N.W. writes:

I have been puzzled for a number of years by the popular obsession with vampires and zombies. While there is a plethora of monsters to choose from, for some reason Americans today seem to be mesmerized by these two monstrous variations of the undead.

In a discussion with a friend concerning hipsters and their taste in music and culture, I had an insight into the nature of the dark reflections represented by the vampire and zombie.  (more…)

IN a New York Times piece about the New Yorker cartoonist Pat Byrnes, James Warren offers this quote from Mr. Byrnes’ wife about the cartoonist’s role as stay-at-home dad:

“I’m thrilled that he’s as committed to raising our daughters and can find humor in it that should give other dads the inspiration to be their kids’ primary caretaker,” Ms. Madigan said when I saw her Thursday at the Carl Sandburg Literary Awards Dinner sponsored by the Chicago Public Library and its foundation.

To the extent that she is thrilled, Ms. Madigan is an anomaly. The normal woman does not want to support her husband. She also does not want her husband to be in charge of children and home. The likelihood that Mr. Byrnes will inspire many men to become house dads is virtually nil. And if he did it would only lead to the further disenchantment of marriage. The decline of marriage parallels the decline of male authority and the male provider. There has never been a little boy in all of recorded history who dreamed of being Captain Dad with a baby carrier on his back. (more…)

DIANA writes:

I saw the grisly footage of Qaddafi’s murder on television. I had first to turn off the sound. Then, ashamed, I turned off the television. I have nothing more to say than that I am appalled that my country had anything to do with this grotesque caricature of justice. Actually, to call it a grotesque caricature of justice is to trivialize it. I have no words for it. (more…)

THE MODERN egalitarian State does not imprison people who defy the official religion of equality. But it does impose severe punishments. These penalties are often so onerous and so pervasive in their effect on ordinary freedoms that it is fair to call them totalitarian.

Take the issue of pregnancy. Everyone knows that a pregnant woman is not the same as a man or as the woman who is not pregnant. As workers, pregnant women are, at least temporarily, less productive than the non-pregnant. No one delivers a baby at work. Pregnancy almost always ends in motherhood, which, at the very least, brings occasional disruption in work schedules.

But according to the terms of radical equality, the pregnant woman is essentially the same. And she must be treated the same. Those who refuse to recognize this patent falsehood may be severely punished for “pregnancy discrimination.”

Combating “pregnancy discrimination” is now one of the highest priorities of the Equality Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which consumes hundreds of billions each year (as much as four percent of GNP, according to Peter Brimelow) in enforcing anti-discrimination statutes, intruding upon employment decisions and seeking penalties for discrimination. Pregnancy discrimination violates an amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The amendment stipulates that pregnancy is similar to any other short-term medical condition, no different from a broken leg or the flu, and a woman may not be barred from employment or promotion due to pregnancy. In actuality, the statute requires that pregnancy be viewed as distinct from other medical conditions. Employers are not under the same pressure to hire and promote workers who are clearly limited due to any of a number of other medical conditions. An employer will not be sued for refusing to promote someone with, say, a debilitating heart condition that affects his work.

Pregnancy discrimination charges by the EEOC against businesses have increased by 25 percent in the last five years alone, according to EEOC figures. In gauging the effect of this increase, it is important to bear in mind that businesses that are sued are not the only ones affected by the increase. Other businesses must take measures to ensure they are not sued, possibly resorting to lawyers, consultants and inefficiency in the process.

“[S]uch a dramatic increase unfortunately illustrates that too many employers are ignoring their legal obligation not to discriminate against pregnant workers,” said Spencer H. Lewis, Jr., district director of the EEOC’s Philadelphia District Office.

Such a dramatic increase almost certainly does not reflect any change in employment decisions and attitudes. Pregnancy has always affected employment, and always will, at least for as long as businesses strive to be businesses and not socialist enterprises. What this increase does suggest is more intense enforcement and a greater ideological commitment to fighting pregnancy discrimination, possibly affected by the ongoing increase in the number of single mothers and almost certainly by the poor job market.

Here are a few recent lawsuits initiated by the EEOC: (more…)

MARIE DEDIEU, a once prominent feminist from France who was kidnapped from her vacation home on the island of Manda off Kenya on Oct. 1, has died in captivity, French authorities announced today. Dedieu was disabled, confined to a wheelchair for years, and had cancer. Her captors did not take her wheelchair or medication from her home when she was abducted.

Dedieu, 66, was with her live-in African boyfriend, John Lepapa, 39, when kidnapped by armed Somalians. He was left unharmed. Lepapa told The Daily Mail, ‘My girlfriend pleaded with them and told them to take whatever they wanted from the house, including the money and to spare her life, but they would not listen.’

What was a 66-year-old woman in a wheelchair doing on an African island, 60 miles from Somalia, with a 39-year-old African boyfriend? Perhaps the answer can be found in her political beliefs. Dedieu was a founder of France’s Women’s Liberation Movement (MLF) in the 1960s. An English woman on vacation and two Spanish aid workers were also abducted recently by Somalians in Kenya.

