Close Reading: What Tiger Woods’s daughter looks like today is insane!

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 5 Comments

A screenshot of a promoted Twitter ad

I did not click on the Twitter ad pictured above, out of fear for my soul. There’s something about the come-on “Tiger Woods’ daughter was adorable as a child, but what she looks like today is insane” that leaves me cold. Probably, it’s the part where I get ready to see how insane someone looks. That’s just the kind of thing I want to see, and also just the kind of thing I want to stop wanting to see. All it took to push me over the edge into decent behavior, in this case, was a chubby-cheked little girl. I submit that our visceral revulsion to clicking on the link in this advertisement tells us something about our values. It gives us a glimpse of our urges and the flickering scruples that hold them back, and it’s the subject of today’s Close Reading.

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Trump threatens to tell us what he really thinks

By Dan Brooks in 2016 Election 0 Comment

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Donald Trump seems poised to give us the general-election campaign we wanted all along, in which he goes bananas and tears apart the Republican Party before—this part is really important—losing. Yesterday, Paul Ryan told Republicans on a conference call that he would no longer campaign for Trump and direct his energy toward protecting their majority in Congress instead. Although he did not withdraw his endorsement, the announcement was widely understood to capitulate the presidency, and narrowly understood to betray the nominee. Trump himself took the narrow view. This morning, he used Twitter to issue an ominous…promise? Threat? Status update? You can decide what this is:

It is nice. I assume he means he can finally focus on detailed policy proposals and rebuilding the dignity of the working class. But maybe he’ll just bash Muslims.

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On Twitter with Steve King and emboldened Nazis

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 2 Comments
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) with far-right Eurotrash Frauke Petry and Geert Wilders

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) with far-right European leaders Frauke Petry and Geert Wilders

This morning finds friend of the blog and all-around badass Gina Patnaik putting it down on Rep. Steve King (R-IA) in the Des Moines Register. Gina is from Denison, in his district, and she is disappointed by King’s decreasingly coded racism:

So when you say that the changing racial demographic of our country is “cultural suicide,” I know what you mean. You mean me.

It’s a great letter, and I urge you to read it. I happened to interact with Rep. King regarding this cultural suicide business last week, when I called him an embarrassment to my home state on Twitter and he retweeted me, for some reason. Behold:

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I wondered why he would do that. Did he not understand that it was criticism? Does he automatically retweet anyone who mentions him? Did he see the white sheet in my avatar and assume we were cool? These questions baffled me for about two minutes. Then came the Twitter Nazis.

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Friday links! Affected nonchalance edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments
nonchalant

Just one of many faces made by a man who won’t be president, so whatever

Welp, Hillary Clinton wrecked Donald Trump in Monday’s debate. You can tell he lost by the mania with which he insists he won. Now that the queen has slain the frog prince, as we always knew she would, we can go back to treating Trump’s candidacy like the joke it is. Remember last week, when FiveThirtyEight had them in a dead heat? That was before Hillary got that sweet, sweet three-point post-debate bounce. Now that people have seen Trump is belligerent and nonspecific, he can’t win. And isn’t he orange? I find this to be the drollest election of our lifetimes, and certainly not a clear rupture between the American experiment and its decline. Today is Friday, and Republicans sure will be embarrassed when we look back on it. Won’t you count these eggs as chickens with me?

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New Ghostbusters provokes widespread psychological reactance, narrowly focused laughter

By Dan Brooks in Ethical Dilemmas 1 Comment
What if the ghost librarian looked cooler and slimed her right away? That would be funny.

A scene from the new Ghostbusters, which wisely makes everything look more badass.

“[Psychological reactance is] the feeling you get when people try to stop you from doing something you’ve been doing, and you perceive that they have no right or justification for stopping you. So you redouble your efforts and do it even more, just to show that you don’t accept their domination. Men, in particular, are concerned to show that they do not accept domination.”

Prof. Johnathan Haidt, describing the phenomenon of psychological reactance to Thomas Edsall in the Times. Props to Ben al-Fowlkes for the link.

I have not seen the new Ghostbusters movie, so I cannot say if it is good or important. Judging by the trailer, the decision to cast women is the most interesting thing about it. I am not as interested in the promise of worse jokes but better effects, or in the decision to remake a hit from 30 years ago whose charms are not just fondly remembered but hard to explain. The first Ghostbusters should not have been good. I’m not sure lightning is going to strike that premise twice. Yet rather than not seeing the new Ghostbusters because it doesn’t look funny, large numbers of men are not seeing it because it’s “all women.” On Twitter, they are not seeing it so aggressively they sent threats and racist memes to Leslie Jones, who plays the black Ghostbuster who isn’t a scientist like the other three. After Twitter banned Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos for inciting the abuse, the hashtag #FreeMilo cast him as a victim of censorship. Clinical discussion of what makes people so awful after the jump.

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