The boiled frog problem

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9nVpO1Dvfk

For those of you whose work environment/Amish fundamentalism prevents you from watching a YouTube video all the way through, that’s Glenn Beck boiling a frog alive on national television. He’s attempting to illustrate “the old saying,” that if you throw a frog into boiling water he’ll jump right out, whereas if you start the frog in lukewarm water and gradually heat it to boiling, “the frog won’t realize what’s happening and die.” Nietzschean aphorist Glenn Beck is not. Huck Finn-ean frog catcher he ain’t, either, and the several seconds he spends trying to get hold of one of the frogs—which turn out to be alarmingly small and cute—give the viewer a chance to realize that this is something he actually intends to do. “Barack Obama has galvanized this country,” Beck says, citing the number, size and urgency of the bills the President has ostensibly proposed. “He’s forced us to wake up and think.” I wouldn’t go that far, but okay. Unlike John McCain, who’s been slowly heated, the American people have been thrown into our present political situation all at once. “And what happens when you throw ’em in?” Beck demands. Then he throws his frog into his kettle of boiling water, from which it completely fails to jump out, possibly because its skin and outer layers of musculature have been flash-cooked and its eyeballs have burst. Beat. “Okay, forget the frog,” Beck says. Then he tells us to forget about both Democrats and Republicans, too, because they are fake. And…scene.

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The freighted death of Bill Sparkman

Appalachia, where poverty becomes gothic

Appalachia, where poverty becomes gothic

The death of Bill Sparkman, the part-time Census Bureau worker whose body was found tied to a tree in Clay County, Kentucky, must surely mean something. According to early reports, Sparkman was found with the word “fed” written—most news outlets have used “scrawled”—across his chest, and he happens to have been a government employee killed in a time and place that happen to be particularly charged with anti-government sentiment. He also died in meth country, where the Appalachian suspicion of outsiders is compounded by the practical considerations of manufacturing and selling narcotics in the woods. It is possible he was killed for being a stranger in Clay County. It’s possible he committed suicide. It’s possible that his death is evidence in the case to be made against a particularly virulent type of right-wing rhetoric, and it’s possible that to treat it as such is to engage in a particularly cynical type of hysteria. The only thing certain is that Bill Sparkman is dead and, even more than usual, we desperately want there to be a reason.

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The lonesome, crowded, rhinestone-studded West

The view from the Shell station in Beulah, Wyoming, approximately 600 miles from Missoula

The view from the Shell station in Beulah, Wyoming, approximately 600 miles from Missoula

Combat! blog is on the road once again, beaming its pirate signal from the utterly lawless Room 203 of the Days Inn in Gillette, Wyoming. Thanks to Google Analytics, I happen to know that no one in Wyoming reads this blog. Thanks to my rapidly-clearing nasal passages, I also know that the entire town of Gillette smells like that chemical they put in natural gas to alert you that you left the stove on. I’m not saying that these two facts are related, necessarily, but my mom reads Combat! blog every day, and her house smells like chocolate chip cookies.

Anywhom, I’ve got a solid eight-hour drive ahead of me and I’ve spent my precious pre-checkout time doing paying work, so today’s entry is more of an assignment. If you’ve got the same kind of news alert system going that I have (thank you Tyler, Christina) you know about [warning: massive tone shift] this utterly wrong and terrifying story out of Kentucky. News of a man’s death should not be immediately pressed into the service of a cultural-political theory, and this seems like one of those bizarre situations where one hopes for a suicide. If that turns out not to be the case, the implications are obvious and ugly. We will talk about them tomorrow, when hopefully everything seems sensible and a little rosier and we can go back to ragging on Michael Steele. Or, you know, take a long, hard look at ourselves and the implications of what we say. Read that article. While you’re at it, read this one, too. We live in significant times, despite regular reassurances to the contrary, and the things that happen on our television screens are more intimately connected to our actual world than we might think. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.

Miracle Whip will not tone it down, acknowledge irony

Seriously, just...don't. I think maybe you should leave. (Editor's note: Curt?)

Seriously, just...don't. I think maybe you should leave. (Editor's note: Curt?)

Those of you who dimly remember that Combat! blog is supposed to be about oppositional culture (and not All Health Care All the Time) might also remember one of our major theses around here: Consumer culture is not driven by the desire to conform, but rather by the desperate need to individuate. Never has that principle been so on display as in the most recent series of advertisements for Miracle Whip.* Featuring a group of twenty-something urban semi-professionals partying on a roof in slow motion—and occasionally eating sandwiches absolutely slathered in what I assume is Hellman’s mayonnaise—the ads defiantly assert the mantra of a generation: We Will Not Tone It Down. Video after the jump.

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