Culture

Re: A Need, No Specifics, and a Way of Life

By Monique Chartier | December 30, 2007 |

In her OpEd in yesterday’s Providence Journal which Justin brings to our attention, Ms.Yeh Ling-Ling states: But at least the Chinese leaders realize population growth’s contribution to global warming. They defended their one-child policy by arguing that it has helped the fight against global warming by avoiding 300 million births There are some valid points…

A Need, No Specifics, and a Way of Life

By Justin Katz | December 30, 2007 |

What comes to mind when somebody declares the necessity of population control? Personally, my initial reaction is against a presumed totalitarian intent. Yeh Ling-Ling’s op-ed in the Providence Journal yesterday exacerbates that reaction, with its first paragraph urging presidential candidates to “learn from the Chinese experience.” And no, the piece isn’t about the dangers of…

Remembering Their Plight

By Justin Katz | December 26, 2007 |

Jeff Jacoby’s Sunday column in the Boston Globe merits a read by anybody who hasn’t seen it yet: The sparing of these women was very welcome news, of course, and it was not coincidental that each case had triggered an international furor. But for every “Qatif girl” or Nazanin who is saved, there are far…

Washington Crossing the Delaware at Christmas

By Marc Comtois | December 24, 2007 |

One of the little things that Christmas reminds me of is the first time I saw Washington Crossing the Delaware at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art when I was in college back in the early 1990’s. (Why? Well, Washington crossed into Trenton on Christmas Eve). Now, I’d seen pictures of it, sure. But…

A Saint for Our Times

By Justin Katz | December 23, 2007 |

Warren Throckmorton’s Friday Journal piece serves to leaven the surreality of the professor quoted my previous post (and I don’t say that solely because I love the name Throckmorton): Many make the Santa Claus-like association of this story to Saint Nicholas the gift giver. I see an additional angle. For reasons that often involve money,…

Chipping Blocks from the Foundation

By Justin Katz | December 20, 2007 |

What’s dismaying is that which the Providence Journal editorial writer elides in his or her advocacy for same-sex marriage: The ruling essentially locks homosexual couples into marriage in Rhode Island unless one or both members of the marriage move back to Massachusetts and institute divorce proceedings there. That is not equal justice under the law.…

Beware the Tween Idol

By Marc Comtois | December 19, 2007 |

As my daughters have grown up, I’ve become more aware of the pop culture canonization of people who are famous (some for its own sake, aka Paris Hilton). What’s disturbing to me is that there is no age limit to the phenomena. More specifically, the recent Hannah Montana ticket “controversy” is symptomatic of our culture’s…

Steroids, Baseball and the Failure of the Press

By Marc Comtois | December 19, 2007 |

Editor & Publisher focuses it’s microscope on sports journalists and how they missed baseball’s budding steroid scandal way back in 1995: It wasn’t a particularly long story. The 730-word piece by sportswriter Bob Nightengale in the Los Angeles Times on July 15, 1995, included no flashy graphics or leaked documents. But what it said turned…

Anti-Americanism, Anti-Humanism, Make-’em-all-like-me-ism?

By Justin Katz | December 16, 2007 |

Today’s surprising factoid comes from Mark Steyn, after a few paragraphs on the voluntary depopulation movement: Lest you think the above are “extremists,” consider how deeply invested the “mainstream” is in a total fiction. At the recent climate jamboree in Bali, the Reverend Al Gore told the assembled faithful: “My own country the United States…

MLB’s Mitchell Report

By Marc Comtois | December 13, 2007 |

Some of you may not care about baseball, but it is one of our country’s cultural and historical touchstones. Former Senator George Mitchell’s report (PDF)on the use of steroids and human-growth hormone in Major League baseball contains several names of players implicated in the use of either or both. And though Sen. Mitchell attempted to…