MATTHEW H. writes:

The movies that Hollywood puts out today are often decadent and evil. They glorify sadism, depravity, and nihilistic violence. They are modern-day versions of the Roman games.

Hollywood isn’t just making crap; it is degrading characters that used to be good and decent. Batman used to be a worthy superhero instead of a sick freak. The 1960’s Batman was clean and wholesome. The show was campy and juvenile, too, but it wasn’t a study in abnormal psychology. Batman was an honest and true hero, not an angry recluse fighting his “inner demons.”

Hollywood is tearing the fabric of our civilization. Pop culture is an important and powerful thing, it isn’t just “entertainment.” For a lot of people, it’s really important. Their families have been destroyed, they don’t go to church, the community institutions that used to bind people to one another have faded away or been forcibly broken up — to these people, pop culture isn’t just light amusement; it has real meaning. In many cases they have little else. Read More »

LAWRENCE AUSTER writes:

Our society produces demonically violent entertainment, and avidly consumes demonically violent entertainment. Is anyone going to claim that he’s “shocked” that members of our society frequently commit demonically violent acts?

Here, by Jenny McCartney at the Telegraph, is a description of the 2008 movie The Dark Knight, the predecessor of just-opened The Dark Knight Rises, which an audience in Aurora, Colorado was watching last night when an armed man burst into the theater in body armor and proceeded to shoot about 65 people, killing 14 of them. Can we honestly say that people who go to see such movies are innocent? Can we honestly say that the people who were murdered while watching such a movie were merely innocent victims? Read More »

HERE is an editorial by the mendacious, corrupt, child-hating New York Times on the affirmation this week by the Boy Scouts of America of its longstanding policy of excluding homosexuals as pack leaders or scouts. The headline is “The Boy Scouts 19th Century Decision,” as if the nineteenth century is somehow by definition detestable. (This implies that much of what we do is execrable. Do you own property? Do you read newspapers? Repent, those are nineteenth century things to do.)

Here it is, with comments inserted:

It is impossible to square the Boy Scouts of America’s values of openness, strong moral character and leadership with its announcement this week that reaffirmed a retrograde policy of barring gay boys from membership and gay or lesbian adults from serving as leaders. [So what if the policy is “retrograde?” Building roads is retrograde. Fighting fires is retrograde. Many of our laws are retrograde. And, since when has homosexuality been linked with strong moral character? Name a single strong moral leader who was openly homosexual.] Read More »

DIANA writes:

A homosexual California state senator has proposed legislation that will legalize a child having more than two legal parents.

Think of the downstream effects of this insane legislation. At first it will appear only to regularize the irregular jerry-built “parenting” situations of cohabiting homosexuals, lesbians, and their egg and sperm donors.

But down the line, this destruction will manifest itself in the lives of children of divorced heterosexuals, who make up a large portion of children growing up in unstable circumstances. Read More »

WINNIE writes:

Facebook may be an unfortunate milieu for many reasons, but it does offer me a strong anecdotal glimpse into the minds of my white liberal, feminist, elite-college-educated, upper-middle-class peer group. Many of them have never questioned the paradigm given to them by our parents’ generation: hippy/60’s Boomers whose outward lives expressed conservatism, but whose decisions in child-rearing, whose philosophy and whose approval (indeed – steering) of the activist public school agenda formed their kids into the new guard who now occupy lobbying firms, policy think tanks, academia, hospitals, law offices, etc. Read More »

JENNIFER TYRRELL’S request to continue as a Tiger Cubs pack leader in Ohio was denied by the Boy Scouts of America this week. This is good news. Tyrrell is a lesbian. The Boy Scouts, which upholds a tradition of forming men not lesbians, remains a small island of sanity in a sea of anti-child institutions, a stark contrast to the degenerate and irresponsible Girl Scouts of America which has embraced homosexual rights and feminist ideology.

This story, however, is another remarkable instance of mainstream junk journalism.  Read More »

JEFF W. writes:

Your job market thread has been another very good discussion. I liked the comments about LinkedIn. I have always hated it and the people who use it.

I would like to describe my theory of why the American job market has been destroyed. On the surface, it makes no sense. The decline is extremely unpopular with voters, of course; one would think that politicians would always favor a healthy job market. A crippled job market has also damaged the government’s tax base; everyone in government has an interest in a healthy job market, and one would think that a worsening one would alarm them. The American consumer has been the source of sales revenues for businesses throughout the world; business interests thus should also very much want a healthy job market that puts money in consumers’ pockets. Why have the people, their elected leaders, government interests and business interests all been thwarted in their desire for a healthy job market? That question puzzled me for years. Read More »

IN THE discussion of today’s job market, a male commenter tells a woman trying unsuccessfully to find a job that she deserves her hardship because women advocated for economic independence. The female reader responds:

MarkyMark thinks there were all these men who wanted to support me, but I snootily turned them down. I never in my life met a man who wanted to support me. Quite the opposite. I met plenty of men who thought my name was “Gravy Train.” Who says men hate feminism? As far as I can tell, men LOVE feminism. They can’t get enough. It lets them off the hook completely. They have sexual access to a woman without having to marry her first. After marriage, they can expect her to support herself.

Funny, how the so-called “men’s rights movement” overlooks these obvious truths. In some ways, feminism has been a men’s rights movement.

Read More »

BEN J. writes:

My company was just sold to a hated competitor, and they will be closing my office in Colorado, and laying me off in December. To add insult to injury, the ‘new’ company is buying the office pizza tomorrow, from a local chain so greasy, the pizza can soak through the box in 15 minutes, and a paper plate in a fifth of that time.

