Reince Priebus manifests, presents CNN/NBC with diabolic choice

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 2 Comments
RNC chairman Reince Priebus in his Cave of Insanity

RNC chairman Reince Priebus in his Cave of Insanity

Making a popping sound as he displaces the air, RNC chairman and extradimensional potentate Reince Priebus had demanded that CNN and NBC Entertainment halt production on planned features about Hillary Clinton. And if they do not? One week from today, Priebus will “seek a binding vote of the RNC stating that the committee will neither partner with you in 2016 primary debates nor sanction primary debates which you sponsor.” In other words, CNN and NBC drop their respective Hillary projects or they don’t get to carry the Republican debates. And like that, before you could say Subeirp Ecnier, he disappeared.

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Friday links! Rich pleasures edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

It is tempting to believe that as our society becomes more crass and hedonistic, the sophisticated pleasures evaporate. How can we enjoy the incisive psychology of The Cherry Orchard when our brains have been honed to Barely Legal 6? It’s tempting to think that the game of inches that was 20th-century culture will be lost on a society that measures value in millions, but that’s just declinism talking. In fact, the mass stupefaction of American society provides us with rich pleasures, the way Oedipus having a marital dispute with his mom provided the ancient Greeks with irony. And we don’t even have to go to the theater. Today’s links offer plenty of schadenfreude and a healthy dose of rueful surprise, and they’re all constituted of at least 50% real life. Won’t you succumb to embittered satisfaction with me?

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Good night, sweet prince

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 2 Comments

In a blow to snide remarkers everywhere, Michael Steele is no longer chairman of the Republican National Committee. He has been replaced by a man named Reince Priebus, who certainly sounds amusing, but seems unlikely to go on television and talk about how he’s so street that sometimes he wears a hat backwards without even thinking about it.* We are not likely to see another Michael Steele. That’s kind of ironic, because there are already two of him. As Ben al-Fowlkes and the Huffington Post recently pointed out to me, the story “Michael Steele loses RNC chairmanship” threatens to be eclipsed, in our minds if not in our lives, by the story “Daily Show retires Michael Steele puppet.” Video after the jump.

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