Culture Warriors category archive
The Anachronism 0
I find Prince Harry and Meghan Markel’s stories of how they were treated credible. After all, it was English settlers who fostered America’s original sin of chattel slavery and created the myth of white racial superiority so as to ease their consciences (and line their wallets).
What most strikes me, though, is the downright petty nastiness of the treatment they received. Even bigots are capable of being polite.
I’m a Southern Boy. I have known in my lifetime many bigots who are capable of politeness. It doesn’t make them any less bigoted, but at least they were able to dress up their bigotry in Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.
Also, I don’t get Americans’ fascination with the British royal family. Nor that of PBS viewers with soap operas set in Edwardian England. Grump, grump, grump.
Misdirection Play, Cancel Culture Dept. 0
A snippet:
When in doubt, create a moral panic.
From Dystopian Fiction to Dystopia 0
Gene Collier, writing at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, makes a strong case that we are descending (have descended?) into Idiocracy.
Methinks he makes a pretty good case.
Patriot Gamers 0
Capitol insurrectionist is tired of waiting and wants out of the pokey.
“Nobody Expects the Spanish American Inquisition”*
0
At the Des Moines Register, Connie Ryan reminds us that the freedom to practice your own religion (or lack thereof) does not grant the privilege of imposing it on others.
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*With apologies to Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Just the Vaxx, Ma’am 0
Warning: Short ad at begins at about the six-minute mark.)
You can blame a lot of this delusional thinking on the disinformation superhighway and persons’ willingness to believe anything they see on a computer screen when they wouldn’t believe the same damn thing if it happened right before their eyes.
Frozen 0
At the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Tom Horner suggests that it’s time for Texas to man up and take some responsibility for itself.
Image via Juanita Jean.
Cancel Culture, Republican Style 0
The Des Moines Register’s Rekha Basu comments on Iowa legistors’ attempts to keep information from the New York Times’ 1619 Project out of public schools. She finds that effort particularly disheartening because the project was led by a black woman from Iowa.
A snippet:
One more time, heaven forbid that American students learn what life was really like in ye olde South.
The Disinformation Superhighway, Short Attention Span Theatre Dept. 0
One man saw it coming.
He even foresaw “influencers.”
An excerpt from Charlie Warzel’s article about him in last Sunday’s New York Times (emphasis added):
In June 2006, when Facebook was still months from launching its News Feed, Mr. Goldhaber predicted the grueling personal effects of a life mediated by technologies that feed on our attention and reward those best able to command it. “In an attention economy, one is never not on, at least when one is awake, since one is nearly always paying, getting or seeking attention.”