Culture Warriors category archive

There is no question that, if Sigmund Freud came back, he would think up a whole batch of new conditions and complexes in an attempt to explain Republicans’ skeevy preoccupation with sex, women, and women and sex.

Addendum:

More family values here.

Tony Norman reflects on teabagger nostalgia. A nugget:

Before the civil rights movement challenged the status quo, America was dominated by white males. Those in power subscribed to laissez-faire economics, a muscular foreign policy that sought to expand markets overseas, a knee-jerk accommodation to corporate power and a toothless Christianity that preached contempt for the poor.

Racial and religious minorities, women and homosexuals were relegated to the margins of society or reduced to second-class status in their homes. Even children were considered just a notch or two above property.

This is the era that commentator Pat Buchanan and his terminally nostalgic colleagues at Fox News think of as “the good ol’ days.”

Read the rest.

Patriotism aside, a South Bay high school worried about campus safety was within its legal rights to order a group of students wearing American-flag adorned shirts to turn them inside out during a 2010 Cinco de Mayo celebration, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The U. S. Flag Code is considered guideline, not law. I assume that is why the story and, I guess, the ruling do not mention that the Flag Code forbids wearing the flag or representations of the the flag as clothing, with the exception of a small patch on athletic uniforms.

Standing at the confluence of ignorance and jingoism, the flag-wearers announced their intent to appeal.

Treating the flag with disrespect is a poor way to parade one’s patrio–oh, never mind.

Witchcraft strips the conscience bare.

In related news news of the crafty, Christine O’Donnell, who assures us that she is not a witch (she certainly failed to bewitch Delaware!) returns because everyone needs some chuckles.

Chris Hayes and his guests discuss how political hate scams get pulled off and how “economic conservatives play social conservatives for suckers.”

A local candidate in Florida does not think her opponent is Godly enough, or worships the correct flavor of God, or something.

To which I say, “Matthew 6:5”.

. . . Arizona seeks help from Dear Abby.

Via Delaware Liberal, which adds commentary you should read.

Also, Josh Marshall has a wonderful post which deserves a read.

Stay classy, Virginia Republicans.

There’s a quotation, likely apocryphal, often attributed to Winston Churchill (though I have not found an authoritative citation) to the effect that

Of course, the United States will have fascism, but it will be called “anti-Fascism.”

Case in point:

I should have realized this, but it took the Professional Left Podcast (subscribe now if you haven’t already; it’s fun and it’s free) to remind me that Arizona’s “Let’s All Hate on the Gays” legislation is nothing more than Sharia law, fundy style.

I seldom agree with the resident curmudgeon at my local rag, as her default position seems to be that “other persons don’t deserve nice things,” but she got this one right.

I commend the musings of PoliticalProf to your attention. He said it better than I can.

It’s an empty person who must mistreat others to feel alive. There is a word for such a person.

“Sadist.”

Once a pervert, now a self-designated “Christian,” but one unknown to Christ.

Excerpt:

The Stand-Your-Ground Defense is like bleach. It does work for whites, but it will ruin your colors.

Below the fold because it autoplays on some systems.

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A. When it takes place in Florida, where, if you are a white guy who kills a black kid, murder is only attempted murder.

“Vile” does not begin to characterize this.

To be clear, the problem is not the jury. The problem is Florida and its laws and the culture they reflect, a culture that exists not only in Florida, but in much of the rest of the country.

It is the culture of the “Lost Cause” (tell me again, exactly what cause was lost?), the culture of “black lives don’t matter,” the culture of white racism and white racists, the culture of Judge Lynch.

My words may be harsh, but no harsher than the reality.

It lives among us still, white racism, the legacy of chattel slavery and its rationalizations, of theft of labor, America’s original and continuing sin.

The Rude One rudely explains how “James Taranto just couldn’t help himself, bless his soul.”

Prepare yourself for rudeness and read it.

(For a bonus, here’s his delicious takedown of Bobo from yesterday.)

The streams of syrup unleashed in media stories about the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan show have been silly and stultifying. I have relentlessly avoided them.

The times were not so syrupy.

Young men were dying for old men’s lies in Viet Nam, as today different youngsters die for different lies from different old men in a different part of the world; the protest movement was starting to bloom. The Civil Rights struggle (which still is going on, by the way) was nearing its height. The great civil rights and anti-war demonstrations were yet to happen. Acid rock was just on the horizon. A culture war was brewing, one that continues still as the forces of reaction continue to, well, react.

I remember boys getting suspended from school for “Beatles haircuts,” which were quite short in retrospect. One of the students in my high school, directed to cut his hair by the principal, had his head shaved; the principal forced him to wear a toboggan cap until it grew back.

Michael Tomasky tries to bring some reality to the orgy of saccharine nostalgia.

Full Disclosure:

I did not pay much attention to the Beatles until later, after seeing a Leonard Bernstein “Young People Concert” in which Bernstein praised the richness and complexity of their music. I was more into Cannonball Adderley and Rimsky-Korsakov. And I was always more of an Airplane freak.

Moved below the fold because it rudely autoplays on some systems.

Aside:

When I wrote this post, I was using Slackware Linux (once you Slack, you never go back–Slackware, the purest Linux, the Distro of Iron). The video does not autoplay on Slackware, but does autoplay on Mageia Linux, which I use on another computer because I like to explore different distros (“distributions”) of Linux operating systems.

I have a Windows computer, but it’s dual boot with Linux and is usually booted into the Linux side of the house, because, frankly, Linux just works better than Windows. Windows users, please use either the email link on the sidebar or the comments to let me if something is autoplaying, so I can deal with it accordingly.

Autoplaying is rude and obnoxious.

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Texas twits.

It’s an all or nothing thing, folks.

Via BartCop.