Culture Warriors category archive

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.

Writing in the Bangor Daily News, Robert W. Glover, assistant professor of honors and political science at the University of Maine, tries to understand the hostility to the child refugees fleeing to this country. A nugget (emphasis added):

This pitched public debate reveals much about how humans collectively respond to those who are different. Research on immigration attitudes suggests that opposition to increased migration often stems from perceptions of economic threat or notions that newly arriving immigrants, particularly those from different racial groups, threaten community security or our “way of life.”

For instance, in recent immigration attitudes research we conducted at the University of Maine, we found individuals consistently employed notions of threat consistent with racial stereotypes, even when these failed to correspond to the facts of a narrative they had just read. This shows how powerful notions of threat hinder our abilities to grasp nuance — or even make us misinterpret reality itself.

Honest to Pete, you can’t make this stuff up.

Via Job’s Anger.

Dick Polman:

Nearly 18 months ago, the Republican National Committee released a detailed autopsy report on the ’12 debacle. It warned: “If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn’t want them in the United States, they won’t pay attention to our next sentence. It doesn’t matter what we say about education, jobs, or the economy; of Hispanics think that we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In essence, Hispanic voters tell us our party’s position on immigration has become a litmus test, measuring whether we are meeting them with a welcome mat or a closed door.”

So what does the GOP do, in the one chamber of government it controls? It OKs a crackdown measure drafted in part by the likes of Michele Bachmann (she’s ecstatic about the House action, which tells you all you need know). In short, the GOP has opted to become known as the deportation party.

The Marquis de Sade, were he alive today, would be a Republican.

The University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors has decided that dissent is a bad thing.

I strongly doubt that Thomas Jefferson, who had as many faults as he had virtues, would approve.

Full Disclosure:

I did a year of graduate work in history at UVa. It almost destroyed my love of history (but it didn’t–if you don’t know where you came from, you cannot know where you are going), but it did me the inestimable service of convincing me that I did not want to become a professional academician.

Those folks will stab you in the back over a semicolon.

What Noz said.

The Stupid. It burns.

Facebook apparently is too liberal, so some wingnuts are starting their own site, where they can wallow unmolested in hate.

The Rude One’s comments on this are a delight.

Via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

What happens when crackpot state legistors arrogate the role of doctor?

Debra L. Ness and Charles Cutler answer that question in the Inky. A nugget:

Pennsylvania and many other states have considered or enacted laws that mandate bad medicine, undermining the relationships between patients and health-care providers. These laws concern a range of issues, including women’s health, gun safety, environmental hazards, and more.

One of these laws forbids doctors from telling patients which by-products of natural-gas extraction may be making them or their children sick. Others prohibit physicians from discussing whether a gun in a patient’s home might be within reach of a small child. Still others require doctors to subject women seeking abortions to unnecessary medical tests or inaccurate information.

This Republican quackery needs to end.

Via Job’s Anger.