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NURSING CARE in Britain’s hospitals is so poor that some doctors prescribe water to make sure patients don’t become dehydrated. Socialized medicine and the feminist devaluation of nursing have been a disaster for patient care, argues Melanie Phillips in The Daily Mail. The ethic of nursing has changed. Careerism and competence have replaced vocation and basic compassion.

Phillips writes:

[D]uring the Eighties, nursing underwent a revolution. Under the influence of feminist thinking, its leaders decided that ‘caring’ was demeaning because it meant that nurses — who were overwhelmingly women — were treated like skivvies by doctors, who were mostly men. (more…)

A READER sent the below poster from Rollins College in Florida. As you can see, the absurd, stomach-turning acronym LGBT, used with a straight face by our highest officials in the same way they might walk around with bowls of cherry jello on their heads, is now morphing into the alphabetical mouthful, LGBTQQIP. ‘P’ is for pansexual. ‘I’ is for intersex. ‘S’ is for sinful. ‘R’ is for ruining your life. Whatever part of the alphabet you toss into this juvenile stew, corporations, government and academic institutions will be eagerly behind it, lining up with bowls of cherry jello, heaping on programs to make queer, pansexual, intersex individuals feel good. They don’t really care what the letters mean, as long as they lessen the resentment of the homosexual. Since the resentment of the liberated homosexual is bottomless, twenty-sex letters are not enough and there will have to be long strings of consonants, especially Q’s and P’s.

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JESSE POWELL writes:

I visited my old high school today. I was a student in the late 1980s and while my visit brought personal memories, I was struck by the cultural changes that had occurred. My old high school is looking very grand now after the many improvements made to the physical structure. Lots of sunlight pours in. There are big windows everywhere. In addition many of the classrooms are filled with computers, which were not a routine part of ordinary classes in my time. There were a few rooms I remembered from the old days but not very many.  (more…)

AT GalliaWatch, a website on current events in France, Tiberge writes about a shoe company’s controversial poster ads featuring children with their “families.” One poster depicts a child with two women and the words, “As my two mommies say, the family is sacred.”

The ads for the shoe retailer Eram are ambiguous. Though supporters of homosexuals see them as positive, the ads clearly lampoon the deconstructed family as well. The above ad on the right says, “As my mommy and her boyfriend who could be my older brother say, the family is sacred, ” and the one on the left: “As my dad, my mom, and my dad’s third wife say, the family is sacred.”

Eram was besieged with complaints, as well as support, and the company set up a Facebook page to deal with the ensuing controversy, which is no doubt exactly what it was seeking. (more…)

THE BLOGGER “Out of Sleep” contends that people can’t be argued out of liberalism, only awakened from it. He writes:

I … live in a very liberal neighborhood in a top-three liberal city, and work in a field absolutely lousy with doctrinaire liberals. And I don’t mean go-with-the-flow, vote Obama cause he seems like a reasonable guy kind of liberals. I mean religion-is-poison, whites-are-evil, if God were not dead it would be necessary to kill him kind of Sauron Morgoth Saruman liberals! (more…)

THE Victoria and Albert Museum has announced that it will be combing its collections for artworks and artifacts that put homosexuality in a positive light. The project has been given the highbrow name, “Sexing the V & A collections.” Here is the museum’s announcement. Comments have been added in brackets below. (more…)

  FROM the excellent website, British Paintings. 

MRS. M. writes:

Thank you for two brilliant pieces this week! The “Glass Ceiling” post made me laugh out loud with your insightful comments. The “Interracial Marriage” post rang true for me. My Hispanic aunt is married to a black man and experienced more racism from his family and friends than he did from hers. My Hispanic mother married my white father, and he encountered more racism from her side than she did from his as well. (more…)

  KEVIN MACDUFF writes from Vermont: That post on the Glass Ceiling was beyond epic! Please have yourself cloned so other men may benefit from women like you. You make Ann Coulter look like such an amateur!

IN A PORTRAIT today of an interracial couple, The New York Times manages to avoid some of the most obvious aspects of interracial families in America. The piece focuses on a black woman married to a white man when the overwhelming number of black/white couples (more than 70 percent) involve a black man and a white woman. The couple say they have been the target of stares and negative comments over the years, proof of ongoing racism. All of the comments presumably come from whites. A more realistic appraisal of interracial families in America would have revealed that whites are possibly more in favor of them than blacks and Asians. As Steve Sailer has written, and as has been discussed here before, black women and Asian men are often “bitterly opposed” to interracial marriage, as they have been the biggest losers since whites threw down the barriers that once prevailed. In this previous entry, a white woman described the hostility she faced from her black mother-in-law when she married her black husband.

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THE DISCUSSION in this entry about books has turned to the importance of reading aloud to young children and adolescents. Jill Farris wrote:

I grew up in a reading household with no TV in the 1960s and 70s when, even then, TV was dominating many homes. I married a man who is extremely intelligent but who spent many hours in front of the TV as a child. He had what I consider to be an impoverished childhood even though his parents were college educated. (more…)