A birthday wish

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 4 Comments

The original filename for this image was “smug dog,” which is now the brand name of my line of yoga accessories.

Today is my thirty-fifth birthday. Now that I have ascended to the top of my demographic, I have only one more year of enjoying the exact same things as an 18 year-old. After that I like Family Circus, Harley-Davidsons and voting Republican. These sorts of changes don’t happen very often, as this poll analysis from the Times indicates. It starts out with some boring stuff about Paul Ryan and the base and a car salesman in Des Moines who is not related to me, but then you hit this:

A series of recent polls in six swing states showed that only 5 percent of voters were undecided and only about 1 in 10 likely voters who had chosen a candidate said they were open to switching. At this point four years ago, more than 1 in 4 voters nationwide said they might change their minds.

Anticipated total spending this election cycle: one billion dollars. Find out who’s going to win after the jump.

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Romney keeps it surreal in the Hamptons

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 3 Comments

“We removed it to make his mouth more efficient!”

My favorite aspect of the 2012 presidential election is the micro-genre of news story in which Mitt Romney does some Richie Rich shit. This weekend was delightful, as Romney held a trio of fundraisers in the Hamptons. You may remember the Hamptons from such experiences as client invites you to his summer home to reinforce the idea that he is your boss, or this. That was hilarious when I was twelve, but now that I am older I prefer the sort of sardony you can only get from the New York Times:

A woman in a blue chiffon dress poked her head out of a black Range Rover here on Sunday afternoon and yelled to an aide to Mitt Romney, “Is there a V.I.P. entrance. We are V.I.P.” No such entrance existed.

Well played, Michael Barbaro and Sarah Wheaton. But for the prize pig Romney donor quote of the weekend, you’ll have to click on the jump.

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Leonhardt on the national age divide

By Dan Brooks in Baby Boomers 1 Comment

I’d better turn out to be really good at this thing.

As anyone who saw me gallivanting around Missoula with my mother will tell you, many Americans are much older than us. Some might argue that age is a continuum, with several Americans in fact younger than even we are, but that seems far-fetched. It ignores the monolithic concentration that is the Baby Boomers—those people who invented rock and roll, who ride around the farmer’s market on Harley-Davidson motorcycles, who can be found at the post office screaming that Social Security is unconstitutional. Sorry—everything but Social Security is unconstitutional. The increased conservatism of the Boomers accounts for much of the country’s rightward shift over the last few years, as David Leonhardt suggests in his excellent Sunday Times column.

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Friday links! Apocalypse nowish edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

The four horsemen of the apocalypse: war, famine, disease, and tweets as sources

I’m not saying that the apocalyptic destruction of goodness and the unraveling of sense are in the near future, but what are the odds that they’re in the recent past? The anthropic principle dictates that the apocalypse is coming, because if it had already happened we wouldn’t be here. Ergo, pretty much every event is a sign of the coming apocalypse, or at least a link in the causal chain. We just have to figure out how to read them. Today is Friday, it’s pretty gray outside, and there seem to be an inordinate number of cannibal stories floating around. One need only check the news to find ample evidence—or at least some pre-schizoid pattern recognition—for the end of days. Come scry with me, won’t you?

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Fox News runs fair, balanced propaganda segment

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 1 Comment

Fox and Friends hosts Steve Doocey, Greta, and The Wang

The genius of Fox News lies in its insistence that it is not a propaganda network. It’s right there in the tagline: fair and balanced, a motto which Fox News staffers and on-air personalities obey with unshakable fidelity, as indicated by their smile-like facial grimaces above. Fox News is neither fair nor balanced. Its whole marketing strategy is to flaunt a conservative bias, which is a smart way to secure one of two demographics in the United States that continually feel persecuted by an imagined mainstream.* That’s clever, but what’s brilliant is the constant, monolithic insistence that the network is not just honest and ethical, but the only honest and ethical news source on television. It’s an audacious doubling down on a proposition that everyone, Fox fans and critics alike, knows is a lie. That makes it thrilling to the conservative faithful and infuriating to everybody else, with only old people and your barber in the middle. But today’s discussion is going to ignore the existence of those Fox News viewers who actually believe the network is fair and balanced, on the grounds that such people are too dumb to influence the physical universe, much less American culture. Evidence after the jump.

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