Culture Warriors category archive

Warning: Language.

Via Delaware Liberal.

I got a dollar says we’ll be hearing more about this:

A historical marker in New Bern will honor the 1st N.C. Colored Volunteers, a unit of former slaves noted for their bravery while fighting for the Union during the Civil War.

The highway marker is scheduled to be unveiled today (that was Friday–ed.) on the grounds of the historic New Bern Academy, where the unit had a farewell ceremony in July 1863, said Mike Hill of the N.C. Office of Archives and History. Less than a year later, the unit was renamed the 35th U.S. Colored Troops, according to a news release from the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, which oversees the highway marker program with the state Transportation Department.

Just sayin’.

Early Christmas shopping? Paul Collins explains that the backstory is not what you might think. A nugget:

Early shopping might have faded into history like other Gilded Age excesses were it not for the arrival of an utterly counterintuitive player into our story: progressive titan Florence Kelley. Better known today as a co-founder of the NAACP — and for teaming up with Upton Sinclair and Jack London to start the Intercollegiate Socialist Society — Kelley also has a special place under the historian’s Christmas tree. Her widely distributed 1903 essay, “The Travesty of Christmas,” was not, as you might expect from a socialist suffragette, an attack on early shopping — it was in support of it.

The December rush on stores, Kelley explained, brought “a bitter inversion of the order of holiday cheer” for overwhelmed clerks and delivery boys. Early shopping was part of Kelley’s crusades for child labor laws and an eight-hour workday, because the last few weeks before Christmas were exactly when overtime and seasonal child labor were most abused.

There’s that 27% number again.

Yes, indeedy-do, that’s about the size of it.

Afterthought:

Some years ago, I had a short email exchange with a student from France. Somehow the conversation turned to fashion for a while, so I sent her a link to a chart similar to this one comparing European and American sizes for women’s clothes.

She could not make sense of the American sizes, because the system is, frankly, stupid.

A couple years ago, while campaigning for a city council candidate, I found myself at the Virginia Beach Convention Center at some sort of expo.

There was a booth there about breast cancer. I got chatting with the lady at the booth, who was about my age. In the course of the conversation, I remarked, “When you and I were growing up, you couldn’t say ‘breast’ in a conversation,” and she agreed.

It seems that you still can’t.

In Easton, Pennsylvania, at least, breasts can’t be mentioned.

We live in a society that denies reality.

Then, again, let’s not and say we did.

Several churches in the Charlotte area – including one of the largest, Calvary Church – are moving to cut ties with Boy Scout troops they sponsor after a decision earlier this year by Boy Scouts of America to admit openly gay Scouts.

Someone at Fox News decided to complain that the “Walking Dead“* is a sign of American decay, much like the Police Gazette, dime novels, silent films, Esquire Magazine, the wireless, comic books, and many other predecessors.

Tony Norman isn’t having any of it.

“Is watching ‘The Walking Dead’ seriously hurting American society?” Dr. Manny Alvarez asked in the lead sentence. “I would argue ‘Yes.’ Hate me all you want, or call me paranoid and misinformed, but there is one common theme that is pervasive in American pop culture today: violence. Even more specifically, zombie violence. The idea of a zombie-infested world inspires fantasies of monsters possessed by an uncontrollable rage to kill, and viewers get a thrill imagining what it would be like to participate in this new world order.”

Zombies possessed of an uncontrollable rage sounds a lot like Fox News regular Sen. Ted Cruz and his gang of nihilists who shut down the government with no winnable strategy.

Do read the rest.

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*It could not possibly be as stultifying as The Beverly Hillbillies.

Last night, we watched Wheel of Fortune, as both of us like word puzzles (my friend is an editor by trade and I’m a punster by avocation); I also like to marvel at Vanna White’s state of preservation, as in amber.

One of the contestants, during the intros at the beginning, allowed as to how he was married to his wonderful husband (Giuseppe, I think) and that they were in the process of adopting their first child. Yes, “he.”

And nobody batted an eye.

Afterthought:

I wonder whether the audience received any special preparation for the moment. I rather suspect so.

I bet that the studio’s mail will be interesting for the next couple of days.

They were cats.

Now they are fleabags.

They have been on Frontline, but it’s not working.

The vet told us that the possibility that Frontline-resistent fleas may have evolved is currently being researched, as Frontline is over 20 years old.

But evolution can’t happen, can it?

Really, because creationism!

An unflagging madness.

Stilly, stupid, childish in Johnson County, Kansas.

Cleveland area school district arranges for an etiquette consultant.

Harding, who is the founder of the Cleveland School of Etiquette and Corporate Protocol, said CRS contacted her after children of some of the families they support expressed concern about how to act in certain social situations. With so much communication being done via technology, Harding says many teens aren’t learning the basic “rules of the road” in the game of life.

(snip)

The class will cover the importance of respecting others, making eye contact, social graces, cellphone etiquette, how to write thank you notes and more.

“Bad manners are at an epidemic level in our society. We’ve made kids today so reliant on technology that many are incapable of sitting in a living room and having a conversation.”

Technology does not cause rudeness.

It may facilitate it, especially when the rude can hide behind anonymity, but blaming some hazy “technology” for causing rudeness is as absurd as blaming automobile engines–also a technology–for causing bad driving.

I used to do “communications” training for supervisors (known in the trainer’s locker room as “how to talk good”) back before there was a computer in every pocket.

People were rude in the olden days too.

Only they left behind no evidence thereof engraven in eternal electrons.

Afterthought:

If the kids learn anything, more power to the class.

Stephen Colbert on Miss America. Video below the fold in case it autoplays.

In other news, John Aravosis rounds up some twits that were not disgusting racist pigs.

Read more »

Yet more racist twits.

A lot of this is silly, but it starts with a verity:

A puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that somewhere someone is having fun.

Another outbreak of my way or the highway.

A group is calling for five western Maryland counties to secede and form their own state.

Scott Strzelczyk, leader of the Western Maryland Initiative, said people are fed up with the liberal majority and want an “amicable divorce.” He wants to live in a smaller state, with more “personal liberty, less government intrusion, less federal entanglements.”

I’m beginning to wonder whether the nation will survive Teabaggery.