Culture Warriors category archive

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.

You realize, of course, that these people are nuts.

Afterthought:

The irony is, they don’t believe the words of the Savior they claim to venerate.

Let Cowgirl Up explain what it means.

Last week, I fulminated about a couple of school dress codes that were, at best, problematical and, at worst, bigoted.

Now comes Ruthann Robson to explore the questionable history and application of dress codes as a means of perpetuating and enforcing class and status.

A nugget:

At their heart, school dress codes that go well beyond safety concerns and basic decency rest on the unequal relationships between adults and youth. School officials like to tout the rules as preparation for employment, but those standards are hard to pin down: Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg would be suspended at most schools with detailed dress codes.

Dress codes also hearken back to a time when kings, queens and government councils routinely proscribed all manner of attire, with special attention to prohibiting people of “mean condition” from certain styles – purple, for example, was reserved for royalty. But the English went even further, regulating how frilly men’s collars could be or how revealing their tunics could be. Colonists brought such traditions with them to America. The Puritans prosecuted women who wore lace and Southern colonies included matters of dress in their slave codes.

Learn how it takes place; go here and listen to the podcast.

Reg Henry reflects:

And how do I know? Hey, I was a kid too, and it was back in the days of the pharaohs when the old-school way of doing things was universal. They didn’t have a paddle at the schools I attended — they had a rattan cane, a terrible weapon of mass instruction. It hurt like hell.

And so did I become a paragon of learning and a pillar of decency? Er, not quite. I think I would have done better with a self-esteem program. Having watched corporal punishment applied brutally and arbitrarily, I became outraged by unfairness and skeptical of sternly imposed authority.

In short, I started down the road to becoming a liberal. Now you mockers of self-esteem wouldn’t want that to happen to any kid, would you? Old-school thinking deserved an F in some areas and that’s why the education world changed.

Students’ hair continues to make grown-ups stupid.

A father in Oklahoma said this week that he was forced to pull his daughter out of classes after the charter school she was attending sent her home for having the wrong hairstyle.

She’s a seven-year-old African American child who had dreadlocks .

The school’s policy states

“hairstyles such as dreadlocks, afros, mohawks, and other faddish styles are unacceptable.”

Of the ones listed, the only one that I could consider “faddish” is the mohawk, since it seems to reappear for a short while every other generation.

Oddly enough, the last time I saw a mohawk, it was worn by the virtuoso guest pianist at a concert by the Virginia Beach Symphony.

I am skeptical that this policy is “colorblind.”

I am certain that it is stupid.

Back in the olden days, when I was a young ‘un and the Beatles came on the scene, schools invested lots of energy in mandating that boys not grow their hair.

It was considered a sign of the Apocalyse for boys to have hair even a couple of inches longer than a short back and sides, let alone as long as an American icon such as Buffalo Bill.

Indeed, one of my fellow students, a star pitcher on the baseball team a year or so ahead of me, was ordered to cut his hair because it was too long; mind you, these days, he wouldn’t be noticed. In a brilliant seizure of malicious compliance, he shaved his head. As this was long before the “bald look” was the Next Big Thing, the principal* ordered him to wear a toboggan cap until his hair grew out, so a toboggan cap it was for the rest of the school year.

By the time a few more years had passed, the high school hair wars were recognized to have been a phenomenally stupid waste of energy over stupid stuff.

It is comforting sign of continuity to know that school administrations have not lost their ability to waste energy over stupid stuff.

__________________

*The principal was a fairly reasonable guy. His family was friends with my family and we used occasionally to visit them in their house, where my brother and I would play with their daughters.

He attended my mother’s funeral as the last surviving member of their bridge club.

Back then, long hair on boys made lots of grown-ups stupid.

So obvious it takes a genius to think of it:

Life hack: if someone makes a racist/sexist joke, say, with total seriousness, “I don’t get it, can you explain it?”

Via Contradict Me.