In the pantheon of quotes that have no exact wording and are alternately attributed to Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain, perhaps none is more satisfying than “Those who enjoy democracy and sausage should take care to learn as little as possible about how either is made.” Like a public men’s room, democratic self-government is both utterly necessary and really gross. The problem is that so many people are involved. If you’re like me, you can’t help but notice the paradoxical phenomenon that your friends are conscientious, dignified people whose generosity and depth of character makes them an invaluable gift, whereas everyone you don’t know is a stupid asshole. Democracy is a great way to decide what we’re doing on Saturday night, and a terrible way to decide how to reform health care. Or, rather, it’s the second most terrible way to decide that, just after every other means of government ever devised by man. If you think the Tea Party is irritating now, just wait until one of them becomes king. Until then, enjoy this collection of instances of mass opinion, be they public opinion polls, widespread beliefs, popular media or the concentrated retardation that is an elected official. It’s Friday, and we’ve all agreed that for the next two days it’s okay not to work. At least democracy got one thing right.
Not cool: Obama authorizes assassination of American citizen
Barack Obama, seconds before slowly rotating his hand downward
I think I speak for all of us when I say goddammit, dude. An unnamed “US official” has confirmed that Anwar Al-Awlaki, alleged terrorist and certain dickhead, is on the list of people whom the CIA is allowed to kill. If, like me, you have become momentarily distracted by the thought of how awesome and creepy such a list is—hey, CIA operatives, if you’re having a panini or whatever and you happen to see Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, go ahead and stab him in the face—allow me to bring you back to sobriety by pointing out that Al-Awlaki is an American citizen. He’s also believed to occupy a significant leadership position in Al Qaeda, a probably true fact that I learned from reading an article in the Washington Post. At the time, that same article said that Al-Awlaki was “thought to have been killed”—an assessment that, coming as it did from the same military and civilian intelligence sources that decided he was a high-ranking Al Qaeda officer in the first place, casts a little doubt on the “Anwar Al-Awlaki is a terrorist so it’s okay if we whack him” argument. God forbid he’s just an asshole, because he’s an American asshole, and we have rules.
Should I eat it? KFC’s new Double Down sandwich
When KFC announced its new KFC Double Down sandwich on April 1st, we thought it was a joke. I use “we,” here, in the sense of “We would not like to watch Tyler Perry’s House of Pain,” or “We thank you for the prize package, but we’re just going to go ahead and sell the Segway,”—that is, in the sense of we who do not weigh 300 pounds. Frankly, we are not sure that thing is even a sandwich. The generic hallmark of the sandwich is bread, and the absence of bread is of course the Double Down’s claim to fame. Where the bland, ambitionless Whopper wastes your time with a bun, the Double Down puts bacon, cheese, and something called Colonel’s Sauce between two pieces of fried chicken. Which is great news for anyone who A) has a gluten allergy or B) wants their food to look like it’s eating food.
David Brooks: Come on, son
Okay, who wants to hear one more page from my book?
In a column he describes as “a great luscious orgy of optimism,” David Brooks suggests today that we all stop worrying about the state of American governance, political discourse, finance and world influence, because the country is going to be saved by—ready?—population growth. Props to alert reader/muay thai enthusiast Mike Sebba for the link. We’ve discussed the vexing phenomenon that is Mr. Brooks before (as well as the vexing phenomenon that is Mr. Brooks.) He’s either the most insightful commentator who’s still frequently wrong or the most frequently wrong commentator who still manages a lot of insights. Either way, it’s as hard to get on board with him as it is to jump off into the lake. If he weren’t a conservative, or if he were not so consistently juxtaposed with the mind-warpingly boring Thomas Friedman, we at Combat! blog probably wouldn’t be pulling for him so much. As it is, though, he’s like your friend with the stutter who wants to be a stand-up comedian: you hope the world will suddenly start to work in such a way as to make David Brooks right. Usually, that is. Today, David Brooks has written a column whose fundamental assumptions are so bafflingly stupid as to merit a big old Come On, Son.
What is Sarah Palin now?
She’s not a politician, exactly—she quit her job as governix of Alaska, and that whole second-in-line-for-the-presidency thing mercifully remained conjecture—yet all she talks about is politics. Normally that would make her a commentator, but her public statements are not really, um, up to the standards of the field. Palin’s pronouncements combine brevity and vagueness in a manner that suggests she’s not trying to convert us to her position so much as convert us to her. When she says that health care policy must strengthen American values, it’s not an argument so much as an answer. So far, Palin’s priority as a commentator seems to be to make her own position clear in relation to everybody else’s, albeit in the most infuriatingly abstract way possible. That agenda seems doubly odd, since we already know what she thinks before she says it: Sarah Palin agrees with the Republican Party. Still, she seems aligned with but not quite of the GOP, perhaps because the bulk of her rhetoric is not for anything; she’s just against President Obama. Consider her most recent piece in the National Review, in which she argues that the President’s recent support for expanded oil and gas drilling is just a trick. When one of her stated nemeses agrees with her, she refines her position in order to renew the dichotomy. In the past, we’ve criticized her for not having any ideas, but that isn’t really fair. In her present incarnation, Sarah Palin doesn’t need ideas, because the idea is herself. As David Carr suggests in today’s Times, Sarah Palin is a brand.