I find being asked to dine with those who are taking my job and my income rather insulting. But maybe I’m just too sensitive or too old-fashioned.

COSTCO, the big-box retailer that is as much a fixture of American suburbia as the white-steepled church was of Puritan New England, has announced it will begin selling Muslim halal family-size entrées, or food that has been prepared according to Islamic law. This, and Costco’s other halal products, just might be the most significant overture to Islam in America yet. (And I’m not joking.) Without anyone in the mainstream taking note of it, a major retailer has begun over the last two years selling foods prepared in Islamic rituals. Saffron Road is a purveyor of halal frozen foods, including chicken nuggets and lamb vindaloo. Costco will start with its Chicken Tikka Masala. The chief executive of Saffron Road, Adnan A. Durrani, has sent a message to American Muslims:

We deeply need the support of you, your families and communities.  Let’s show Costco that there’s an educated, progressive, and dedicated American Muslim community by demonstrating our buying power to Costco via purchasing Halal products in their stores.

Halal meats must come, as Wikipedia explains, from “animals … slaughtered in the name of Allah (enunciating this blessing at the point the animal yields its life is the single most important aspect of halal meat).”

What grounds do most Americans have for objecting to Costco’s venture? None.

That’s because most Americans think that because many Muslims are nice, decent and good people, Islam itself must be only nice, decent and good. They believe they would be hateful and sick to refuse to accommodate Islamic law in their own country.

This thinking is disastrously wrong.

Read More »

THOUGH Democrats this spring claimed that proposals to reform the draconian Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) represented a “war on women,” a new survey suggests that a majority of women voters are aware of the law’s shortcomings, particularly its connection to false allegations against men, and want it changed. The Global Newswire reports:

WASHINGTON, July 17, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — A strong majority of registered voters participating in a national survey support reforming the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). These persons support measures currently being debated in Congress that are designed to curb the waste, discrimination, and false allegations which are occurring under the current VAWA law. Read More »

ALAN writes:

The parish in whose church I was an altar boy at Sunday Mass, weekday Masses, and Christmas Midnight Mass half a century ago is about to mark its 150th anniversary. St. Anthony of Padua parish was founded in south St. Louis in 1863 by 14 white men. For many decades afterward, sermons could be heard there in English and in German. Its large and beautiful church was filled with respectably-dressed parishioners on Sunday mornings in the 1950s – with no air-conditioning.

There was no “diversity” in the parish or the neighborhood around it for years afterward. But there is today: In strict compliance with leftist dogma, the parish now celebrates the “multicultural neighborhood”around it. Read More »

A FEMALE READER writes:

You’ve had some great discussions at TTH about the insanity and dysfunctionality of the workplace in today’s society. The kind of discussions you can’t find anywhere else.

It’s a subject I would like to see discussed more.

It’s hard to find words to describe the mendacity, manipulativeness, corruption, and toxicity of the job market. If the problem were only the shortage of jobs, the scarcity of money–that I could live with. In times like that, we make do with less. My mom grew up during the Great Depression and she said, “Sure it was tough. But if affected everybody. You were all in it together.” Read More »

VINCENT C. writes:

The nine-state, 2,700 mile bus tour of the “sisters religious” of Network, a Catholic organization seeking additional funding for the poor, which began in Des Moines, Iowa, and ended in our nation’s capital in early July, has ended, but the ongoing melodrama of dissent in the Catholic Church in the area has not.  Read More »

MARK REGNERUS, the University of Texas sociologist recently in the news for his study of adults raised by homosexuals, is the subject of a university inquiry that could lead to charges of professional “misconduct.”

Regnerus’ findings, which indicated significantly poorer outcomes in life, were published in Social Science Research. According to Peter Wood of the Chronicle of Higher Education:

[M]ore than 200 “Ph.D.’s and MD’s” are said to have signed a letter to James Wright, the journal’s editor, questioning “the process by which this paper was submitted, reviewed, and accepted for publication.” The text of the letter is embedded in this blog by Scott Rose, on “The New Civil Rights Movement.” Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes:

Mano Singham at an atheist website, Free Thought Blogs, has mentioned the post here about lesbians who want their children to play with children from normal families. He writes:

“You really must read this page and the website in general for yourself to appreciate the alarmist worldview of those who think that the world is closing in on them because of rising equality of women and gays gaining mainstream acceptance, and feel helpless to do anything about it.”

In some ways this characterization is fair and in some ways it isn’t. The world is closing in on us, but we are not helpless. Read More »

JAMES FLYNN, the IQ expert, continues to receive shockingly fawning press for his claim that IQ tests show women are now smarter than men. Interestingly, there have been no public hysterics or angry demands for new programs, as there were when Lawrence Summers said men were possibly more qualified mentally for certain fields. The eagerness with which the press has lapped up this story, while for years it never much noticed the many IQ tests that showed men’s mean scores were slightly higher, indicates that it is a deeply satisfying bit of news. It affirms the liberal view of history as a sordid tale of oppression and shows that despite the massive chaos feminism has unleashed on the life of the ordinary person, all is okay because at least women are a bit smarter. Perhaps the average woman is smart enough to hold a job at Wal-Mart plus a job as a construction worker and raise three children without any husband.

The problem is, Flynn’s findings, accepted as if now unquestioned scientific fact, are highly sketchy. Flynn revealed to ABC news that his studies, which took place in Estonia, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, involved girls and boys between the ages of 15 and 18. Psychologists have noted for years that adolescent girls develop faster than boys and complete puberty earlier.

Flynn also made other statements that shed serious doubt on his command of this issue: Read More »