Levi Johnston’s pistachio commercial captures essential tragedy of human existence

By Dan Brooks in consumerism 6 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggB6SsB4DgM&feature=player_embedded

Yes, that is Levi Johnston, baby daddy to Tripp Palin, former future son-in-law of former future serious human being Sarah Palin. The story of Johnston—plucked from rural semi-poverty and promised to a local aristocrat, only to be cast back into the newly unsatisfying life from which he came—is a sort of Great Expectations for contemporary America, and this nuts commercial shows just how great our expectations are. “Now Levi Johnston…does it with protection,” the voiceover intones. Ha! See, Levi Johnston is famous because he got the governor’s daughter pregnant when he was in, like, high school, right? And that was the same year that the governor suddenly became a candidate for Vice President of the United States, and instead of getting her daughter an abortion and having Levi killed, like the governor of Nevada would have done, she made Levi get engaged, at least until November! Now he’s got a kid and he has to make money to support it, but at the same time he’s nineteen years old and famous for no good reason! So, you know, nuts commercial! If only that commercial could be broadcast backwards in time and viewed by the Levi Johnston of two years ago, maybe the shouted question, “how’s the baby?” could serve as a useful warning instead of a chilling reminder.

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Michele Bachman is dumb, pretty, and in Congress

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 6 Comments
Who can say how many members of Congress there are? We just don't know.

Who can say how many members of Congress there are? We just don't know.

I’m  a regular Joe. I like my beer cold, my television reality-based, and my elected representatives completely opposed to the existence of government. Ever since Sarah Palin rode away on a pegasus*, there’s been a void in my life. Where’s the high-ranking government official to assure me that the government is working against me? Who’s going to protect my precious freedoms from all enemies, imagined and domestic? Why can’t Ron Paul have prettier hair?

Fortunately, we’ve got Michele Bachmann, God’s answer to a prayer that Pat Robertson accidentally said backwards. She’s young-ish, kind of pretty, and she went to law school at Orel Roberts University. She also wants an investigation into anti-Americanism in the US Congress, thinks global warming isn’t a problem because carbon dioxide is already part of the atmosphere, and urges you not to participate in the 2010 census. And she’s from Waterloo!

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The Summer of Hate: Counterculture in 2009

By Dan Brooks in counterculture, health care, health insurance reform, help me kill zombies, inevitability of death, oppositional culture, populism, representative democracy, subculture, the crank factor, town hall meetings, town hall protests, widespread dumbening 4 Comments
Apparently if you go Hot Topic it's all Glenn Beck CDs and copies of The Wealth of Nations now.

Apparently if you go to Hot Topic it's all Glenn Beck CDs and copies of The Wealth of Nations now.

I was going to be angry about these kids, but one look at the profoundly sixteen-year-old-girl expression on that sixteen-year-old girl’s face and I didn’t have the heart. (If you’d like to get real sad, you can read a blog written by that poor girl’s mother, in which she calls Barbara Boxer a “moronic twit.” The badge on the right side indicates that she’s made the list of “best conservative blogs on the net,” which is apparently determined by total word count.) That’s her boyfriend on the left, proving again that teenage boys will do anything under certain conditions. And what are these desperate youths and the ragtag band behind them protesting for? Lower taxes on the rich, reduced social services, deregulation of business and conservative fiscal policy.

To hear Frank Rich tell it, protests like these are harbingers of a new era of cultural and political upheaval. Last weekend was the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, which television raised me to believe was the most important moment of the 20th century. It turns out that was all to promote The Wonder Years, though, because this year’s commemoration was overshadowed by the season premiere of Mad Men. First of all, if you don’t watch Mad Men, you should start immediately. It is the Cadillac of television shows, or the Combat! blog of television shows in that Frank Rich and I agree with it more than anyone else in America. Second of all, Frank Rich is right. The year that resonates with our present cultural moment isn’t 1969; it’s 1963.

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