FEMINIST activists, including the untiring Wicked Witch of the West, Gloria Steinem, claim the Democratic National Committee is discriminating against mothers for not allowing children on the floor of the upcoming convention in Charlotte. That’s right. You heard it. After doing everything possible to trivialize motherhood and promote child neglect, the National Organization of Women is now up in arms because mothers can’t take their children to a political convention. (more…)

  SEE the outstanding comments in the entry "Why Boys Don't Read," including Kevin M.'s remarks about his childhood reading and the pleasure he took in the books of Alistair MacLean, (above) the Scottish novelist who wrote thrillers and adventure stories, including The Guns of Navarone, H.M.S. Ulysses and Lawrence of Arabia.

VINCENT C. writes:

On October 18, 2012, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, head of the Archdiocese of New York, will host the annual Alfred E. Smith Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. Begun in 1945 by the then Archbishop, later Cardinal, Francis Spellman, the dinner was intended to honor the life of Alfred E. Smith, who served as Governor of New York, and in 1928 was nominated to be the Democratic Party’s candidate for President, the first Roman Catholic to be chosen for that position. He lost to Herbert Hoover.

Smith was a very devout Catholic, whose practice of his faith permeated his entire life. The dinner, which was initially established to raise funds for the Foundling Home for orphans and abandoned children, has raised tens of millions of dollars, currently used for financing at least 13 separate Catholic charities, as well as becoming a “must attend” for aspiring politicians who seek national office, although President Truman chose not to attend, and John Cardinal O’Connor refused to invite Clinton after his signing of the bill permitting late abortions. In 1980, President Carter was booed during the ceremony. This year, the major speakers are Mitt Romney and, believe it or not, Barack Hussein Obama; yes, the same man who has unleashed the furies of government against the Roman Church and other serious religious organizations in a way unprecedented in U.S. history. (more…)

AT Memoria Press, Martin Cochran considers why boys are turned off by reading. Cochran identifies perhaps the single greatest reason. Boys are discouraged from heroic literature. He writes:

It is now well-recognized that boys are not reading. What is the problem? Most commentators want to say that boys have an aversion to books. But the problem is quite the opposite: books—modern books, that is—have an aversion to boys.

A recent edition of The New York Times Sunday Book Review featured a Robert Lipsyte article that attempts to address this problem. Here is the proffered solution: (more…)

A 33-year-old Nebraska woman prompted hundreds of people to rally in the state’s capital last month after she claimed she was attacked in her home by three men who carved anti-homosexual slurs into her skin. Police said today that the crime was a fake. According to KLKN news: (more…)

THIS 19th century Japanese print by Kobayashi Kiyochika is discussed at the interesting blog Floating Along in Japanese Prints. Gina Collia-Suzuki writes:

Hana Moyō (Patterns for Flowers), by Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915), is a series of triptychs published in 1896, each one of which features a beautiful woman from a specific historical era set against a distant background scene. The way the figure in the foreground is shown close-up in contrast to the smaller figures depicted in the background of each triptych makes this an unusual and striking set of designs. The title refers both to the beauties themselves (the flowers) and the patterns of their beautifully decorated garments. It’s a stunning set and one of my favourites. It’s also very interesting for anyone wanting to compare the modes of dress and arrangement of hair throughout different periods of Japanese history. (more…)

  IN AN ENTRY on a fairly typical weekend of murder and mayhem in Chicago, a commenter at VFR, Wayne Lutton, writes: Our classical FM station breaks for NPR “news” at midnight. They regularly mention that “Twelve people were killed in Kabul…. so many were killed in a suicide bombing in Beirut…. people were killed in a town outside of *** in such-and-such country which has been wracked by sectarian violence.” The nameless killings in Chicago are reported in the Tribune in much the same way. But I can’t recall when NPR reported the nightly/weekend killings in Chicago at all, with even the detachment with which they relate the growing casualties in the Middle East.

JANE R. writes:

Speaking of Condoleeza Rice have you seen the new NFL clothing line advertisement? Yes, Condi is modeling for the new line of NFL sports apparel. Hard to believe that a past U.S. Secretary of State could reemerge as a model, but it’s true.

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THOUGH WOMEN have been playing golf at Augusta National Golf Club for years as guests, the club refused to admit women as paying members — until now. The chains have been loosened, and two women — Condoleeza Rice and banker Darla Moore — have been admitted as members. (more…)

CATHIE CLINE, a vice president of marketing for Mattel, Inc. recently told The New York Times: “One of the great things about Barbie is that she continues to push the envelope. Barbie doesn’t worry about what other people think.”

Maybe Barbie doesn’t care what other people think but Mattel might worry after it begins selling its transvestite Barbie in December. Here again a major American corporation defies its own best interests. Drag queens don’t have children. People who dislike drag queens produce lots of little girls who play with dolls.

(more…)

BRAD C. writes:

You might have already come across this column in The Telegraph, but I thought I would pass it along.

The author, Catherine Hakim, is a prominent British sociologist, and she argues that allowing open extramarital affairs is the way to happiness. That an academic sociologist would argue for this conclusion is not surprising. What I found surprising about this column was the way it was written: the author’s flippant tone, the seeming obviousness of her conclusions, the moral equivalency between eating meals in the home as opposed to at a restaurant and having sex in the home as opposed to with an extramarital partner, the reliance on economists’ quantification of frequency of sex into units of economic utility . . .  (more…)

IF you haven’t yet read  “The Tyranny of Artistic Modernism” by Mark Anthony Signorelli and Nikos A. Salingaros at The New English Review, I highly recommend it. The authors describe modern art as a totalitarian cult of ugliness. They write:

Whereas earlier traditions of artistic creation embraced symmetry within complexity, modernism has embraced extreme simplicity, dislocation, and imbalance. Whereas earlier traditions sought to bring pleasure to an audience — “to teach and delight,” as Horace’s famous dictum would have it — modern art attempts to “nauseate” or “brutalize” an audience (the terms are from Jacques Barzun’s The Use and Abuse of Art). Whereas pre-modern architecture employed scale and ornament, modern architecture aggressively promotes gigantisms and barrenness. Whereas classical literature was grounded in regular grammar and public imagery, modern literature routinely resorts to distortions of syntax and esotericism. (more…)

MY parents did something when I was young that would be unthinkable to today’s hovering, safety-conscious parents. My two younger twin sisters ate dinner in the kitchen by themselves while we — my parents and their other five children — ate in the dining room. (more…)

SJF writes:

As I’ve mentioned before, we homeschool our six children. One of the subjects we emphasize is history, especially American history. Whenever we travel, we prepare the children ahead of time for historical sites. So, for example, last spring, I took my 12- and 10-year-old to Washington, D.C. so they could visit the sites they had studied over the past year, such as Mt. Vernon.

We are about to leave on summer vacation, and will head into the Colorado Rockies. (more…)

EDWARD BARTLETT, of Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), sends the following summary of recent events on college campuses under the new U.S. Department of Education sexual assault directive.

Civil Liberties Took a Beating on College Campuses

The first full academic year following the Department of Education’s release of its Sexual Assault Directive has come to a close. The Directive was announced by the Office for Civil Rights on April 4, 2011 without prior notice or opportunity for public comment. Two days later, civil rights expert Wendy Kaminer deplored the “authoritarian impulse” that gave rise to the Directive and predicted it would occasion, in her words, “tragic deprivations of liberty.” (more…)