A blog by Dan Brooks
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezk0e1VL80o&feature=player_embedded
Remember when you could say the word “freedom” without smirking ironically? Originally (1295—2001,) “freedom” had a relatively strict denotative meaning that corresponded to the range of things you were allowed to do. Then a bunch of church people in bathrobes who had never seen a girl’s twanger flew planes into the World Trade Center, and “freedom” became a marketing strategy.
The human equivalent of an American flag pin made of colored rhinestones
According to Jonathan Chait at the New Republic, Sarah Palin will run for President in 2012. It’s a surprise announcement roughly as surprising as the announcement that the cat will lick itself around noon—sure, there are a lot of reasons why she wouldn’t, but that is also the kind of thing she is prone to do. As Chait points out, Democrats might regard a Palin nomination as a free ticket back into the White House. “But here’s the thing,” he writes, “no one is ‘unelectable.'” Thus begins the rush to assert that Sarah Palin would be a qualified, serious candidate in 2012—a rush by which political commentators, in their natural desire to take up a contrarian position, all wind up saying the same thing. In preparation for an election that may well be determined by how many Americans take up our civic duty to call stupid statements stupid, I’m inaugurating a brand-new feature called Unintentionally Hilarious.
Everybody loves her: the white, the old, the old and white, the asked to stand there...
Partly because it’s the most vital movement in contemporary politics and partly because they’re hilarious, we’ve spent over a year now trying to figure out what the Tea Party means. While several of the philosophical questions—and even some of the ontological ones—remain unanswered, Tuesday made one practical outcome clear. Christine O’Donnell has defeated heavily-favored Delaware legislator Michael Castle in the Republican senate primary, thanks to the enthusiastic backing of the Tea Party. Where Castle polled favorably against likely Democratic opponents in the general, O’Donnell does not. It might be because she’s crazy. “A lot of people said we can’t win the general election; yes we can!” she told the Times. “It will be hard work, but we can win if those same people who fought against me work just as hard for me.” Two things: 1) Agreed that Christine O’Donnell will win the election if the people who don’t like her start liking her and 2) now she owes Barack Obama a nickel.
If you haven’t heard of Judson Phillips, it’s probably because you haven’t yet signed up for Tea Party Nation, the national-level organizer of Tea Party organizations that sends you a ton of emails, many of which are titled “Draft” or, once, “Do Not Send.” Judson Phillips may be an idiot. As the organizer of the first national Tea Party Unity Convention, he may also be one of the few identifiable leaders in the still-amorphous movement. The Tea Party Nation website is either the canary in the mine or one arbitrarily drawn constellation in the exploded galaxy that is the Tea Party, depending on whose side you took in the series of schisms that immediately followed its formation. I prefer the first interpretation, since A) the alternative is to have no concrete information about the Tea Party at all and B) Phillips is hilarious. Case in point: his recent screed/policy proposal regarding illegal immigration, which is the subject of today’s Close Reading. Text after the jump.
Charles Koch, photographed here with the things he does not own
Here are just two of the many fun quotes in Jane Meyer’s New Yorker article about David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who founded Americans For Prosperity, support a network of conservative think tanks dedicated to libertarian causes, and have been instrumental in creating and sustaining the Tea Party movement:
They’re smart. This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.
The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.
The first is from a previous advisor to the Kochs and one of the many sources in Meyer’s story that go unnamed. The second is from Bruce Bartlett, formerly of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a think tank the Kochs funded. If you lack the time or patience to read Meyer’s mind-blowing but also 10,000-word story on these men—whose combined income is exceeded in America only by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet—you should know two things. One, the Fifth Avenue apartment mentioned in the opening section now belongs to one of my former clients, and I used to tutor there twice a week. Two, you can get the gist of Meyer’s article by reading Frank Rich’s column from Sunday.