit because it did nothing to stop ISIS? And then a few weeks later opposed background checks at gun shows, also because it wouldn’t stop ISIS? Communications from his office consistently referred to him as Commander Zinke instead of Representative Zinke—part of a relentless branding strategy that even extended to his duties as a rep. He co-sponsored the Draft American Daughters Act, a satirical bill to register women for the draft that expressed his opposition to letting them take combat specializations. This bill also did not pass. Again, nothing Commander Zinke proposed to the House ever passed. But what fun we had!

Now he runs the Department of the Interior, a position that will make his gung-ho performance art more difficult. It’s hard to connect the Interior to foreign terrorism. I believe Commander Zinke can keep making politics more like pro wrestling, though. It was a heartening sign when he rode a horse to his first day of work last week. Seriously—you can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. Montana has not lost much of a legislator, but we must bid farewell to one hell of a showman. I can’t say I agreed with his politics too often. But I love a character, and Commander Zinke has certainly been that. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

Hey, do you know about Beryl Markham?

By Dan Brooks in books March 8, 2017 0 Comment

Aviator and author Beryl Markham, who is great

One of my favorite books is West with the Night by Beryl Markham. It’s a kind of memoir, insofar as it is about her life as a bush pilot in and around Kenya after World War I. But while the author is lambently present in each chapter, it isn’t about her. It’s about flying airplanes, crashing airplanes, horses, the people of Africa, the other people of Africa who had exploited the first people just long enough to get weird about it, uppity customs agents in Italian Ethiopia—all the relentlessly particular details that make a life when someone is too busy living it to think about herself. Markham is present in the work the way a carpenter is present at the table. Even though it is definitely a memoir, I think of West With the Night as a collection of linked short stories, made a little more beautiful by the knowledge that they actually happened to the same woman.

Besides writing what I consider one of the ten best narrative works of the 20th century, she also flew solo from Europe to North America in 1936. She was the first woman ever to do it, although not the first to try. The vents on her fuel tank iced over in the 21st hour, and she crash-landed on Cape Breton Island to walk away with the record. Before that, she was the first licensed female racehorse trainer in Kenya. She was also publicly known to have fucked the queen’s uncle.

Anyway, you should buy West with the Night or check out a copy from your local library. Even though it’s great, it went out of print shortly after it was published. We’re lucky to have it today. To read Markham is to reenact her life in a way reminiscent of its signal moments. I imagine her over Canada as she realized her engines had stopped working, thinking “nope” and bringing that hunk of dead metal whistling to the ground. I picture her smirking as she leaves the wreck, miracle tacked onto miracle. She lived her life so willfully. It is our privilege to read her and will her back to life ourselves.

iPhone remark suggests Chaffetz has no idea what insurance costs

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government March 7, 2017 1 Comment

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) addresses the Whos of Whoville.

Congressional Republicans have released their plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, and it is less than comprehensive. Andy Slavitt, former Acting Adminstrator for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services under President Obama, described the plan as “basically a $600 billion tax cut funded by gutting Medicaid.” Although its architects claim it will preserve access for the millions of previously uninsured Americans who found coverage under Obamacare, it does away with the subsidies that let them buy it. When it was pointed out to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) during an appearance on CNN’s New Day that “access doesn’t equal coverage,” the congressman implied that people who couldn’t afford insurance were spending irresponsibly. Quote:

You know what? Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice. And so maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest in their own healthcare.

Chaffetz’s father once owned part of a professional soccer team, so the representative may have a shaky notion of how much individual health insurance costs. Either that, or he’s playing an old card: poor people aren’t poor because of iniquity or an economy that doesn’t serve them, but rather because they spend unwisely. The poor have just as much money as everybody else! Assessment after the jump.

Missoulian ends online comments, hopefully forever

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media March 6, 2017 10 Comments

The Missoulian offices as photographed by Cathrine Walters

The Missoulian newspaper website has disabled comments, depriving western Montana of its most reliable way to experience pure despair. Comments sections are bad. But the Missoulian comments were especially bad, combining the subliterate hatred of YouTube comments with the gravity of current events. And it always seemed to be getting worse. The paper turned off comments on obituaries a few years ago, after one became a public referendum on the character of the deceased, the circumstances of his death, and whether he had it coming. Last week, I am told, commenters on a crime story revealed the identity of a victim of sexual assault. That’s what prompted this editorial from Kathy Best, in which the new editor announces that comments on Facebook and Twitter will continue, but website comments are done indefinitely. I applaud this decision. It’s been a long time coming.