Culture Warriors category archive

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Reg Henry reflects:

And how do I know? Hey, I was a kid too, and it was back in the days of the pharaohs when the old-school way of doing things was universal. They didn’t have a paddle at the schools I attended — they had a rattan cane, a terrible weapon of mass instruction. It hurt like hell.

And so did I become a paragon of learning and a pillar of decency? Er, not quite. I think I would have done better with a self-esteem program. Having watched corporal punishment applied brutally and arbitrarily, I became outraged by unfairness and skeptical of sternly imposed authority.

In short, I started down the road to becoming a liberal. Now you mockers of self-esteem wouldn’t want that to happen to any kid, would you? Old-school thinking deserved an F in some areas and that’s why the education world changed.

Students’ hair continues to make grown-ups stupid.

A father in Oklahoma said this week that he was forced to pull his daughter out of classes after the charter school she was attending sent her home for having the wrong hairstyle.

She’s a seven-year-old African American child who had dreadlocks .

The school’s policy states

“hairstyles such as dreadlocks, afros, mohawks, and other faddish styles are unacceptable.”

Of the ones listed, the only one that I could consider “faddish” is the mohawk, since it seems to reappear for a short while every other generation.

Oddly enough, the last time I saw a mohawk, it was worn by the virtuoso guest pianist at a concert by the Virginia Beach Symphony.

I am skeptical that this policy is “colorblind.”

I am certain that it is stupid.

Back in the olden days, when I was a young ‘un and the Beatles came on the scene, schools invested lots of energy in mandating that boys not grow their hair.

It was considered a sign of the Apocalyse for boys to have hair even a couple of inches longer than a short back and sides, let alone as long as an American icon such as Buffalo Bill.

Indeed, one of my fellow students, a star pitcher on the baseball team a year or so ahead of me, was ordered to cut his hair because it was too long; mind you, these days, he wouldn’t be noticed. In a brilliant seizure of malicious compliance, he shaved his head. As this was long before the “bald look” was the Next Big Thing, the principal* ordered him to wear a toboggan cap until his hair grew out, so a toboggan cap it was for the rest of the school year.

By the time a few more years had passed, the high school hair wars were recognized to have been a phenomenally stupid waste of energy over stupid stuff.

It is comforting sign of continuity to know that school administrations have not lost their ability to waste energy over stupid stuff.

__________________

*The principal was a fairly reasonable guy. His family was friends with my family and we used occasionally to visit them in their house, where my brother and I would play with their daughters.

He attended my mother’s funeral as the last surviving member of their bridge club.

Back then, long hair on boys made lots of grown-ups stupid.

So obvious it takes a genius to think of it:

Life hack: if someone makes a racist/sexist joke, say, with total seriousness, “I don’t get it, can you explain it?”

Via Contradict Me.

Because it worked so well the last time.

Grand County commissioners will discuss joining 11 other Colorado counties in forming a 51st state.

Russian pol thinks girls are icky.

He needs him some Zappa.

In divining bigotry, actions, or, in this case, words, speak louder than words.

Or something (emphasis added):

A federal judge Monday granted a new trial to the owners of three Mexican restaurants after it was discovered a juror discussed the case and made ethnic slurs against the defendants during the trial in March.

(snip)

“The defendants are entitled to have twelve — not eleven, but twelve — jurors make [a] decision impartially based upon all the evidence and based upon deliberations among them,” U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby wrote in his 23-page decision. “I conclude that these defendants were denied that right, no matter how much this juror believes that he has no discriminatory feelings toward Mexicans.”

A Texas megachurch whose leaders have linked vaccines to autism is now asking its members to get immunizations or stay quarantined after an outbreak of measles was traced to the congregation.

Instead of her normal sermon on Sunday, Eagle Mountain International Church Pastor Terri Copeland Pearsons was forced to spend the majority of her time explaining how the congregation should react to the news that all of the 11 measles cases in Tarrant County had been linked to members or visitors of the church.

If God didn’t believe in medicine, He wouldn’t have given us doctors.

Video at the link.

