Breitbart plays the race card in Carson vs. Pelosi

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 0 Comment
The homepage of Breitbart.com around noon eastern

The homepage of Breitbart.com around noon eastern

I was astonished to see the Breitbart headline in the screenshot above, but it changed when I clicked on it. The story-page headline reads Nancy Pelosi Calls Ben Carson “Disturbingly Unqualified,” which is probably a more precise way to describe her than “white Democrat leader.” Beware autoplay video with sound, should you click on that link yourself. The story is short enough to quote entirely here:

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is calling the decision to tap Ben Carson as head of Housing and Urban Development a “disconcerting and disturbingly unqualified choice.” Pelosi says the country deserves someone with “relevant experience” to protect the rights of homeowners and renters.

In her statement released Monday, she says “there is no evidence that Dr. Carson brings the necessary credentials to hold a position with such immense responsibilities and impact on families and communities across America.”

Trump says, “Ben shares my optimism about the future of our country and is part of ensuring that this is a presidency representing all Americans.”

There’s a lot missing from this report, including what Carson’s qualifications might actually be. If you want those kinds of nuances, you’re better off with the Times. It’s kind of weird that Breitbart would just reprint a statement from the House Minority Leader with none of its own commentary or counterpoint, save that quote from Donald Trump. But all the commentary they need is in that homepage headline: White Democrat Leader Calls…

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Friday links! Possible boners edition

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment

Joker boner

“Everything is only for a day,” Marcus Aurelius writes in book IV of the Meditations, “both that which remembers and that which is remembered.” He means don’t worry about your historical reputation, because the people who know it will all die, too. Still, among the living, it’s hard not to hope posterity will like us. I think of my grandparents’ segment of history—from the Depression through fascism into boom decades culminating in the hypertrophied 1980s—and I am overwhelmed with admiration. Then I try to come up with titles for our chapter of the history books. “Deficits and Decay” seems toppable. “Where Animals Went” would work in a work of popular nonfiction. Today is Friday, and history might remember us as people who didn’t think about the future, but not in the good way like Marcus Aurelius wants. Won’t you chortle at the boners with me?

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Grand Marnier targets race-blind narcissists with “blend out” ads

By Dan Brooks in advertising 10 Comments

If you watch Hulu, as I do when my Critique of Pure Reason is broken, you have probably seen Grand Marnier’s “blend out” commercials. In the one above, everyone at the club is kind of bored by a jazz combo, until a young man reinvigorates them by mounting the stage and beatboxing along. Grand Marnier: drink a bunch of it and interrupt a public performance, probably to broad acclaim. It’s pretty much your standard alcohol-commercial excellence fantasy, (q.v. Heineken) except everyone in the club is black, and our beatboxer is white. Surely there’s a reason for that—but what?

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A little insight into the Tea Party constituency

By Dan Brooks in Tea Party 12 Comments

Image courtesy of our platonic friends at moronswithsigns.blogspot.com.

First of all, when is Obama gonna get going with the infanticide already? He’s been in office for fifteen months now, and I haven’t seen even one centurion dash a Christian child against a tall palm. Maybe that’s because I haven’t been looking in Florida, though. The New York Times has conducted what appears to be the first semi-scientific poll to determine Tea Party demographics, and found that “the 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.” That shouldn’t surprise anyone. What is counterintuitive is that Tea Party supporters turn out to be, on average, richer and more likely to hold college degrees than the general public. The majority describe the amount of money they paid in taxes this year as “fair.” They usually or almost always vote Republican, 57% of them hold a favorable opinion of George W. Bush, and a plurality of them believe that Sarah Palin is unqualified to be president. And 25% of them say that the federal government under Barack Obama favors blacks over whites. Sounded almost sane there, for a second, didn’t they?

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