Culture Warriors category archive

In the Bangor Daily News, Amy Fried tees off on the war mongers:

I’ll cut to the chase. There is no “war on Christmas.” It’s a phony, ginned up annual attempt for a small set of Americans to express their cultural grievances.

But you, dear readers, deserve more than that.

So I’ll offer some personal reflections and a bit of history.

As someone who celebrates Jewish Christmas — a movie and Chinese food — it seems beyond absurd to think Christmas is anything put pervasive.

Between the constant Christmas songs and crowded stores and many beautifully decorated trees and strangers who used to ask my kids what they thought Santa would bring them and others who tell me “Merry Christmas” (and, no, I’m not offended, although, even though I know they were meant with the greatest warmth and sincerity, the comments to my non-Christmas celebrating kids were kind of a bit much), Christmas is everywhere.

It’s a wonderful column. Please do read the rest.

The privileged are, for the most part, unconscious of their privilege, until something shakes them awake.

Ten years ago, when I started my career as an assistant district attorney in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, I viewed the American criminal justice system as a vital institution that protected society from dangerous people. I once prosecuted a man for brutally attacking his wife with a flashlight, and another for sexually assaulting a waitress at a nightclub. I believed in the system for good reason.

But in between the important cases, I found myself spending most of my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids did with impunity growing up in the suburbs. As our office handed down arrest records and probation terms for riding dirt bikes in the street, cutting through a neighbor’s yard, hosting loud parties, fighting, or smoking weed – shenanigans that had rarely earned my own classmates anything more than raised eyebrows and scoldings – I often wondered if there was a side of the justice system that we never saw in the suburbs. Last year, I got myself arrested in New York City and found out.

Find out how the criminal “justice” system retaliated.

H/T to Thoreau.

When you build a television show on glorifying rednecks, don’t be surprised when the rednecks act like, well, rednecks.

Today’s QOTD comes alive.

Celebrate the Prince of Peace. Come upside someone’s head.

Kristina Vindiola says a woman hit her outside the Wal-Mart on 91st Avenue and Thomas Road after she said “Happy Holidays.”

“The lady looked at me,” said Vindiola. “I thought she was going to put money in the kettle. She came up to me and said, ‘Do you believe in God?’ And she says, ‘You’re supposed to say Merry Christmas,’ and that’s when she hit me.”

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

At Contradict Me.

Men are pigs.

Nothing promotes the holiday spirit more than a little Fox News style bigotry.

Apparently, it’s still a thing in North Carolina.

The bit at the 3:27 mark sums it up.

Via Raw Story.

Have we reached peak stupid?

The Booman wants to know.

In the Navy, if your victim is unconscious, you have a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

The former director of surgery at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center, who was brought up on charges that he had sex with an intern while she was too intoxicated to give consent, will not face a court-martial.

Senior officers at the hospital have accepted a recommendation by an investigating officer not to pursue a trial for Cmdr. Steven Cobery because his accuser could not remember the events in question, a hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Words fail me.

Via BartCop.

Having been married twice, I have my own ideas, but, really, now, you can’t make this stuff up.

It would seem that little boys are okay, but big boys are not.

Full Disclosure:

I attended Catholic Churches for the 19 years during which I was married to a second-generation Italian Catholic. All the priests I knew were good men who did their jobs honorably.

They knew that we had both been divorced and that I was not Catholic, and they never denied either of us communion. They placed Christian love above doctrine. They understood the Gospel of Love.

They honored their God and I treasure my memories of them.

Their work has been dishonored by their management.

Karen Owen wants to know. A nugget:

How can we call ourselves — and practically insist that we are — a Christian nation when we seemingly ignore so many of the teachings of Christ?

Isn’t compassion part of it? Or was that just my imagination as a little girl attending Sunday school at the family Presbyterian church?

Read the rest.

Via BartCop.

Tony Norman wonders why, amongst all the fuss about the phony “war on Christmas,” no one seems to care about the war on Thanksgiving.

That’s why I’m astounded that many of the loudest voices against the watering down of Christmas have given some of America’s biggest retail outlets a pass for making their underpaid, non-unionized employees work on Thanksgiving, the biggest family-oriented day of the year.

If you’re looking for ways to engage your Tea Party-loving brother-in-law in an argument that actually means something, ask him what he thinks of the fact that several relatives and quite a few friends aren’t having dinner with their families because they have to work Thanksgiving shifts at Kmart, Target, Sears and Wal-Mart.

The last place you will find me on Thanksgiving is at a big box store, or any store, for that matter.

We are going to have a quiet dinner and take a nap, while being thankful we are not fighting crazed shoppers bent on acquiring this year’s must-have, next year’s must-donate.

Afterthought:

Perhaps the lack of uproar reveals what Americans truly revere.

Read more »

Juliana Breines wonders why we blame victims and concludes that it’s selfish self-protection. A nugget.

Victim blaming is not just about avoiding culpability–it’s also about avoiding vulnerability. The more innocent a victim, the more threatening they are. Victims threaten our sense that the world is a safe and moral place, where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. When bad things happen to good people, it implies that no one is safe, that no matter how good we are, we too could be vulnerable. The idea that misfortune can be random, striking anyone at any time, is a terrifying thought, and yet we are faced every day with evidence that it may be true.

Read the rest.

Not Birch Beer, birch tea. Robyn Blumner:

If you’ve ever wondered what happened to the John Birch Society, author Claire Conner of Dunedin can tell you. The radical right-wing group that was briefly a player in national conservative politics in the 1960s is back, under a different name: tea party.

The Koch brothers’ daddy was a Bircher.

They continue the tradition, but with more skillful P. R.

As I’ve said before, I’m not a big fan of Al Sharpton, but sometimes he’s right.

The generations raised to accept racism as normal and right, as, indeed, the will of Republican Jesus, are indeed shrinking, but they are not going out without a fight. If you doubt me, read today’s paper.