Culture Warriors category archive
Tales of the Tarheel Potty Police 0
North Carolina legislators just can’t stop peeking under the stall.
Afterthought:
Doesn’t anyone else recognize how pervy is their preoccupation with pee?
Golden showers must fill their dreams,
as smiles await them with their streams . . . .
The “Friend Zone” 0
In The Guardian, Jessica Valenti tries to make sense of men who are afraid to be alone with women just because they are women.
(snip)
And that’s the rub. To some conservatives, still, relationships are not about joy or friendship, mutual admiration or common interests – they’re about creating new citizens. “Get pregnant a bunch of times and give birth to a bunch of beautiful little future taxpayers,” (Federalist writer and Lutheran pastor Hans Fiene–ed.) Fiene instructs women.
That’s why I can’t feel too badly for men like this, who are missing out on rich friendships and connections with women. Because the reason they refuse to see us as friends is that they don’t really see us as people – just potential wives or objects or desire, virgins or whores.
This does not negate that there are some men who should not be alone in a room with women.
And God Said, “Suffer, Baby” 0
If you are going to be a Biblical literalist, you can’t pick and choose. Literalism is an all or nothing proposition. Farron Cousins explains.
Tales of the Tarheel Potty Police 0
Alfred Doblin skewers the ballyhooed “compromise” over North Carolina’s infamous peer-into-the-potty law. A snippet:
Think about it. A law approved by a Republican legislature and signed by a Democratic governor that prevents municipalities from ensuring that no resident of their respective communities is the subject of discrimination. And this was the fix to a bad law.
The Republican Party, embracing mean for the sake of mean ever since Richard Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy.
Tales of the Tarheel Potty Police 0
Remember, the “compromise’ has a footnote. It puts “a moratorium on local ordinances regulating public accommodations or private employment practices until Dec. 1, 2020.” In other words, it strips localities from enacting their own anti-discrimination laws, because–oh, hell, I’ll be blunt–discrimination is a Republican Family Value.
Rights for Me but Not for You 0
In The Roanoke Times, Virginia Tech history professor Peter Wallenstein explains how Southern states favor of “states’ rights” except when they are not.
Trumpling Freedom of Religion 0
(Link fixed.)
In The Seattle Times, Rabbi Daniel Weiner reflects on the recent anti-Semitic vandalism of his synagogue, in which the words, “Holocau$t is face hi$tory,” were spray-painted on its wall. He responds to persons who believed that he unfairly blamed Donald Trump for the deed. Here’s an excerpt (emphasis added):
There has been much documented about the intersections between Trump associates and the “alt-right” — a cleansing euphemism for white supremacy. Trump’s actual regard for vulnerable populations, Jews among them, is inconsequential to his intoning of the classic “dog-whistles” of anti-minority tropes. If he is truly aware of the implications of his words, it is troubling. If he plumbs the abyss out of mere political expediency, it is equally dangerous, displaying a reckless disregard for truth and propriety unworthy of the office he currently holds.
When you blow a dog-whistle, don’t be surprised when the dogs respond.
American Taliban 0
At the Boston Review, Richard White turns the light of history on the spurious claim that “America was founded as a Christian nation” in considering two recent books on the topic. He points out that those who make such a claim almost always do so in pursuit of a particular political and economic agenda, rather than in pursuit of salvation.
Here’s a bit of his discussion of Steven Green’s Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding:
The various forms are important; the original myth is not the same as the one currently in fashion. Both see God’s guiding hand behind the nation’s history and regard Christianity as the basis of republican principles. The old myth, however, was optimistic and tried to be inclusive, which was possible in what was still an overwhelmingly Protestant country. It was oriented toward the future and intent on explaining a providential American destiny. The new myth, by contrast, is sectarian and divisive in a country full of Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc., not to mention agnostics, atheists, and the sometimes-inchoate mass who define themselves as spiritual. Rather than look to tomorrow, today’s myth appeals to those who think they have lost an ideal past.
Do read please read the rest. It will help you better understand our home-grown Pharisees.
Turkish Taffy Pull 0
The Local delves into the history of the current strained relations between Germany and Turkey. It seems a bit superficial and anecdotal, but, if you you want to understand some of the headlines coming out of Europe these days, it may be a good place to start.
A Ruse by Any Other Name . . . . 0
There’s nothing new about new about rebranding–“old wine in new bottles” is a cliche, but cliches become cliches because they express a truth succinctly. “Alt-Right” for “white supremacist” is a rebranding effort. The rebranders hope that you will forget that behind the shiny new label is the hate bottled from the same cesspool they’ve been swimming in for centuries.
At Above the Law, Elie Mystal excoriates another contemporary attempt to rebrand bigotry, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/us/politics/trump-travel-ban.html. A snippet:
This might come as a shock to the Witch King of bankruptcy, but “Rebranding” doesn’t work either. Not in front of a judge. You can stick a funnel on a horse and call it a unicorn, Mr. Trump, but you can’t make it s**t rainbows. You’re dealing with educated people now, not just fleecing yokels anymore.
Poor Baby 0
For all their bleating about “personal responsibility,” Republicans always seem surprised to find out that their own actions have consequences.
Shunned 0
The Girl Guides (that’s “Girl Scouts” in USAn) of Canada have had enough of Trump and Republican “mean for the sake of mean.”
The ban does not mention the latest Executive Order by President Trump barring travel to “the States” by citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries, and imposing a 120-day moratorium on accepting Syrian refugees.
“While the United States is a frequent destination for Guiding trips, the ability of all our members to equally enter this country is currently uncertain,” GGC executives Sharron Callahan and Holly Thompson said in an advisory Monday afternoon.
More at the link.
How Stuff Works, BusyBully Dept. 0
Antony Davis and James R. Harrigan explain busybullies, those persons who always know what’s best for you because they just know and sit down and shut up, okay?
A snippet.
First they will say that the thing they don’t want you doing is dangerous to you. When you tell them it isn’t or that you don’t care, they will tell you it is dangerous to others. When you demonstrate that it isn’t dangerous to others, they will tell you that it’s bad for “society.” They will offer exactly no evidence for any of their claims because, in their eyes, moral superiority is its own evidence. But your evidence they will subject to the highest scrutiny before dismissing it out of hand.