THE New York Times reports staggering increases in suicide among the middle-aged, especially among men. The rate for middle-aged men jumped by almost 50 percent between 1999 and 2010. It rose to 27.3 deaths per 100,000 men, as compared to 8.1 deaths per 100,000 for women, which also represents an increase. Many of the commenters in the ensuing discussion blame the economy and the inability of men to provide for their families. As Congress ponders further increases in legal immigration and visas for foreign workers, the commenters tell stories of lost jobs, careers suddenly terminated, depleted savings and divorce.

One commenter writes:

My brother committed suicide last July. He had just turned 60. He lost his IT job in the Great Recession in 2008. Despite hundreds of resumes being sent out, and a lifetime of IT experience, he got few interviews and no job offers. He spent down his 401(k) and when he died the only thing he owned was a beat-up car. We later found out he had a lot of credit card debt, with which he had tried to keep himself afloat. After four years of no job offers, unemployment running out, having no health insurance, etc., his dignity was shot. He had lost hope of ever working again. How I wish he had not committed suicide; how I would give anything and everything to have him back. (more…)

MARY FORD of Searcy, Arkansas received this rejection letter (below) from the Disney Production Company in 1938. She was turned down for training in the Inking and Painting Department because women were categorically not accepted for “creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men.”

The letter was posted on Flickr by her grandson, Kevin Burg, who found it among his grandmother’s things after she died and said “it speaks for itself,” and at Huffington Post, which also views the letter as an artifact of a misogynist past. However, neither source noted a fascinating detail. The letter was signed by a woman, another Mary. Perhaps, like other women of the time, this Mary had no objection to rejecting another Mary for the reasons stated.

Women often supported customary, informal discrimination against other women because they knew, for one, that giving preference to men would enable men to support women and children. Perhaps, dare we say it, women did not always view themselves as in competition with men and perhaps, dare we say it, some women even wished the best for men, knowing men needed satisfying careers in ways women did not and wanting them to have job preferences out of a spirit of generosity. Yes, it was a horrible and frightful past, almost too disgusting to contemplate. The creative work in Disney’s production department was a career and Disney presumably did not want trained employees leaving career positions to give birth and care for children. Companies were not in the business of sustaining the cultural revolution to their own detriment and the average woman was not inculcated to view her existence as first and foremost a self-centered commercial enterprise.

Things have changed since this awful, bleak period. Now women are not discriminated against and many trudge off to offices, leaving their children at Tots-R-Us because their husbands, if they should be so fortunate to have them, cannot hope to support them adequately in the era of dual-income families. If only Mary Ford had been so lucky. If Disney were to send out such a letter today, it would be worth almost instant cash to any Mary Ford, as she could take it to the nearest office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and government workers would happily convert it into big bucks for her. If enough Mary Fords got together, Disney might cease to exist.

(more…)

  La nuit des Veilleurs au ministère de la Famille by ktvideo1 JEWEL writes: Here is a collection of videos of young, Catholic French protesters against the Sodomite Marriage and Adoption Laws. In particular is the video (above) of "les veilleurs" (the watchers) who have been holding night vigils. The video is set to music of a poem by Therese de Lisieux. What strikes me about these determined young people is the difference between their protest and confrontation with the police and that of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. France is experiencing something marvelous, despite the bad news.

KARL D. writes:

(more…)

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

The Associated Press carried a story the other day that is meant, I suppose, to be both heart-warming and reassuring. It’s about the grit of our gals, guys and in-betweens in uniform. Call me cold-hearted if you like, but I found it neither heart-warming nor reassuring. It’s the kind of story that makes me miss Lawrence Auster’s pithy commentary all the more.

The story celebrates the achievement of U.S. Army Sergeant First Class (SFC – E-7) Greg Robinson in completing the Army’s air assault school at Fort Campbell, Kentucky — home of the 101st Airborne Division.  (Despite its name, the 101st is an air assault division: most of its soldiers no longer train to make parachute jumps into battle, but are flown into action in helicopters in the manner combat-proved by the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam and Cambodia.) (more…)

  EVEN those who reject some of the tactics and principles of Frigide Barjot, the former comedienne who has organized the massive Manif Pour Tous rallies against homsexual marriage in France, can appreciate the courage and tenacity of this woman. In this video of her outside the National Assembly last week on the day the Assembly approved same-sex "marriage" and homosexual adoption, she walks through a crowd of hostile and angry homosexuals who push her and call her names.

THE PHILADELPHIA City Council last week approved a bill that would require the city’s health plan to pay for sex change surgery, as well as psychotherapy, hormone treatments, and laser-hair removal for those pretending to be the opposite sex. A city that can barely meet its operating expenses and that has scared legions of businesses away with its draconian taxes and crime has now turned to investing in the medical mutilation of its citizens. Perhaps there is logic in this.

(more…)

MARY THOM, former editor of Ms. Magazine and a guiding force of the American feminist movement, died on Friday. The New York Times, which never fails to inform us of the deaths of even the most marginal of feminist leaders, reports in her obituary:

Ms. Thom never married, and her friends said her true love was her motorcycle, a 1996 Honda Magna 750. On it, she zipped around town — to dinners in the West Village, feminist talks, and back home to her apartment on the Upper West Side.

On Friday, she was riding on the Saw Mill River Parkway shortly after 4 p.m. when she hit a car, throwing her onto the road, the Westchester County police said. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Ms. Thom was 68 years old.

