THE DISCUSSION on horror in popular culture continues here. Thomas F. Bertonneau writes: The Body Snatchers is superbly horrifying because the horror is predominantly moral, the loss of self through absorption in an emotionless collective, the annihilation of love and family.

  A STUDY by a California non-profit found that 64 percent of children under eight in households with incomes less than $30,000 have televisions in their bedrooms.  The screen is the cheapest babysitter ever known to mankind. And the worst babysitter too. When was the last time you heard this form of child abuse discussed in a church? Where are the moral leaders who care about the young? When have you ever heard a feminist express alarm over the disappearance of childhood?

YANI writes:

I too am bewildered by people’s interest in the death culture. 

You may be interested in the latest manifestation of all things zombie. Last weekend, Brisbane hosted its 6th Zombie Walk to raise funds for brain research. I know of it through a woman I met at work who took her 4-year-old son along. When someone asked, quite naturally, “Was he scared?” the mother looked at the questioner as if she’d lost her mind. “Of course not!” she said, “He knows it’s only grown-ups dressing up!” (more…)

BRUCE writes:

The death of Qaddafi can be compared with the death of Saddam to demonstrate how the Left always tries to use the mob to avoid moral responsibility for its actions. 

The Left does not (like the Right) itself inflict the punishments that it feels that its enemies deserve.  (more…)

HOW MANY so-called atheists can endure true suffering with their beliefs intact? The Australian philosopher David Stove could not. In this piece, his son, R.J. Stove, movingly describes his father’s last months alive:

From the day of [my mother’s] stroke to the day of her death, almost eight years afterwards, she was in twenty-four-hour-a-day nursing care. By that time my father had long since left the scene. Diagnosed with esophageal cancer, and convinced beyond all reason that his announcement of this diagnosis to Mum had brought about her stroke, Dad simply unraveled. So, to a lesser extent, did those watching him.

All Dad’s elaborate atheist religion, with its sacred texts, its martyrs, its church militant; all his ostentatious tough- mindedness; all his intellectual machinery; all these things turned to dust. Convinced for decades of his stoicism, he now unwittingly demonstrated the truth of Clive James’s cruel remark: “we would like to think we are stoic…but would prefer a version that didn’t hurt.”

Already an alcoholic, he now made a regular practice of threatening violence to himself and others. (more…)

BRADLEY H. writes:

Raised a Southern Baptist, I was. Often I’m intrigued by Catholicism – certainly I am by adherents like you. But what to make of the Church’s (viz., the Pope’s) approach to Islam? And now, what to make of the Church’s stance on the New World Order? (more…)

CONTINUING the discussion on horror, Daniel H., from the blog “Out of Sleep,” writes:

I think part of the explanation for the popularity of zombies, at least, is very simple and close to the surface. Zombies are animated corpses without souls. They are shaped like people, but they are not people because they have no spark of life within them. (more…)

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

I have a somewhat different understanding from “Spengler’s” of the sado-masochistic cinema-entertainments that go by the name of horror movies. Taking pleasure in violence comes naturally to human beings. St. Augustine recognizes this in his comments on infancy in The Confessions, Book I. An infant is an inarticulate tyrant who would compel and punish if only he could. Child rearing is thus the essential program of taming the savage, of socializing and humanizing it, of coaxing it to internalize morality.

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.

(more…)

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…)