Gingrich finally allowed to explain everything

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 6 Comments

Bat Boy (right) and Newt Gingrich (farther right)

The best thing about the Republican Party’s sad attempt to get over Mitt Romney through a series of superficial relationships with new candidates is that we all knew, sooner or later, they would get around to Newt Gingrich. I personally could not wait. The oddly childish former House Majority Leader has said and done so many weird things that no one who knows his career would vote for him, yet his demeanor is so smug and off-putting that he repels anyone who sees him for the first time. As Ben al-Fowlkes pointed out to me, Gingrich would stand a chance in 1840. In 2011, he seems to have staked his campaign on the twin propositions that A) he has name recognition and B) people won’t remember what he’s like. That’s a recipe for fun, right there. As if to reward us for somehow making him the Republican front-runner, Gingrich has compiled all the likely complaints against him and refuted them, point-by-point, in a 5,000-word defense on his website. The only thing he forgets to mention is that that’s not crazy at all.

Continue reading

Friday links! Varieties of human experience edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments

"I actually find nothing strange about Antonin Scalia. Bafflingly, I regard Antonin Scalia as the default human condition. Now bring me Solo and the Wookie."

We at Combat! blog spend a lot of time considering the problem of others. Partly that’s because I work from home, where I live with several terrariums. When you live alone, have no coworkers and socialize with an insular peer group, it’s easy to start thinking that other people are basically the same as you. They are not. The human experience is characterized first by its stunning variety, and what one person considers the givens of existence are, to another, mere trifles. Take lying, for example. When I lie, I have to take care that what I’m saying sounds like the truth. Otherwise, people will start to think less of me, and because I see the same people over and over again—the colloquial term for this phenomenon is “friends”—my life will get worse. For other people, lying is a sort of formality, the way Japanese people say ittadakimasu before eating. They just have to make the gesture of a declarative statement, and even though nobody believes them, that gesture is enough. It’s probably because they have no friends and the truth means to them what Rembrandt’s Christ With Arms Folded means to a labrador, but who knows? This week’s link roundup is chock full of absurd behavior undertaken by weirdos, and it serves to remind us that other people are startlingly different. Won’t you shudder in disrecognition with me?

Continue reading

Friday links! Radically different worldviews edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 6 Comments

Margie Phelps makes the most of her only life before sliding into oblivion.

One decreasingly fashionable view of colonial history holds that the American Revolution succeeded in part because of ideological consensus—the remarkable tendency of Americans to hold the same basic views on the same foundational ideas. We’re all pretty much committed to the idea of equality before the law, for example. If you explained that concept to a dude in 18th-century Korea, he would A) become obsessed with your cell phone and B) laugh at the notion that every person in a society should obey the same laws. From outside our particular historic paradigm, Americans’ general agreement is mind-blowing. Yet, at this very moment, Rick Santorum is running a campaign based on the idea that this county’s biggest problem is gay dudes. He will never be President, but hundreds of thousands of people agree with him. Get a few conclusions removed from basic principles, and the nutso worldviews of your fellow Americans are breathtaking. It’s Friday, and people across the country can’t wait to recharge by watching some Ghost Whisperer and going to church. Won’t you marvel at their fantastic perspectives with me?

Continue reading

Friday links! Actually, I’m crazy edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized 4 Comments

Scientists* estimate that approximately one out of every three people is crazy, yet we go about our daily business as if our governmental officials, beloved celebrities and attractive dinner dates were entirely sensible and calm. It’s not until they send us all pictures of their genitals that we begin to suspect the truth: pretty much everyone is a ticking time bomb, just waiting for the right traffic event or interview question to explode into ratfuck insanity. As we prepare to celebrate our nation’s independence this weekend, I thought we might celebrate those Americans who spontaneously shoot up in the air and make a terrible thunder/flash of light before falling to the ground a burnt stick. It’s Friday, several people previously believed to be reliable have gone all hoopy on us, and I am three deadlines away from a psychotic break with reality myself. Won’t you join me?

Continue reading

Friday links: Shape of truth, form of whatever! edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

Shape of a dude batting way above his average

If you’ve spent any time teaching rhetoric or composition,* you’ve likely noticed that many people understand on an instinctive level what a sentence sounds like but have no idea what to put inside it. I became fascinated by this phenomenon in the years before I withdrew to my mountain lair, back when I used to spend hours a day watching high school students compose sentences. “Although,” they would begin, and then lapse into a state of deep concentration, as if they A) had no idea what they were going to say but B) knew the second part would contradict the first part. In the same way that we all learned language by mimicking sounds before we knew they were vehicles for meaning, many of us have mastered the art of building the shape of a truthful statement and then filling it with total bullshit. This week’s link roundup features statements, actions and ideas that resemble decency in silhouette, but which turn out to be crassly unethical and vapid in content. It’s the perfect preparation for a weekend whose structure will be exactly the same as every other, but which will of course turn out to be an unprecedented, irreplaceable experience that will probably involve throwing up. Won’t you bring a little bile to your mouth with me?

Continue reading