Friday links! It’s only fair edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment
Senator Randy Paul (R–KY) invites you to watch him take a dump.

Senator Rand Paul (R–KY) invites you to watch him take a dump.

After children have lost their other innate abilities—when they can no longer recognize facial expressions or manipulate objects, but instead swipe feebly at whatever images they hope to change—they will still have a keen sense of what’s fair. Fair is I get what you get. If you are, for example, one of a numerical minority of Americans whose parents were legally kept as slaves five generations ago, and you are twice as likely to be born into poverty and roughly one fifth as likely to successfully hail a cab, it’s unfair that I don’t get to say the n-word. I thought racism was supposed to be over, but here we are giving people special privileges. Today is Friday, which is totally unfair to Thursday, when you think about it. Won’t you forget where we came from with me?

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Friday links! Confront the masquerade edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 3 Comments

It’s Friday, but more importantly we stand on the cusp of Halloween weekend. I don’t know about you, but I like Halloween. It’s a holiday we can all celebrate comfortably. Halloween doesn’t come with the weirdo baggage of a Christmas or a Columbus Day; it’s a perfectly innocent time devoted to images of death, elision of individual identity and the sexualization of pirates. The best part of Halloween is, of course, the masquerade. For one night of the year and maybe the preceding Saturday, the social conventions that govern dress and age-appropriate behavior are lifted, and we confront the real freedom we possess. Here is carnival in the root sense of the word—a society governed not by mores but by appetites, mostly for Reese’s and Apple Pucker, but also for truth. Paradoxically, we become most ourselves when we put on a costume. This week’s link roundup is all about the truth that reveals itself only in the lie, the confrontation with the masquerade. Also midget tossing. Trick or treat, kids. Why don’t you reach into this sack without really knowing what’s in it?

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Pawlenty infuses GOP field with bold new ideas

By Dan Brooks in Class Warfare 3 Comments

Former Minnesota governor, Republican presidential candidate and benevolent eagle Tim Pawlenty delivered what his aides described as a “major economic policy address” yesterday, laying out his plan for the United States economy to achieve 5% annual growth. “Plan,” in this context, is more like “demand,” and “achieve” is “develop with no discernible causality.” The details of Tim Pawlenty’s economic plan may surprise you, particularly if you’ve never heard or read anything about a Republican politician since 1928. The rest of you can put on your disappointed-not-to-be-surprised faces in preparation for the jump.

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