Combat! - Page 320 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Quarter of Americans sympathize with South in Civil War

By Dan Brooks in American History April 13, 2011 3 Comments

Our ancestors did not have public opinion polls and therefore knew what their fellow Americans thought only through conjecture. If the country was building railroads and allowing the Irish to consume rock candy, people seemed happy. If they were arming themselves and claiming sovereign authority against the US Constitution, they were pissed. The past was a terrifying time, but it was made more palatable by the fallibility of any given assessment. Sure, back in 1861 it seemed like A) thousands of Americans were willing to die so that other Americans could own a third group of Americans as slaves, and B) everyone was therefore retarded, but maybe it was states’ rights or tariffs or something less awful. Now, of course, we enjoy no such comfort. Telephones and computers and Wharton graduates have allowed us to peer into the opinions of our fellow citizens with chilling comprehensiveness, and the chilling comprehension that results is, yeah, other people are dumb. Super dumb, as suggested by this CNN poll in which one in four Americans expresses sympathy for the Confederacy over the Union in the Civil War. Of course, they might just be contrary dicks. You can guess which sort of person I like better.

Seeking children, McDonald’s re-deploys clown

By Dan Brooks in advertising April 12, 2011 8 Comments

"It's actually parked out back, if you want to get out of here."

You may not have noticed,* but the last few years of McDonald’s commercials have been conspicuously free of Ronald McDonald, the clown so brightly colored that only a child‘s retinas are innocent enough to look at him. It turns out that L. Ron McDonald has been the object of an ongoing campaign of protest from various height/weight-appropriate killjoys, who argue that he is designed to sell unhealthy food directly to children. That is obviously true. When was the last time you saw a clown convince an adult of anything, much less what to put in his mouth? Whereas that works on kids all the time. With their McCafe marketing campaign and their new emphasis on salads, apple slices and other substances that will not immediately stop a mouse’s heart, McDonald’s has been working the adult/child divide for the last several years, so it’s only logical that they would again release Ronald McDonald into the wild. He is back; he is still simultaneously nonthreatening and extremely disturbing, and he is definitely for kids.

Here Is Your American Culture: Unboxing videos

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture April 11, 2011 14 Comments

A man shows himself showing a camera a box with a picture of a phone on it.

Despite my inordinate concern with various esoteric phenomena thereof, I am totally disconnected from American culture. Like your grandpa accidentally watching I Heart Huckabees, I occasionally run across some expression of the national zeitgeist that seems all the more disturbing for having been going on this whole time without me. Such was my reaction to the existence of unboxing videos. They seem disgustingly alien yet also inevitable in retrospect, like when the dog gets a boner. I became familiar with the form through this video calling for its end, which does a nice job identifying the hallmarks of the genre.* A reviewer or civilian has just purchased an item of consumer electronics. He narrates the experience of opening the box, describing the packaging in minute detail. Then he observes the physical form of the product itself, suggesting the connection between that form and its socio-semiological significance—also known as its function. Then everyone lapses into the silence of despair. That last part is implied, but it’s the ultimate destination of pretty much every variation on the form.

Friday links! Fiddles and fire edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links April 8, 2011 5 Comments

As hyperpartisan Photoshops go, this one is surprisingly well done. Maybe I'm just thrilled he's not wearing a turban.

We all who are not Russian spambots know the old expression about Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Clearly it is a durable metaphor, since it survived as a commonplace when much of the rest of western culture—including such minor elements as engineering and physiology—was lost with the fall of the Empire. Yet the fiddle was not invented until a millennium after the Great Fire, as any smug prick will tell you. This sketches an interesting narrative: the image “Nero sings while Rome burns” or “Nero plays the lyre while Rome burns” had to reproduce as a viable meme for a thousand years, only to mutate into the much more viable strain “Nero fiddles while Rome burns” upon the invention of the violin—or, more likely, upon the convergence of the terms “fiddle” to play the violin and “fiddle” to screw around. Besides presenting a rad instance of ideational evolution, this progression is a testament to the power of human beings to envision collapse in their own time. Because today is the last thing that ever happened, present times invariably seem like end times. I’m sure Nero remarked on the phenomenon often.

Glenn Beck to end Fox News show

By Dan Brooks in lying April 7, 2011 1 Comment

Beavis wept.

We won, you guys. Glenn Beck announced yesterday that he will not renew his existing contract with Fox News, meaning that the network will stop airing The Glenn Beck Program and Old-Tyme Conspiracy Hour sometime between now and December. The news is startling but not surprising. Reports have swirled—swirled!—regarding Fox executives’ displeasure with Beck, whose show has lost 300 advertisers and 40% of its ratings share since the salad days of late 2009. It appears that the same principle applies to Fox viewership as applies to the nation: the more people know what Glenn Beck is talking about, the less they buy it. The bad news is that he may purchase his own cable channel—in order to, and I quote, “extract more value” from his fan base—but the interesting news is his and Roger Ailes’s mutual attempt to hide their contempt for each other. “I truly believe that America owes a lot to Roger Ailes and Fox News,” Beck said in a statement yesterday. Ailes quote and uncharitable analysis after the jump.