A blog by Dan Brooks
There is no Combat! blog today, because my valiant girlfriend has been laid low by oral surgery. She has had her wisdom teeth chiseled out of her jawbone, and she requires mostly Vicodin but also my help. While I make like Florence Nightingale, how about you read this fine essay from Bookforum about the problem of the psychopath—both in society and in diagnosis. We’ll be back tomorrow with a fun Indy column and less swollen loved ones.
Six-term senator, man of the people and wizened child Chuck Grassley
Elitists: they’re everywhere, according to people whose words and ideas are broadcast to millions. Obama was an elitist for saying every American should go to college. Donald Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord told CNN that fact-checking is elitist. Elitism seems concentrated in the journalistic class, particularly when politicians identify it. Just this morning, Senator Chuck Grassley (R–IA) posed this question to his Twitter followers:
Do u think 2day’s journalists r too elite for ‘ordinary Americans’?
— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) July 11, 2016
You can tell Grassley is a man of the people because he uses chatspeak abbreviations. Journalists are too elite for him, an ordinary American who has served in the Senate for 30 years. But his tweet raises some questions.
A piquant comic by Kris Straub
I wrote a column for the Indy this morning and 1000 words of fiction, as one does, and now I face a choice. I can either write a whole blog post for you good people, or I can go on a hike with my brother. I think you know from this preamble which I have chosen. There is no Combat! blog today, because I will be alone with my thoughts again soon enough. While I retreat to lived experience, how about you enjoy the timely comic strip above? I think it’s more common—and perhaps stronger—as only the first three panels, which expose the essential absurdity of a lately popular argument. Those of us who still log in to Facebook occasionally may find it useful. We’ll be back tomorrow, probably, with something more substantive.
There is no Combat! blog today, because my brother is in town and we must play a board game we invented involving wizards. While I summon cacodaemon, how about you read this fantastic essay by Tim Kreider from 2013? It is old, and we have linked to it before, but I agree with Sarah Aswell: it bears reading at least once a year. We’ll be back Monday, probably, unless we get trapped in some kind of soul prison.
Me on Double Dare
Remember Double Dare? I feel like it was one of the most important shows on television, and I don’t understand why they haven’t remade it along with everything else. But maybe I only think it was important because it’s familiar to me. On an unrelated note, respondents to the Missoula Independent’s Annual Best of Missoula Poll and Pull-Out Advertising Section have selected me as Best Journalist, along with actual journalists Erika Fredrickson and Kate Whittle. In case I did not yet wonder if they were being sarcastic, they also put me on a list of Best Writers with Gwen Florio and winner James Lee Burke. You may remember Florio from her nationally-admired reporting on the Jordan Johnson rape case and her subsequent crime novels. You may remember Burke from being famous and great. As you can see, the Best of Missoula poll is accurate about 67 percent of the time, while a third of us benefit from noise in the statistics. That’s part of this town’s peculiar charm, as I discuss in this week’s column for the aforesaid Independent. Now you understand how I got where I am today: pandering.