WOMEN will be boxing for the first time in the 2012 Olympics and the Amateur International Boxing Association has asked the female participants to wear skirts. Naturally, the women are up in arms. Yahoo Sports reports:

Three-time world champion Katie Taylor from Ireland does not want to wear something that she would find uncomfortable while fighting: [That’s right. Boxing never involves discomfort.]

“It’s a disgrace that they’re forcing some of the women to wear those mini-skirts. We should be able to wear shorts, just like the men. [And you should be walloped and suffer brain damage just like the men too. Isn’t one of the perks of being female the privilege not to box?]

“I won’t be wearing a mini-skirt. I don’t even wear mini-skirts on a night out, so I definitely won’t be wearing mini-skirts in the ring.” [I would be supremely surprised if you ever have a night out with a man regardless of what you wear.]

Who the heck cares whether these Amazons wear skirts or pink frou frous? Women don’t belong in the boxing ring. Period. Female boxers are about as interesting as a male synchronized swimmers. They are pretend boxers, acting their roles in the ridiculously drawn-out farce that is modern male and female relations. If only a director would emerge from the sidelines and say, “Cut! Alright, that’ll do. Let’s wrap this up and go home.”

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  WHEN I think of pink in its loveliness, I don't think of pink ribbons, pink lemonade, pink planes or the aggressive sentimentality of hot pink Blackberry covers, but of the Rosa Damascena of Pierre-Joseph Redouté, one of history's great botanical painters. The petals and thorns of this rose, which cannot be conveyed on a screen, are exactly as the most beautiful roses appear in the garden, their heads nodding under the weight of their flamboyant frills. They have a sleepy quality and are reminiscent of the roses in Hans Christian Andersen's “The Snow Queen," the flowers that reminded Gerda of her friend Kay. When Gerda cried in sorrow for her friend, her tears fell to the ground and rose bushes sprang up from the moistened earth. Redouté was born in 1759 in St-Hubert in the Begian Ardennes. His father Joseph worked as a painter and decorator in the local Abbey and came from a long line of craftsmen and artists. The family was not wealthy, but the young Pierre-Joseph was befriended by a monk at the Abbey, who was an avid naturalist and herbalist. He took the boy on walks in the woods and meadows, where they looked for medicinal plants for the Abbey pharmacy. Thus was born a botanical painter. Redouté would eventually go on to the Versailles and patronage under Marie-Antoinette and, later, Empress Joséphine. Though prints of Redouté works can still be found in elegant homes, there is something intensely rustic about them upon closer examination. The glory…

A.M. writes:

Your views of our culture, and of traditionalism in general, are simply arresting. You wrote:

“A parade was once for honoring or commemorating heroes. Now parades are for freaks, misfits, sluts and monsters. It must be overwhelming for children.” (more…)

  SEE the ongoing discussion of fundraising for breast cancer. Breast cancer research is a worthy and important cause. Breast cancer is a terrible evil. But why do women seem to show far more interest in their own health than that of others? And, since this is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, why are we not insistently reminded by its promoters that abortion, oral contraceptives, a failure to breastfeed and low fertility are believed to be major causes of breast cancer? Pink ribbons, pink t-shirts and pink lemonade are well and good if you can stand that kind of thing, but the important facts about breast cancer are even better.

GIRL SCOUTS of America has joined the growing list of cultural institutions that have reached the point of no return. According to NBC News and Yahoo, Girl Scouts spokeswomen in Colorado say it is now official policy for the organization to accept “transgendered” boys.

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LYDIA SHERMAN writes:

I have to tell you something about our nearest small town. I drive through the main street when I come or go from my home in a farming area. The town characters walk around during the day. One is a man who thinks he is a sheriff in the Wild West. (more…)

KENDRA writes:

I was watching a football game at a restaurant the other night, and noticed that some of the male players were wearing light pink shoes and other accessories. My husband told me that it is a campaign for breast cancer awareness, and I found this to be absurd. (more…)

PAUL writes:

The Catholic Church is heading towards what its own Pope wrote against in his Catechism: 

57 This state of division into many nations is at once cosmic, social and religious. It is intended to limit the pride of fallen humanity united only in its perverse ambition to forge its own unity as at Babel. But, because of sin, both polytheism and the idolatry of the nation and of its rulers constantly threaten this provisional economy with the perversion of paganism.

A universal economy is paganism. To expect everyone to agree to what is economically valuable, and what is not, is to forge another Babel. (more…)

  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…)