Friday links! Impossibility of perspective edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

Smoke from the Sawtooth fire obscures the damn sun.

I am dogsitting my excellent nephew in the South Hills today, and the smoke is so thick I cannot see the mountains. Hell, I can’t see the grocery store at the bottom of the hill. The Sawtooth fire has covered Missoula in a rich musk, equal parts wood smoke and singed squirrel. In addition to creating some really excellent lighting effects and possibly damaging my lungs, the smoke creates an atmosphere of isolation. Even more than usual, the broad view is impossible. Today is Friday, and none of us can see too far in front of his own nose. Won’t you revel in subjectivity with me?

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Dammit!

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 3 Comments

I accept that my desire to see Rick Santorum win the Republican nomination is destructive and wrong. American politics is not the Puppy Bowl, and we should not just root for the funniest one. Still, the heart wants what it wants. The heart got really excited last night, when it briefly appeared that Santorum might take Ohio. Then boring, sensible America came charging in, and Romney won every district with an airport. Again, that’s good. Rick Santorum should be kept as far from the presidency as possible, for the same reason you don’t keep the octopus with the Christmas lights. But the ugly part of me—the part that wants the comfort of seeing its nihilistic misanthropy confirmed—was hoping to see the GOP’s most absurd candidate take the country’s most predictive state. I suspect that part of me is also the Santorum constituency.

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Semi-grammatical Santorum attacks public education

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 12 Comments

Pictures into which dicks with cocaine on them must be Photoshopped immediately

Rick Santorum home schools his children. That way they get the full benefit of his mastery of calculus and physics, plus his incisive understanding of history. Speaking in Ohio on Saturday, Santorum explained that public schools are “anachronistic,” having been developed in tandem with the factory system during the American industrial revolution as a means to educate workers. We’re going to ignore the problems with that thesis to consider Santorum’s argument against public schooling, which went like this:

Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America? Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children.

I’m going to call that an argument in favor of public schools, for several reasons.

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