Culture
Today’s epiphany — which I wouldn’t be surprised to find to be common understanding among a great many people more insightful than myself — is the intellectual proximity of those who would erase from the books any “victimless crime” and those who see a “victim” of a social crime in every unhappy circumstance. The first…
Something nags at the ear upon the reading of a recent op-ed coauthored by Rhode Island Representatives David Segal and Edith Ajello. Segal and Ajello claim to have opposed the House bill that would have made prostitution unequivocally illegal in the state on the following grounds: Under the proposed legislation, the police would raid suspected…
Nicholas Wade has an interesting musing on the pitfall of conformity in intellectual pursuits: Journalists, of course, are conformists too. So are most other professions. There’s a powerful human urge to belong inside the group, to think like the majority, to lick the boss’s shoes, and to win the group’s approval by trashing dissenters. The…
On last night’s Matt Allen Show, Monique and Matt covered the travesty that is healthcare “reform,” the travesty that is underage exotic dancers in Rhode Island, and the travesty that is the Caruolo lawsuit in Woonsocket. (If I may interject: perhaps there’s a solution to be found, among these three issues, if the government requires…
Bill Rappleye brought a camera man down to the suspicious spa in Middletown that I mentioned on Monday. Rappleye’s very careful not to make the prostitution accusation, which the spa owner denies, but something odd emerges from the video. If you were a small business owner and a TV news reporter came to your place…
What a wonderful feeling to be covered by the national news when you are from a state as small as Rhode Island. One’s pride must swell at such an honor! But wait… Thanks to over 40 years of Rhode Island Democrat Control, we can legally prostitute our daughters and have career pole dancers at age…
Let’s hear the rationalizations why this ought to remain the case: Rhode Island teens under 18 can’t work with power saws or bang nails up on roofs. But dance at strip clubs? Sure. Just as long as the teens submit work permits, and are off the stripper’s pole by 11:30 on school nights. It’s enough…
As with much else in Rhode Island, it could be that some of the decisive ambivalence about the continued permissibility of prostitution in the state would dissipate if people took a moment to understand what it actually means. The blog of a new Web site that URI Professor Donna Hughes and associate Melanie Shapiro have…
Stephen Kent makes a poignant point that extends well beyond the borders of Christianity: The cross is the symbol of Christianity. The asterisk is the symbol of 21st Century conditional cultural Christianity. … Marriages vows now seem to read As long as you both shall live.* *or until either party becomes bored, tired or attracted…
Conductor Lorin Maazel made a point that’s occurred to me periodically in an interview with Jay Nordlinger that appears in the latest print edition of National Review: Speaking of operas, we get on the subject of opera productions, and specifically “Euro-trash,” to use an impolite term–Maazel’s is “Euro-dreck.” He thinks that this phenomenon “will gradually…
