What to do with the stars and bars?

By Dan Brooks in subculture 1 Comment
Stars and Bars

I guarantee you this home has called 911, probably on the Fourth of July.

The question of what to do with the Confederate battle flag is easy to answer: hang it in your frat house window instead of a curtain. Or adhere it to the back of your truck. You can even wear it on a shirt while your Big & Rich shirt is in the wash. These uses of the Confederate flag occur in different contexts and reflect its diverse meanings, but they all send the same essential message: I am white. Over at the Atlantic, Yoni Appelbaum reflects on the problem with having a flag of whiteness, first designed by the losing side in a war over slavery and reinvigorated in the backlash against desegregation. Meanwhile, in the part of America that does not read the Atlantic, Republican candidates for president are conspicuously mum.

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Friday links! Smug sense of rectitude edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 24 Comments
Good one, dick.

Good one, dick!

Here’s a tip for you Kombat! Kids out there: you can be any kind of asshole so long as you are right and good. For example, I have a bunch of stuff I need to do today, but none of it matters because The New York Times Magazine published an essay I wrote. Monster, undying props to Willy for that one. It’s not that writing an essay is such a great achievement, or even an achievement I undertook today, but I feel like I’m off the hook for the rest of the morning. Today is Friday, and a smug sense of rectitude will compensate for any number of personal failings—from the rectified’s perspective, at least. Won’t you blithely transgress decency with me?

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Theory, practice to rematch in Rand Paul candidacy

By Dan Brooks in Reactionary Populism 3 Comments

Okay, not so much Rand Paul as Tommy Carcetti, but when you think about it...

Those of you who question the value of newspaper journalism should check out the New York Times’s torrential coverage of Tuesday’s midterm congressional primaries, which appear to portend a vast wave of anti-incumbent sentiment. The emerging narrative is one of Tea Party-style rage gone mainstream, at least in Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Kentucky—where GOP-chosen and Mitch McConnell-sponsored senatorial candidate Trey Grayson was defeated by Rand Paul. Yes, that Rand Paul. The man who has argued that the Federal Reserve, the Department of Education and pretty much all of the New Deal are unlawful infringements on the Constitution, who said in his victory speech that “capitalism is freedom” and declared himself a card-carrying member of the Tea Party, if only they issued cards, will now have to sell a specific, non yelling-based political platform to a general populace. Candidate Paul, welcome to compromise country, population: the rest of us.

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