Meanwhile, inside Michele Bachmann’s head

By Dan Brooks in Tea Party 0 Comment

"We set out early. Light was poor."

The Tea Party took another step toward actuality last week with the approval of a congressional Tea Party Caucus, headed by none other than Michele Bachmann. And you know what that means! Okay, technically that does not mean it’s time for another edition of Meanwhile, inside Michele Bachmann’s head, since that series is explicitly not about Michele Bachmann. It seemed like a genius system at the time, but in retrospect our decision to make MIMBH about everyone but the person whose name is mentioned in the title was an editorial oversight. Henceforth, Combat! blog will use Meanwhile, inside Michele Bachmann’s head to talk about Michele Bachmann. This paragraph is surely of little interest to anyone, except various web crawlers that are, as we speak, making this page the definitive result for people who type “michele bachmann” into Google. For the purposes of attracting that traffic, let me just wind things up by saying michele bachmann hot, michele bachmann legs, michele bachmann crazy bitch who looks at me while i’m asleep.

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Friday links! Seriously, you guys are racists edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

There’s been a lot of discussion around here lately about the fear of reverse racism and the increasingly popular trope that white Christians are the victims of institutional prejudice. It’s hard not to notice that this irrefutable fact of American life was discovered immediately after a black man became President, and also that 66% of the people in this country are themselves white, which should make it fairly easy to bring the orchestrators of this cruel anti-white society to justice. Herein lies the problem. Historically, when a minority group tries to do something about racism, it leads to a more just society (Montgomery 1955, Stonewall 1969) or brutal repression (all human history prior to 1955.) When an overwhelming majority tries to address its racial victimhood, the results are somewhat less reliable (Berlin 1938.) It’s hard not to see, in the racial complaints of the white, wealthy and increasingly powerful Tea Party, a vague threat.

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Ross Douthat inadvertently explains where racism comes from

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 8 Comments

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who also appears in your girlfriend's graduate program

Canny invoker Ross Douthat cannily invokes Pat Buchanan in his New York Times column from Monday, in which he suggests that Harvard and other Ivy League institutions discriminate against working class, rural and conservative whites. This position is, of course, extremely popular with white racists, which is why Douthat chooses to open his column with something Buchanan did in 2000. When the former Nixon speechwriter spoke at Harvard in March of that year, he was greeted with jeers, accusations of bigotry, and pretty much every other expression of anger you can carry off in a pink polo shirt. Buchanan’s claim that contemporary America persecutes white Christians is laughable, but Douthat observes that it’s the same note currently sounded by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and other vital elements of contemporary conservatism. One of those elements turns out to be Douthat himself, who gives us this third paragraph:

To liberals, these grievances seem at once noxious and ridiculous. (Is there any group with less to complain about, they often wonder, than white Christian Americans?) But to understand the country’s present polarization, it’s worth recognizing what Pat Buchanan got right.

And thus does an old myth smear itself with lipstick before trying on its new dress.

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Work sucks, Combat! blog acquiesces

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 4 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCv8wClAC38

As you can probably judge by the lateness of the hour, Combat! blog is behind in its paying work today and has no time for astute cultural analysis, much less what we usually do. Instead, enjoy this video clip from the “Art of Gracie Jiu Jitsu” series, which explains the then-nascent discipline of Brazilian jiu jitsu to the world via grainy video clips of Royler beating hell out of karate instructors. Even if you’re not a jiu jitsu fan—and I frankly find that position baffling—you can appreciate the serene, nature-documentary narration as Royler mercilessly hits this poor man in the ear to get him to roll over. Enthusiasts will enjoy the entire series, which also contains perhaps the most humiliating refutation of hapkido ever caught on tape. Protect your neck and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Pete Sessions and the anatomy of an empty idea

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 3 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HLlSfgJQh4&feature=player_embedded

That’s Pete Sessions, Representative of Texas’s 32nd District and chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, explaining on Meet the Press how Republicans would balance the budget. As you can see, he’s a little vague. Sessions’s opening statement is such a tangle of catch phrases and boilerplate that it merits quoting verbatim:

It’s quite simple that the American people do understand the agendas that are before us. They understand what the President and the Speaker stand for, and they understand what Republicans stand for. Republicans—and especially our candidates, who are all over this country—very strong, standing with the American people back home. We need to live within our means.

I think we’re all relieved to know that Republicans very strong standing with the American people back home—apparently they’re in Iraq or something—and also that their candidates are all over this country. We’re going to need them to implement our innovative new plan for balancing the budget, which is to live within our means. Once we’ve taken care of that, we can win the war in Iraq by committing to victory, fix Social Security by ensuring its future, and finally talk to that pretty girl at the bookstore by taking a chance.

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