Culture Warriors category archive

Dick Polman says, “Say it, dammit.”

The press and the Pennsylvania cops have crafted all kinds of labels for Eric Matthew Frein. He’s a “cop-hating gunman,” a “trooper slay suspect,” a “cop ambush suspect,” an “accused cop shooter,” a “suspected cop killer,” a “highly skilled marksman,” a “self-declared survivalist.”

And yet – quite inexplicably – nobody has called him a suspected terrorist. Which, at this writing, is the most accurate description of all.

But why hasn’t anyone labeled him that way?

Follow the link for his answer.

What is it about being a high school principal that breeds the stupid?

When I was a student, my high school principal fought a stupid war against boys’ having “Beatles haircuts” (I’ve told the story elsewhere in these electrons). Now comes a principal who fights a stupid war to protect an ethnic slur because, I guess, ethnic slurs are a tradition.

Afterthought:

The phrase “egomaniacal authoritarian martinets” does come to mind.

Recently, a kerfuffle broke out about men “cat-calling” women, with persons clearly incapable of thought defending the behavior.

Here’s some thought: Gina Barreca discusses the all-too-routine public harassment of girls and women for being. This nugget sums it up:

. . . I discovered around age twelve that one way to dissuade men from leering at me or making sucking-teeth-clicking noises as I passed them on the street was to stick a finger in my ear and start digging. You have to look really determined; you have to appear on a mission.

It can’t look like you’re twirling a strand of your hair or something like that, because that might be seen as cute and then you couldn’t expect anybody’s sympathy even if you were abducted and forced to live on a farm with Todd Akin.

Thoreau tries to understand the reason for the fascination with STEM (I think that means science, technology, engineering, and math). He poses several possibilities. Here’s just one:

3) More specifically, STEM involves making valuable stuff, whereas humanities and social science just inform how we think, and the people throwing money at this just want people to help them make stuff that they can sell. They don’t care about controlling how people think. (There’s a reassuring aspect to this, I guess. But there’s also a glass-half-empty aspect.)

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Things that haven’t changed since I was a young ‘un:

The hemline war

A 15-year-old teenager who moved from Seattle to Clay County, Florida was forced to wear an ill-fitting, brightly colored “shame suit” to classes after she unknowingly violated the school’s skirt-length policy on her first day.

The Washington Post reported that Miranda Larkin’s family moved to Florida just eight days before the first day of school. Larkin dressed for classes without realizing that her black skirt was an inch too short for Oakleaf High School’s dress code.

and the hair-length battle.

The ACLU of Louisiana has come to the defense of a Rastafarian boy who has been suspended from school and forbidden to return until he cuts his dreadlocks.

The boy was sent home from South Plaquemines High School when classes resumed Aug. 8 because his dreadlocks extended beyond the collar of his shirt, in apparent violation of the school dress code.

After he returned to school the following week with his hair pinned up, school officials told the student his dreadlocks remained in violation.

Rastafarians believe Leviticus 21:5 forbids them to cut their hair, and dreadlocks are central to their religious beliefs.

Because conformity is a family value. Freedom of religion and especially freedom of expression are not.

Ducks of a feather.

You can’t make this stuff up. What’s truly sad is that you don’t even have to try to make it up.

The gyrations of Southerners who wish to deny the reality of Southern history constantly bemuse and amuse.

Houdini would be confounded by the contortions of those who seek to justify a society based on kidnapping, captivity, torture, rape, and theft of labor.

I did not realize this. Did you? (Emphasis added.)

On any given day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement keeps at least 34,000 immigrants locked up while they wait for their cases to be heard in immigration court. Many of these detainees are incarcerated not because they are dangerous or likely to skip their court dates, but because ICE must meet an arbitrary quota set by Congress. This quota, which is often referred to as the “detention-bed mandate,” is a disgrace and should be eliminated.

(snip)

The quota is unprecedented. No other federal or state agency is required by law to detain a specific number of people without any regard to whether the quota makes sense from a law-enforcement perspective. Indeed, the quota is so excessive that it has been criticized by the very immigration authorities charged with enforcing it.

This is what cruelty looks like when it’s made routine by force of law.

Read the rest.

Rekha Basu, because she writes for the Des Moines Register, pretty much had to attend the recent right-wing religious fest in Iowa.

She takes exception to its premises. A nugget:

But America is not a theocracy, so it’s alarming to see politicians, by attending and playing to the sponsors, play into the notion that worshiping Jesus should be a prerequisite for federal or state office. America also cannot base its Mideast policy on some biblical interpretation about Israel. Whatever our religious affiliation or lack of it, I’d guess most voters have better explanations for Sept. 11 or the Sandy Hook shootings than God’s revenge – and would like to practical, reason-based solutions from those seeking office.

Via Job’s Anger.

In July, two customers received a discount for praying before their meal at Mary’s Gourmet Diner in Winston-Salem, N.C., and they posted a picture of their receipt on Facebook, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

It would appear that Matthew 6:5 was not one of their memory verses in Sunday School.

After the bout of Facebook Frolics, the discount has been discontinued.

One wonders whether their next marketing stunt will be a discount for beating plowshares into swords.