Rand Paul and the art of authenticity

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 1 Comment

As our unhealthy fixation on Rand Paul continues to grow, we at Combat! blog are impelled to consider the other prong of his narrative prod: authenticity. Paul and his ilk are, by their own avowal and by media announcement, outsiders—folks who feel the same way you do about the shysters in Washington because, like you, they watch ’em from afar. It’s a reform year. Two big stories dominate the news: 1) the entire country being economically, politically and environmentally fucked plus we’re losing two wars, and 2) people who cannot necessarily articulate the specific elements of #1 blaming the dang government. The trick, if you want to get elected in 2010, is to make yourself part of story #2. Hence the popularity of Rand Paul and his father, Ron, whose views are extreme but whose personae are paradoxically that of the everyman. As Meghan McCain put it, “I can’t help but interpret the congressman’s cult-like, libertarian-leaning following as yet another indicator of a growing resentment of all people incumbent and in power in Washington.”

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Friday links! Ascending order of weirdness edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

Google image search: "weird sausage." Nice to see Marilyn Manson is almost done with his studio art MFA.

American culture is such a particolored cavalcade of weird shit right now that it’s sometimes hard to believe in the standards of realism. Consider, for a moment, that the most vibrant movement currently afoot in our national politics believes that the first black president is a second Hitler, and that Hitler himself was a socialist. Or ponder the knowledge that, having failed to block health care reform with misinformation and threats of filibuster, Republican congressmen have begun to attack financial reform with misinformation and threats of filibuster. It’s as if a promising but unpracticed undergraduate creative writing student were currently writing the narrative of American politics, with all the characters acting too closely to type and an increasing number of surreal flourishes to distract us as the plot fails to cohere. In other words, it all seems kind of made up. In preparation for a weekend that will doubtless conform to natural realism more faithfully than we’d like, this Friday’s link roundup is devoted to stories that our too good to be true, arranged in order of decreasing plausibility. That their truth seems to diminish in as their goodness mounts is surely commentary on something, but it’s probably better if we don’t think about what. Let’s just sit back and enjoy the descent into an entirely fictionalized culture, built for our amusement with the lineaments of the real.

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DNC, RNC both spending money like there’s no 2012

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 4 Comments

Michael Steele at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, where he was described as "the bald guy," "the guy with the mustache," "the guy in the suit," "the, um, he's kind of...he's got glasses..."

Good news, everybody: the GOP isn’t the only national political party taking the money that you thought would help express your political views in Washington and using it to buy caviar strap-ons. Yesterday, the Washington Post revealed that “both the national Democratic and Republican committees spend about two-thirds of the money they take in on the care and comfort of committee staffs and on efforts to raise more funds, with lavish spending on limousines, expensive hotels, meals and tips.” Props to Jacek “Monster In the Closet” Pruski for the link. Those of you who have worked in nonprofits know that the appropriate level of operating costs for a charitable organization is generally agreed to be about 20% of income. During the fundraising cycle that ended in February, the DNC took in about $100 million, and spent $60 million on travel, catering, hotels, entertainment, staff salaries and “office supplies”—a line that, in the RNC’s annual report to the Federal Election Commission, included liquor, jelly beans, and a $900 tab at the Little Door restaurant in Beverly Hills. First of all, if you’ve ever eaten at the Little Door, you know the manilla file folders are incredible. Second of all, the RNC took in $109 million last fundraising cycle, and spent $74 million of it. Where did all that money go?

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Nevada Tea Party candidate accused of being, like, fake

By Dan Brooks in Tea Party 4 Comments

John Scott Ashjian, Tea Party of Nevada senatorial candidate and suspected liberal plot

Remember in college when you were hooking up with this girl pretty regularly, and eventually you sat down and the two of you decided that you were going to just be what you were and not worry about labels like “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” and it seemed like you had discovered a bold new way of living right up until some dude started hitting on her at a party? Well, the 2010 Nevada senatorial race is the party, and John Ashjian is that dude. As of a few weeks ago, he’s running against Harry Reid as the official candidate of the Tea Party of Nevada. Unfortunately, the creation of the Tea Party of Nevada seems to coincide with the announcement of his candidacy. Previously, retired CPAs in Nevada who got all their news from daytime talk radio were represented by the Northern Nevada Tea Party, the Reno Tea Party, or the political action committee Anger Is Brewing. These organizations, as well as the national Republican Party, have suggested that Ashjian’s candidacy is a liberal plot—an attempt to split the conservative and anti-Washington vote in a race where Harry Reid’s seat is seriously threatened. A woman named Elizabeth Crum, writing in a column called The Blog on a website called Nevada News Bureau—which describes itself as, simply, “an independent new service”—writes of the Tea Party of Nevada that “I cannot find any evidence that any of these principals have ever been involved in any Tea Party activities, until now.” Are you beginning to see why having some sort of defined structure is useful in politics? Not to mention journalism?

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Narrative watch: Republican obstructionism

By Dan Brooks in Narrative Watch 3 Comments

"And now I would like to yield the podium to my colleague, whose wallet has been stolen. Somebody took it, and nobody is getting out of here until—what? You found it? For Christ's sake, Bob."

One of two narratives describes the Obama presidency, and if you tell me which one is true I can tell you which 24-hour news network you watch. Either President Barack Hussein Obama is a nouveau socialist whose cult of personality has allowed him to expand federal power to an unprecedented degree, or the Republican minority in Congress has put politics ahead of the best interests of the country and paralyzed the Hill with unrelenting obstructionism. We here at Combat! would never tell you what to believe,* but only one of these narratives has been fleshed out with a lot of scenes. Two weeks ago, Senate Republicans finally released the hold they had placed on Martha Johnson, the woman President Obama nominated seven months ago to head the General Services Administration. If you’ve never heard of the GSA, it’s probably because you are not a wholesale distributor of toilet paper and cleaning supplies; the agency’s primary task is to oversee the day-to-day maintenance of the Capitol and related buildings. Johnson was eventually confirmed with a vote of 94-2, suggesting that she was perhaps not such a controversial nominee after all. While an extreme example, she was just one of dozens of qualified applicants on whose nominations the GOP has placed holds, whether to ransom them for pet projects or out of a spirit of general dicketry. While calling the Republicans obstructionists seems unfair—they are the opposition party, after all—the discrepancy between their principled objections and their voting records is beginning to suggest that they’re playing politics, not government.

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