LOUISE writes: I just read this morning that Hollywood is planning an adaptation of Milton's Paradise Lost. Bradley Cooper, the actor slated to play Satan, had this to say: I'm very excited. I studied that poem at Georgetown, and I fell in love with that character. Satan is very compelling. You understand his argument. Hopefully we'll be able to maintain the integrity of that. I'm assuming he means maintaining the integrity of Milton's poem and not that they'll be arguing for Satan's cause. Though with Hollywood, who knows?

  ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK was not a man driven by belief, as is everywhere asserted. He was a man driven by fantasy and adolescent rage. M. Mason at VFR writes: Strip away the quasi-religious cant and this guy is basically a clever variant of an anarcho-terrorist. He tarted himself up with a lot of medieval Catholic symbolism and juiced himself with anabolic steroids to role play the self-appointed secret identity of an avenging, modern-day "Knight Templar," acting out in real life his own twisted version of a "World of Warcraft" video game.

JUSTIN writes:

Speaking of Breivik’s parents, did you read about his mother, Wenche Behring? Not much in the establishment media about her, that is for sure, perhaps here is why. According to him, she has been debilitated by a sexually-transmitted disease. At the age of 48, she married a man who frequents hookers in Thailand, and she contracted herpes. (more…)

THE INTERVIEWS widely circulated today with Jens Breivik, the father of Anders Behring Breivik, offer a chilling portrait of a selfish, disengaged parent who viewed his son as nothing more than a passing acquaintance. He divorced his son’s mother when the boy was one and had little to do with him afterward, though he did initially attempt to gain custody of the boy. Regardless of how possessive the mother was of Anders, the father was clearly indifferent to his son as he became an adolescent and adult. In interviews, he expressed concern for his own safety and reputation.

Katherine Birbalsingh of The Telegraph makes similar points about the father’s attempt this week to disavow his son. She writes:

What I want to know is why his father isn’t feeling any sense of remorse for having failed his son. (more…)

ALAN writes:

In 1965, American teenagers listened to the “music” of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and other such groups. But grown-ups did not enjoy it and would not have dreamed of playing such “music” in retail stores or supermarkets.

Fifty years later: “Music” that grown-ups in 1965 regarded as raucous or juvenile is now routinely foisted on shoppers in such places. This is just one example of the infantilization of American culture – or, as Diana West describes it ever so accurately, the death of the grown-up. (more…)

HERE are Mayor Bloomberg’s remarks at the “wedding” of two aides on Sunday. Looking at this scene, one wonders how male friendship, let alone real marriage, can flourish in the modern world. How can men fight side by side and love each other on the battlefield of life when there is the possibility that one might stop and ask the other to marry?

The two little girls in their party dresses are a necessary addition to the scene. Without them, with just three men in suits standing at a podium, one would see even more clearly how absurd and unappealing, how dryly procedural, a wedding without a woman is. (more…)

  A. WRITES: I wish I had taken a picture the other day of a crow sitting on a stop sign in my rural neighborhood with something really huge in its mouth. Yup. Pizza, from the neighborhood pizza parlor.  I promise a picture if I see it again.

A British study reportedly showing that babies and young children under five are better off psychologically if their mothers are employed received widespread attention last week in the British press. Meanwhile an American report reviewing 30 years of research on the effects of day care came up with very different conclusions and was virtually ignored when it was released by the Heritage Foundation last month.

In her report, “The Effects of Day Care on the Social-Emotional Development of Children,” Jenet Jacob Erickson focused on the findings of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Study of Early Child Care Research Network from the early 1990s. This study of more than 1,300 children from 10 American communities evaluated both the home and child-care contexts from infancy through age 15 years and included videotaped interactions between children and mothers, as well as interviews with mothers, teachers and adolescents. Children were also observed in child-care settings.

Here are the key findings of Erikson’s review of the National Institute study and other research conducted during the past 30 years:

•Children who spend more hours per week in non-maternal child care are more likely to exhibit problematic social–behavioral adjustment, including less social competence and cooperation and more problem behaviors, negative moods, aggression, and conflict. In teachers’ reports of kindergartners’ social adjustment, the effect of hours spent in non-maternal care prior to kindergarten is comparable to the effect of poverty in predicting behavioral problems. (more…)

NO ONE who committs mass murder of innocents could reasonably be called a Christian. Yet the press has widely reported that Anders Breivik is Christian or a Christian “fundamentalist.”

