Culture Warriors category archive

State rape loses a round in court.

If she’s in a nightie, he’s not responsible for what he does.

After taking a drubbing in last year’s state elections, Virginia Republicans are debating whether their party has come to be defined by its extremists. But in a congressional district in Northern Virginia, one of the state’s main instigators of culture warfare, state Sen. Richard H. “Dick” Black, is running in the Republican primary to replace longtime GOP moderate Rep. Frank Wolf. And he’s guaranteed to ignite wedge-issue passion. Exhibit A: As a state legislator, Black opposed making spousal rape a crime, citing the impossibility of convicting a husband accused of raping his wife “when they’re living together, sleeping in the same bed, she’s in a nightie, and so forth.”

No self-awareness, no self-awareness whatsoever.

More Neanderthalism (with apologies to actual Neanderthals) at the link.

Aside:

I was living in Northern Virginia when Frank Wolf started to get national attention. He was not a “GOP moderate” then.

He hasn’t changed. His party has.

Colbert skewers David Brooks and Ruth Marcus for their self-righteous hypocrisy on marijuana. Listen carefully as he quotes their words, which embody the hypocrisy of privilege.

Privilege means never having to admit or even to realize that you are privileged.

Via Joe.My.God.

I have never been to a strip club.

Or to a “gentlemen’s club,” which, as near as I can tell, is a strip club with higher-priced drinks and better-dressed bouncers.

(There was the one bachelor’s party many years ago that almost got out of hand, but I was very young and just a spectator . . . .)

But I do think that this a good decision.

If you are going to exploit the girls, at least pay them fairly.

It is noteworthy how many persons define “freedom” as the right to restrict the behavior of others.

In the Bangor Daily News, Amy Fried tees off on the war mongers:

I’ll cut to the chase. There is no “war on Christmas.” It’s a phony, ginned up annual attempt for a small set of Americans to express their cultural grievances.

But you, dear readers, deserve more than that.

So I’ll offer some personal reflections and a bit of history.

As someone who celebrates Jewish Christmas — a movie and Chinese food — it seems beyond absurd to think Christmas is anything put pervasive.

Between the constant Christmas songs and crowded stores and many beautifully decorated trees and strangers who used to ask my kids what they thought Santa would bring them and others who tell me “Merry Christmas” (and, no, I’m not offended, although, even though I know they were meant with the greatest warmth and sincerity, the comments to my non-Christmas celebrating kids were kind of a bit much), Christmas is everywhere.

It’s a wonderful column. Please do read the rest.

The privileged are, for the most part, unconscious of their privilege, until something shakes them awake.

Ten years ago, when I started my career as an assistant district attorney in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, I viewed the American criminal justice system as a vital institution that protected society from dangerous people. I once prosecuted a man for brutally attacking his wife with a flashlight, and another for sexually assaulting a waitress at a nightclub. I believed in the system for good reason.

But in between the important cases, I found myself spending most of my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids did with impunity growing up in the suburbs. As our office handed down arrest records and probation terms for riding dirt bikes in the street, cutting through a neighbor’s yard, hosting loud parties, fighting, or smoking weed – shenanigans that had rarely earned my own classmates anything more than raised eyebrows and scoldings – I often wondered if there was a side of the justice system that we never saw in the suburbs. Last year, I got myself arrested in New York City and found out.

Find out how the criminal “justice” system retaliated.

H/T to Thoreau.

When you build a television show on glorifying rednecks, don’t be surprised when the rednecks act like, well, rednecks.

Today’s QOTD comes alive.

Celebrate the Prince of Peace. Come upside someone’s head.

Kristina Vindiola says a woman hit her outside the Wal-Mart on 91st Avenue and Thomas Road after she said “Happy Holidays.”

“The lady looked at me,” said Vindiola. “I thought she was going to put money in the kettle. She came up to me and said, ‘Do you believe in God?’ And she says, ‘You’re supposed to say Merry Christmas,’ and that’s when she hit me.”

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

At Contradict Me.

Men are pigs.

Nothing promotes the holiday spirit more than a little Fox News style bigotry.

Apparently, it’s still a thing in North Carolina.

The bit at the 3:27 mark sums it up.

Via Raw Story.

Have we reached peak stupid?

The Booman wants to know.

In the Navy, if your victim is unconscious, you have a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

The former director of surgery at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center, who was brought up on charges that he had sex with an intern while she was too intoxicated to give consent, will not face a court-martial.

Senior officers at the hospital have accepted a recommendation by an investigating officer not to pursue a trial for Cmdr. Steven Cobery because his accuser could not remember the events in question, a hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Words fail me.

Via BartCop.

Having been married twice, I have my own ideas, but, really, now, you can’t make this stuff up.

It would seem that little boys are okay, but big boys are not.

Full Disclosure:

I attended Catholic Churches for the 19 years during which I was married to a second-generation Italian Catholic. All the priests I knew were good men who did their jobs honorably.

They knew that we had both been divorced and that I was not Catholic, and they never denied either of us communion. They placed Christian love above doctrine. They understood the Gospel of Love.

They honored their God and I treasure my memories of them.

Their work has been dishonored by their management.