Combat! - Page 77 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Peter Daou plans to sue Twitter users for defamation

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media March 22, 2016 6 Comments

Ken Auletta, Arianna Huffington, Peter Daou, and Mark McKinnon after a 2008 panel

Peter Daou first came to my attention via Twitter, where he is routinely mocked by snarky journalists. A former advisor to Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, Daou is now a commentator and activist who founded the group/hashtag #HillaryMen. He is also a former member of the Lebanese Forces, a Christian militia organized during the Lebanese civil war. In a post on his personal blog this morning, Daou announced his intention to sue for defamation various unnamed Twitter users who have accused him of complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982. Daou describes his war experience as extremely traumatic, saying that he never killed anyone and was conscripted against his will. He has publicly condemned the Sabra and Shatila massacre and contends that tweets related to it were meant to defame him in retaliation for his support for Hillary. The big question, in this brave age of social media, is whether tweets can constitute defamation in the same way as broadcasts and publications from media outlets. Daou thinks so, but his case is complicated. Examples after the jump.

Bros: Are they hipsters?

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media March 21, 2016 1 Comment

The beard says hipster. The Bernie says bro. What kind of other person is this?

Perhaps the greatest achievement in the last decade of social journalism has been the elimination of hipsters. At one time, hipsters were such a powerful force that they threatened to displace all other groups. By 2009, for example, they were so numerous that Time magazine found it more efficient to describe them in terms of who they were not:

Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They’re the people who wear T-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you’ve never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don’t care.

Here the author lays out the hipsters’ defining characteristics: they don’t like the band you like, but they like the movie and beer you don’t. They wear hats. And they pretend they don’t care, when in fact we all care very deeply. We care so much about who is a hipster that we successfully hounded them out of existence. But they left a demographic vacuum that has been filled by bros.

Friday links! Wisdom of history edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links March 18, 2016 0 Comment

A 19th-century clothier warns us against the effects of Chinese labor.

I think it’s safe to say we’re witnessing the most exciting presidential election of our lifetimes. First black president was pretty cool, but first woman president is similarly significant, and first fascist TV-star president and/or disintegration of the Republican Party pushes it right over the top. Surely this is not the most interesting US presidential election ever, though. The election of 1860 was pretty hot. So was 1924. In these lively times, when so much seems unprecedentedly awful, we are wise to turn to the even more awful stuff that already happened. Today is Friday, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Won’t you peruse the lessons of history with me?

Lindsey Graham is free now

By Dan Brooks in Rhetoric, Uncategorized March 17, 2016 0 Comment

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Lindsey Graham ran for president this year, and it didn’t go great. He ended up one of a dozen candidates knocked out by a celebrity clown and the most hated man in the Senate, and here lies American democracy in 2016. It’s a situation that invites frank assessment—something from which senators refrain on an almost professional basis. But as Miracle Mike Sebba recently pointed out to me, Graham seems to have embraced honesty. Here he is publicly reversing his position on Apple vs. FBI. Here he is declining the opportunity to pledge his support to the eventual nominee. And here he is at the Washington Press Club dinner, complaining that his party has gone “batshit crazy.” Together, these brushstrokes paint a much more likable Senator Graham. Maybe that’s because he more closely agrees with my politics now. But maybe it’s because he’s finally speaking candidly.

In victory, Donald Trump gently threatens us

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized March 16, 2016 0 Comment

Police at the 1968 Democratic convention seize Pigasus, the Yippie nominee

Police at the 1968 Democratic convention restrain Pigasus, the Yippie nominee.

Don’t worry: after he was denied the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, Pigasus went on to a successful career in investment banking. Today he is a bundler for Hillary Clinton. After yesterday’s primaries, Pigasus and I will probably be voting for the same candidate come November, since our other option is Donald Trump. The billionaire and decreasingly funny running joke didn’t quite seize the nomination last night, but he took all in winner-take-all Florida and knocked Maro Rubio out of the race. Now it’s just him and Ted Cruz, unless John Kasich wins 94% of delegates between now and July.

So why is Kasich staying in? He expects a brokered convention, and he’s not wrong to think that many Republicans—especially the ones who run the party—would rather send him to the generals than either of his opponents. It’s still entirely possible Trump will hit July with a simple majority of delegates, and that will be that. But it’s equally plausible he won’t, especially since former Rubio supporters would seem more likely to shift their loyalty to the other hyper-conservative anglicized Latino senator than to the egomaniac threatening riots.

In an interview with CNN about the possibility of a brokered convention, Trump said, “I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically. I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing many, many millions of people.” Note that he’s not calling for riots himself. He’s just saying, twice, that if he doesn’t get the Republican nomination, that’s probably what will happen. Trump doesn’t like these riots among millions of people who demand he become president any more than you do.

All of this news is a mere curiosity to me, since I will be dead by then. I know I’ve been sicker than this before, because I had walking pneumonia in college. But this thing has really put the zap on me, and the road to recovery is long, viscous, and green with streaks of blood. I’d like to take a moment to thank the inventor of antibiotics, Ted Antibiot, because if this happened to me in 1816 I would be dead. On the other hand, I could write about the evident disintegration of the Federalist Party, so maybe it wouldn’t be so different after all.