Combat! - Page 329 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Having two moms makes you an awesome public speaker

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized February 2, 2011 6 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSQQK2Vuf9Q

That slick sumbitch is Zach Wahls, a 19 year-old University of Iowa student who spoke before the Iowa House of Representatives yesterday to oppose the Iowa Marriage Amendment, which would define marriage as between a man and a woman. Wahls was raised by a committed lesbian couple—which technically makes him a slick sumbitches—and, as you can see, he constitutes a strong counterargument to the claim that a child raised by same-sex parents could not possibly turn out normal.* The IMA passed the house, but this video is likely to change a few minds, or at least cement minds already inclined in that direction. I remain pretty thrilled by it, but my friend Fletch Dogg—who, when he is not playing devil’s advocate, is a regular advocate—raised an interesting question: How is this video different from Tim Tebow’s pro-life Super Bowl ad, which makes me angry?

The big one has a weak heart and is feminine

By Dan Brooks in Fascism February 1, 2011 2 Comments

Kim Jong Il poses a problem. On one hand, he is an aggressive dictator, incrementally starving his people so he can continue to destabilize the rest of south Asia. On the other hand, he is hilarious. Look at him up there with his terrifyingly normal family in 1981, teasing the camera with some sort of Warren Beatty facial expression. The only person in the picture possibly more awesome is the child sitting next to him, who, as soon as the shutter clicks, will lunge forward and strike the photographer in the groin. He is Kim Jong Chol, and thirty years after this picture was taken, he will not get to run North Korea. Thirty years after this picture was taken, his father’s escaped personal chef will tell Chosun Ilbo that Jong Il can often be heard to say, “The big one has a weak heart and is feminine, but the young one is manly.” Props to everyone’s favorite Meghan Gallagher for the link.

Canaries: Rep. Jack Kingston derides evolution on Maher

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse January 31, 2011 11 Comments

God blows on Rep. Jack Kingston (R–GA)

Before we get into this, I should say that I do not like Bill Maher. He is an outspoken atheist and a vaguely mean-spirited liberal, which means he inspires in me that vague discomfort that comes from watching a person you do not like say what you would say. Those of us who believe that sarcasm is not a form of argument do not enjoy watching Maher snicker his way through our deeply-held positions, which made his discussion of evolution with Representative Jack Kingston (R–GA, net worth $2.8 million, 2009 reported income $507 somehow) a real opportunity to see both sides of a coin of suck. Video after the jump.

Friday links: Here is your American culture edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links January 28, 2011 3 Comments

Google Image Search result: "American culture."

I don’t know if my brain performs some sort of maintenance task* on Thursday nights or what, but every once in a while, I wake up on Friday morning and find American culture extremely weird and alienating. Today is one such Friday. How did we arrive at our peculiar combination of performative Christian morality and relentless sexualization of women, men, children and sometimes objects? Even if you can explain that, how did we get from there to Tracy Morgan? The invention of endstopped rhyming language patterns seems vertiginously contingent enough, without even mentioning murder-themed clown rap. Virtually every particular of society and discourse is arbitrary and bizarre when you look at it closely, yet our immersion in it makes it all seem so necessary. It’s the existential dilemma writ large: radical contingency, radical interrelationship, radical nutjobs yelling at you on television. Today is Friday, nothing makes any goddamn sense at all, and it’s all super important. Here is your American culture.

Return of son of bride of health care

By Dan Brooks in health care January 27, 2011 1 Comment

"I know this is a bad time, but they're saying the adenoids are a pre-existing condition."

Let me head off your objections right now: son of bride of health care is not just son of health care, because Mrs. Health Care subsequently remarried and lives in Ohio. Father of son of former bride of health care is John Boehner, and even though he pretends to be friendly, he keeps subtly insulting health care by saying things like, “I understand where you’re coming from; when I was younger, I had to eke out a living sweeping somebody else’s floors, myself.” Basically, new husband of ex-wife of health care is a dick, and every time he claims to do health care a favor he only humiliates it further. Last week, for example, he organized a purely symbolic overturn of last year’s reforms with the Repealing the Job-Crushing Health Care Law Act, which really puts certain other phrases from this paragraph in perspective. It was a pretty cynical move, incorporating as it did both a purported desire to improve the law and a sure exemption from having to do so. Anyone could see what spray-tanned second husband of health care was doing except those closest to him, and so the duty to say something fell to former coworker of both health care and father of son of former bride of health care, David Frum.