Breivik himself denied it in his manifesto. Lawrence Auster writes, “Breivik makes it clear that he is what is known as a ‘cultural Christian.’ This is a very common stance today among conservative-leaning Europeans. Cultural Christians value and want to preserve certain aspects of Europe’s historic Christian culture, even as they plainly admit that that they are NOT believers in God, NOT believers in Christ, and NOT Christians. Which means that it is a gargantuan lie for the media to describe Breivik as a Christian, let alone as a fundamentalist Christian.”

(more…)

A NEW STUDY by British social researchers contends maternal employment in early childhood is psychologically beneficial for children. The study, which received prominent attention in the British press last week, is a dream come true for the liberal press and policy analysts, supposedly disproving the common sense belief – a belief held for all of human history – that maternal care of very young children is primary and important. The head researcher said children of mothers who do not work were more likely to suffer from social problems and “depression.”

According to The Guardian,

Katherine Rake, chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute charity, welcomed the research paper. “This study shows what mothers know intuitively. If you are able to get the balance right, your child and your career can both flourish.”

But this is not what mothers know intuitively. They know they cannot be in two places at the same time. As for those not able “to get the balance right?” Those who place toddlers and infants of necessity in the care of poorly-paid daycare workers? Tough luck. 

The fanfare surrounding the study was noticeably absent of critical thought. In truth, this new study cannot be taken seriously and may actually demonstrate the opposite of what it is believed to prove.

Researchers at University College London, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, tracked 19,000 white children born in 2000 and 2001 who were being followed as part of a larger study. The team looked at the children up until age five, making their sweeping claims even though psychologists and other observers of the human condition widely believe that the psychological effects of early childhood care do not always manifest themselves right away. (more…)

A READER writes:

I’m surprised that you have not commented on the July 14th airing of the show The Talk. The show features an all female panel, like The View, and after discussing the story of the Catherine Kieu, the woman who sexually mutilated her husband, they sit around and joke about it and say how fabulous and hysterical it is. (more…)

THE PHOTOGRAPHS now in wide circulation of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik show a man of immense grandiosity. Posing in uniforms or with weapons, looking straight at the camera and smiling with self-satisfaction, Breivik displays heroic pretensions that are in stark contrast to his actual life. According to this profile, Breivik spent much of his time playing video games, a world of risk-free, contained aggression. He does not appear to have done anything more heroic on the political scene than commenting at blogs. He did not run for office or even set up his own website. His crimes were against the defenseless: unarmed young people in bathing suits and office workers sitting at their desks.

Assuming he did act alone, here was a man with an overblown fantasy life revolving around the virtual world of video games and Internet websites. He now has the renown that matches the glorious self-image he cultivated there. That is one of the most disturbing aspects of his horrific crimes. He wanted to be famous and he is. (more…)

  THE FATHER of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behrig Breivik divorced the mother of Breivik when the boy was one and has been estranged from him for 16 years. Breivik's crimes, while extraordinary in every way, show the rage characteristic of a significant minority of men raised without fathers.  Anders, who was the center of a custody battle between his parents, became a discipline problem in his teen years. According to The Telegraph, the father, Jens Breivik, is a retired Norwegian diplomat and has been married three times. Anders Breivik's mother was his second wife. Presumably Jens Breivik did not try to intervene in his problem son's life after he was 16 years old.

FOR YEARS, New York Times writer Lisa Belkin has been an industrious purveyor of the view that whatever feminism says is good for women must be good for children too. Since feminism and its denial of innate sex differences has led with inexorable logic to the idea of same-sex “marriage,” it is no suprise that this weekend, when same-sex “marriage” becomes legal in New York, Mrs. Belkin weighs in with her views in a piece predictably titled, “For the Sake of the Children.” (more…)

JESSE POWELL writes:

Same-sex “marriage” is legal in New York State tomorrow. On the eve of this grand experiment, it is interesting to look at how family life is faring in the Empire State. In certain areas, it is not doing well at all, especially in upstate New York. New York’s lawmakers apparently did not notice the social problems that literally surround them before launching an attack on marital traditions. 

Like much of America, New York is a two-tier society, with marriage holding up among the higher functioning segments and in extreme disrepair among the lower functioning.

This report looks at five cities: New York City, America’s largest city; Rochester, a troubled city just south of Lake Ontario; Albany, the state’s capital; and Schenectady and Troy, small cities not far from Albany. All five of these cities share one thing in common, and that is a major decline in their white populations in absolute numbers since 1970. The declines in white populations, from 1970 to 2010, are as follows: New York, 55%; Rochester, 68%; Albany, 48%; Schenectady, 49%; and Troy, 41%.  (more…)