White pekoe-woods with a delicate hint of Bircher bark, that’s what.

Chauncey Devega explains the brew.

A heritage group’s plan to fly a large Confederate flag along Interstate 95 outside Richmond is drawing criticism from the head of the NAACP’s Virginia chapter.

The Virginia Flaggers plans to fly the 10-by-15-foot flag on a 50-foot pole just south of Richmond. It’s tentatively scheduled to go up Sept. 28 and will be visible from the northbound lanes of the interstate, although organizers haven’t said exactly where it will be located.

The group claims that this a benign reminder of an honorable lost cause. From farther down the page:

“Basically, the flag is being erected as a memorial to the memory and the honor of the Confederate soldiers who sacrificed, bled and died to defend Virginia from invasion,” Hathaway said.

One more time: When someone starts running on about the “Lost Cause,” ask him or her,

“Just what, exactly, was the cause that was lost.”

Dick Polman cuts through the phony PR of Republican pearl-clutching over Anthony Weiner and San Diego Mayor “All Hand on Deck” Filner:

No matter how many times Weiner tweets his crotch, here’s what a war on women really looks like:

In North Carolina, on the eve of the July 4 break, Republican state senators brought up the new abortion restrictions without any public notice in the dead of night. (At the time, the restrictions were attached to a bill banning the invocation of Sharia law in family courts – Sharia law being such an epidemic in North Carolina.) Women with an abding interest in making choices for their own lives rushed to the chamber, hoping to give testimony. But the Republican lieutenant governor, presiding over the chamber, told them: “The senators are your voice here on all matters. They are the only ones we’ll be hearing from today.”

In the Roanoke Times, Lila Sullivan remembers growing up white under Jim Crow in South Carolina. (My mother was from South Carolina. Apparently, in Ms. Sullivan’s part of the state, my grandmother would have been known as a “Cotton Dolly.”)

A nugget:

South Carolina in the ’50s was a mean place. My family on both sides had deep roots there. My great grandfather fought in the Civil War, or as my grandmother always said, “The War Between the States.” She was a proud member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, and I got to dress up in costume and serve cookies at their meetings. Wade Hampton was considered a saint by my grandmother. (Hampton was a Civil War hero and leader of the Red Shirts, a vigilante group known for violence.) Both my parents were highly educated and very prejudiced.

Aside:

My father’s mother was UDC and DAR and quit them both long before I came along because, according to my father, she thought the other ladies were too damned snobbish about too much nothing.

Via Contradict Me.

Republican legislator argues that public education fosters dependency–on the part of the parents:

On Tuesday, Deseret News flagged a Friday article posted to state Sen. Aaron Osmond’s blog where he says that Utah “should take a close look at repealing compulsory education.”

Osmond argues that requiring children to attend school has caused some parents to “completely disengage themselves from their obligation to oversee and ensure the successful education of their children.”

More at the link.

I’ve known “disengaged” parents. They would have been disengaged in any event.

Nevertheless, it’s a novel twist on the right-wing effort to destroy public schools.

Republicans and the charter schools scammers are not going to rest until ignorance reigns, because ignorance is their friend.

Misogynistic twits.

Men are pigs.

Also, too.

By Katie Heim. Follow the link for the backstory:

If my vagina was a gun, you would stand for its rights,
You would ride on buses and fight all the fights.
If my vagina was a gun, you would treat it with care,
You wouldn’t spill all its secrets because, well, why go there.
If my vagina was a gun, you’d say what it holds is private
From cold dead hands we could pry, you surely would riot.
If my vagina was a gun, its rights would all be protected,
no matter the body count or the children affected.
If my vagina was a gun, I could bypass security,
concealed carry laws would ensure I’d have impunity.
If my vagina was a gun, I wouldn’t have to beg you,
I could hunt this great land and do all the things men do.
But my vagina is not a gun, it is a mightier thing,
With a voice that rings true making lawmakers’ ears ring.
Vaginas are not delicate, they are muscular and magic,
So stop messing with mine, with legislation that’s tragic.
My vagina’s here to demand from the source,
Listen to the voices of thousands or feel their full force.

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