For those who have yet to understand that multiculturalism is nothing of the sort and is merely cover for the continual denigration of Western Christian civilization in the ongoing internal effort toward its eventual overthrow, the latest news from Europe ought to do a good deal of convincing.
Omniculture
Norman Mailer and the Hipster Cataclysm
Novelist-journalist Norman Mailer has died at age 84, according to his literary executor. Malier, known for his interesting but often overly dense prose, puzzling choices of story material, combative journalism, "existential" philosophisizing, and aggressive self-assertiveness in his personal life, burst on the scene at the age of 25 in 1948 with a well-written, critically acclaimed, and popular debut novel, The Naked and the Dead. Intelligent, wily, handsome, charismatic, and highly personable when he wanted to be, Mailer was the embodiment of the "hipster" culture that arose after World War II, in which authors such as he, Gore Vidal, Jack Kerouac, and Stanley Baldwin rebelled against the overly bureaucratized and stifling, government-dominated society that had arisen during the first half of the twentieth century and found its greatest expression during World War II, when nearly everything in American society was under control of the national government.
The Oppressive Realities of the Sexual Revolution
One of the most important presumably unintended consequences of the Sexual Revolution of the second half of the twentieth century has been the increasing dominance of male desires and a corresponding diminution of the value of women’s ways of viewing sex. The opening of all doors ensures that men, who by nature tend to pursue a variety of sexual partners, will drive the agenda, and women, who are by nature better fitted for long-term partnerships, will simply have to accommodate them. Perpetuation of the species ensures that men who spread their genetic characteristics widely will greatly affect the gene pool, and women who are able to take care of their children well—which at least in earlier times was much easier if a man was around to help—will be similarly successful. Hence there is an innate tension in relations between the sexes: there are centrifugal forces at work, but at its best human sexuality ties couples and families together. The development of moral codes pertaining to such matters helped the species thrive. What both men and women give up in freedom they obtain in greater success in contributing children for the future.
Master Storyteller
Critic John J. Miller has published a very informative interview with Robert E. Howard scholar Rusty Burke on National Review Online, which merits attention. The excerpts below provide a good sense of why the underappreciated writer of the Conan the Barbarian stories deserves more consideration. Howard wrote for the pulps in a variety of genres, and modern-day readers are rediscovering his non-Conan writings and realizing that he was above all a master storyteller. Particularly praiseworthy is Burke’s emphasis on the importance of story in narrative fiction, which reflects criticisms made in the prior century by G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and other such luminaries:
Why Johnny Doesn’t Read
Men read far fewer books than women today. That’s a documented fact, and the gap is becoming bigger. Particularly weak is men’s reading of fiction. It’s pretty much women’s domain these days, while men, when they do read, gravitate toward history and biography. Why this is, nobody seems to know. Men used to read books, but today we are unusually reluctant to do so.
ABC Is “Gayest” TV Network—Study
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has declared that the U.S. television networks are not "gay" enough but that Disney-owned ABC is getting close. The organization, which has been highly successful at bullying corporations into supporting a radical pro-homosexual agenda, issued its first report on the matter after analyzing "the number of ‘impressions,’ or occurrences, of gay characters, discussions or themes counted during 4,693 hours of programming examined from June 2006 through May 2007," according to Reuters:
Penn and Willis, a Study in Contrasts
Two stories in the news vividly encapsulate the astonishing gulf between left and right today. First, actor Sean Penn in Venezuela, where he applauded Marxist, America-hating President Hugo Chavez. AP reports: Chavez met privately with the 46-year-old actor for two hours Thursday, praising him as being "brave" for urging Americans to impeach President Bush. That’s bravery, all right. Penn languishes in prison to this very day, beaten brutally hour after hour, for those statements, as he would in Cuba or Venezuela.
TV Tackles the Sensate Culture
Summer has become the main season for cable TV networks to premiere new series and specials, as the broadcast networks give themselves over to reruns and game shows on the assumption that nobody wants to watch television on warm summer nights. That’s probably a good bet—and certainly a good thing if true—and it has a further benefit in that the cable networks tend to be a little more creative than the broadcast majors in the kinds of series they offer. Chasing a smaller audience allows them to be more adventurous in what they’ll try—and sometimes they succeed. Two good examples are AMC-TV’s Mad Men and TNT’s Saving Grace, both of which premiered in the past few days.
“Hot Ghetto Mess” TV Program Under Fire
At least two companies have pulled their ads from the upcoming July 25 premiere of the Black Entertainment Television (BET) program Hot Ghetto Mess which is based on the popular website of the same name. Expressing the same attitude as the website, the program will show viewer-submitted videos of stupid things people do, with an emphasis on the black community. It will also feature comedy, pictures, music, and man-on-the-street interviews to "shine a spotlight on prevalent images in pop culture and examine what role they play in American lifestyle," as the BET web page for the program puts it. It will feature, according to the BET site, "shaking booties, thug life, baby-mama drama and pimped-out high schoolers." In short, in showing the stupidity and ignorance of many Americans, Hot Ghetto Mess will do precisely what a good many shows directed at a broad audience do, but will be directed toward black Americans.
The Great Disruption—Is There Any Hope of Deliverance?
In an article ostensibly considering the literary legacy of science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein, John Derbyshire veers off into an interesting discussion of the current American culture. Derbyshire’s conclusion is that a great separation of American society has taken place since the 1950s: America has always had elites, of course, and we have always had an underclass of some kind. Both seem to be much bigger now than they were then, though. Furthermore, if you subtracted off the elites and the underclass in Heinlein’s time, what was left—the great middle—was far more homogenous then than it is now, its members much better acquainted with each other. The social distance between (say) a doctor and (say) a cop, was smaller then than it is now
Movies for Good Girls
A new wave of movies aimed at young girls is coming, starting this Friday with the theatrical release of Nancy Drew. The director of that film, Andrew Fleming, points out that the recent preteen and teen culture presented models of behavior very different from that of the children at which they have been aimed and which most of their parents would endorse. The LA Times reports the good news that this is about to change somewhat:
Anti-Male, Anti-Marriage “Humor”
Jenny Morse is an excellent libertarian writer and thinker, with a Ph.D. in economics, who holds to traditional moral positions and points out that government in the United States is a huge factor contributing to the undermining of the moral values that make freedom, economic productivity, and social progress possible. Jenny has written a very pointed and correct letter to the editor in response to a syndicated cartoon by Berk Breathed. I reprint it here for your edification:
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