(more…)

  THE nineteenth century artist and writer William Morris brought immense beauty to Victorian homes. His designs continue to inspire decorators. "It helps the healthiness both of body and soul to live among beautiful things," he wrote. His wallpapers, such as this Blue Fruit Wallpaper, were in middle class Victorian homes, as well as great estates. Other examples can be found here. Morris wrote that any decoration is "futile if it does not remind you of something beyond itself, craftsmanship involving not only the mastery of technique, but the evocation of spiritual qualities of breadth, imagination, and order." Unfortunately, Morris was a socialist and thus incongruously promoted ideas that would lead to an assault of ugliness, domestic and otherwise.

BLESSED POPE JOHN PAUL II continues to inspire hideous public statuary. This 45-foot fiberglass behemoth will be officially unveiled tomorrow in the Polish city of Czestochowa. The businessman, Leszek Lyson, who funded it and erected it on private land, is said to be hoping it will qualify for the Guinness Book of Records, which shows the level of artistic ambition involved. The statue should make people stop and think, Lyson said. Yes, I suppose so. Monolithic statues of Lenin made people stop and think too. They made them stop and think of one man and his role in the New World Order.

Similar to another monstrosity, the statue of John Paul outside the Termini Station in Rome (see below), the new papal tower, with its widespread arms, is an all-embracing figure. “Come one, Come all. The Church is whatever you wish to make it,” it seems to say. Though he helped resist Communism in his homeland of Poland and is not to be equated with or placed into the same category as Lenin, the globe-trotting John Paul was a revolutionary figure who helped the Church become more International YMCA than the Eternal City of God. Revolutionary figures inspire revolutionary art.

(more…)

  IN THIS video, previously posted at Galliawatch, a French woman, demonstrating on April 17th against the legalization of homosexual "marriage," is hauled away by the police as she protests that she has done nothing wrong.

AT the Center for Political Islam, Kenneth Roberts examines the Islamic concept of honor and its probable role in the Boston Marathon bombings. Roberts writes:

Why do some American journalists have trouble discerning the motives behind the Boston bombings? The Tsarnaev brothers killed Bostonians for the honor of Islam. Westerners do not understand the Islamic concept of honor. ‘Honor’ to a Muslim is something as concrete and tangible as the Washington Monument, the Colorado River or the Rocky Mountains.

Honor as Plunder

To a Muslim, ‘honor’ is as real as money in the bank or gold coins hidden in a box in the drawer. Honor brings prestige to Islam, to Mohammed and to Allah. Because ‘honor’ is so important in Islam, the main goal of jihad is to acquire more ‘honor’ for Islam. How this acquisition is done is simple. It is done through (sic) by humiliating kafirs. For Muslims, honor is real and concrete, and not merely an abstract concept. (more…)

SEBASTIEN writes:

I was at the demonstration at the Place des Invalides in Paris on Friday the 19th of April, when a Catholic priest was arrested and kicked in the head by the police. There is a lengthy video of what transpired here.

Every night last week, there was an official demonstration from 7:30 p.m. until around 10 p.m. After 10 p.m., we are all supposed to disperse and this is what most people do. I was very happy to see our SSPX priests turn up at around 9:30 pm to be with us for the rest of the night.

Firstly, l’Abbé Beauvais stood in front of the barricades and got the crowd to repeat in song lines which he had composed a little earlier:  “A real family is a Daddy and a Mummy.” (The films I made are here.) After the singalong, the game of tag with the riot police started. As I am a timid soul, I preferred to watch from the sidelines but you can have a very good idea of what happened by watching the footage here. Starting at minute 8:52, you can see the Catholic brother trying to intervene during the arrest of a minor and they both get dragged away. As the brother gets dragged through the barricade, you can see the plain clothes police getting some violent kicks in his head. These are his injuries. (more…)

DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL reports on the immigration history of the family of the Boston bombing suspects:

The Tsarnaev family committed immigration fraud, falsely claiming persecution and requesting asylum it never should have gotten. You can blame that on the Bush Administration, which granted the Tsarnaev family both tourist visas to come here and then asylum for the entire family . . . less than a year after 9/11, when scrutiny of Muslim applicants for asylum should have been stepped up. Instead, Bush Administration pandering to Islam was stepped up. (more…)

KARL D. writes:

Have you noticed how the word “hero” has been bandied about by the media regarding almost anyone and everyone who was involved in the Boston bombing? The man who found the bomber hiding in his boat and called the police? Hero. A victim who lost both his legs who visited another victim in the same hospital to give her a gift? Hero.

What is even more surprising is the absolute venom I have encountered from people when I point out the fact that neither of these men were heroes. One was merely a good citizen doing his civic duty, and the other a victim who performed a kind act for another victim. It seems most people really do operate in a knee-jerk emotional way. The fact that the true meaning of the word “hero” has become so watered down as to render it meaningless does not seem to bother them in the least. Interestingly, out of all the people who called me a “nasty little man” for pointing this out, the majority were female.

(more…)

FEMINISM has resulted in many terrific career opportunities for women, but few fields previously closed to them due to stubborn convention are as rich with novel opportunities as prison work.

According to federal prosecutors, 13 female “corrections officers” were enjoying their careers so much that they essentially handed control of the Baltimore City Detention Center over to a gang, helping gang members sell and smuggle drugs and offering them tough love on the side, The Washington Post reported yesterday. A leader of the Black Guerilla Family fathered five children in the Baltimore jail with four of the guards since 2009. Two of the women had tattoos of the gang leader’s name, perhaps tip-offs to the authorities that something was not quite right. (more…)

  FROM Colorful Realm of Living Beings, a 30-scroll set of paintings by the eighteenth century Japanese artist, Itō Jakuchū.