One of the most important trends of the past half-century was the self-esteem movement in education. The idea was that students learn more if they are told that they’re smart and capable of learning more. In theory, it made sense to a lot of people. Unfortunately, test scores tumbled, and students are doing more poorly than ever on standardized tests, even though the tests have been made easier than before. Meanwhile, U.S. students have rated themselves as doing just great academically. Students in Japan and Korea have been scoring much higher than U.S. students yet do not rate their achievment as high as Americans ratethemselves. Now we find that this wonderful self-esteem movement has been fostering a narcissistic culture, a society in which people increasingly feel aggressive, unsympathetic, and disconnected from one another. Anyone looking at contemporary American culture, especially that part of it which is geared toward and inhabited by the young, could easily see a rising tide of narcissism, of course, and now there is scientific evidence to back it up. The Associated Press reports: Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that
Monthly Archives: February 2007
The Black Ku Klux Klan
The old joke used to be that a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged. The increasing lawlessness of American athletes has a lot of liberals reconsidering their willingness to excuse outrageous behavior as simply an inevitable byproduct of poverty, or worse, as an alternative culture that has a validity of its own. Player representatives to the NFL Players Association—the players’ union—have asked the organization to crack down on players involved in criminal behavior, and Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander, a liberal himself, writes about the increasing mood of disenchantment with wealthy young thugs making trouble in public. Violence seems to break out all too often where prominent athletes gather, in recent years, and the incidence is clearly rising. Telander has had enough, and he senses that many others who hold liberal views like him are coming to feel the same way, realizing that the behavior of these wealthy, privileged thugs reflects a horrible reality of life in American neighborhoods: I sense a change in the air. I sense for the first time that Americans — black, white, brown — have had enough of the nonsense from the sports and entertainment world, enough of the thuggery and violence
Is “Amazing Grace” Irreligious?
In an article on William Wilberforce and Amazing Grace in the Opinion Journal, Charlotte Allen of the religious website Beliefnet.com argues that the movie covers up the Christian foundations of William Wilberforce’s political activities that led to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire: Alas, a lot of people watching "Amazing Grace," Michael Apted’s just-released film, may get the impression–perhaps deliberately fostered by Mr. Apted–that Wilberforce was a mostly secular humanitarian whose main passion was not Christian faith but politics and social justice. This is an utterly astonishing claim. I categorically disagree with Ms. Allen’s assessment of the film. To give evidence of an absence in a film is difficult, of course, but it is significant that she doesn’t give any examples of specific instances in which Amazing Grace slights religion. All she provides is an interview statement by the film’s director, Michael Apted, to Christianity Today in which he clearly meant to convey that he wanted to avoid preachiness in the film. That is a statement for which I would commend him. In great contrast with Allen’s assessment, the reviewer for Christianity Today enthusiastically endorsed the film: Similar to Chariots of Fire and Shadowlands in tone, Amazing Grace
Why the Oscars Don’t Matter at All
The AP story recounting last night’s Oscar ceremony goes right to the heart of why the Academy Awards no longer matter the industry has become so insular, complacent, and distant from its audience that it regularly nominates for award mostly movies that hardly anyone has seen. The AP story mentions only the Best Picture nominations in this regard, and does so only at the end of the article, a destination to which few people will persevere, but this fact is, if anything, even more true of the other major awards, for performances, directing, screenwriting, etc. The message to the audience: we’re smarter and better than you. AP writes, Collectively, the five best-picture nominees had drawn a total domestic theatrical audience of about 38.5 million people, about a third the number of fans who have gone to see the contenders in recent peak years when such blockbusters as "Gladiator" or "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" have won. The day when Hollywood and its audiences largely agreed on what is good is long gone. Hollywood is still humming along because it continues to make audience-pleasing films while its best and brightest talents fool about with their arrogant,
Amazing “Amazing Grace”
An early scene in Amazing Grace establishes the film’s themes in a way that is more subtle than it may initially seem. Young William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) confronts a man who is beating an exhausted horse as it lies inert in the mud, in an impossible and heartless attempt to get it to do its appointed work. But it is not simply Wilberforce’s compassion that is at work here—that would be an insufferable cliche. Instead of responding to the man’s threatening reaction with anger or accusations or pleas for sympathy for the exhausted animal, Wilberforce confronts him with straight facts, pure reason, and an appeal to the man’s self-interest: he tells the man that if he lets the horse rest for a half hour or so, it will be ready to carry on. The man grudgingly realizes the sense in this, and drops his whip into the mud. This is precisely what Wilberforce would go on to do as a Member of Parliament and the man who led the Empire to abolish slavery. His great cause was to bring to light the facts of slavery and persuade his countrymen to do the right thing. Amazing Grace is certainly suffused with
“Monk” and “Psych”
The USA Network mystery-comedy series Monk and Psych are both entering the season’s stretch run, with their penultimate episodes appearing tonight beginning at 9 EST. The season finales will premiere next week. Monk remains superb and inventive, and Psych has become a sold, entertaining mystery comedy program with real, enjoyably challenging puzzles. In my earlier comments on Psych on this site, I observed that the show was trying too hard to be quirky, and I pointed out that "the best thing about a mystery is the mystery." It seems that the producers discovered this timeless truth in the course of the season. The final episode of the first half of the season, which premiered last August, included a solid mystery and incorporated the central characters’ eccentricities into the story, instead of trying to do it the other way round (which never works). (See my review here.) The producers have continued this approach in the second half of the season. It is important, however, to acknowledge that the best mystery stories don’t just have interesting puzzles, characters, conflicts, and social implications. They also have very interesting detectives. Xavier Lechard, a French mystery aficionado, astutely observed that "the most famous and enduring
Important Notice About the Academy Awards
The movie industry’s most important annual moment, the Academy Awards ceremony, will be shown on television around the world, witnessed by over a billion people, this Sunday night. It is the night when Hollywood honors the films and performances that best represent the industry’s self-image as the most decent, thoughtful, intelligent, talented, and beautiful people on the earth—and powerfully confirms the public’s astute perception of them as the world’s most amazing collection of disturbingly charismatic circus freaks.
A Free Ride Is Not Enough: Obama
A very good article by Jon Friedman at Marketwatch points out that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) certainly has nothing to complain about his treatment by the media, even though the Senator and presidential candidate has seen fit to do exactly that. Friedman writes, It seems that the Illinois Democrat has a problem, though. Politico.com, the impressive new political-news site, ran this headline Feb. 12: "Obama Casts Peevish Eye on National Media." The story behind the story is this, as Friedman notes: Ben Smith’s story on the Politico site began this way: Obama "used his first news conference after announcing his run for president to accuse the media of ignoring his substantive record and falsely depicting him as a lightweight." It quoted Obama as saying: "The problem is that that’s not what you guys have been reporting on. You’ve been reporting on how I look in a swimsuit." Friedman correctly observes that this seems a strange complaint from a man who has received such fawning, unconditional admiration from the mainstream U.S. media: Taken at face value, this astounds me. I can’t remember the last time journalists gave a White House candidate such a supersonic push to enable him or her
The Great Hate
At the RedState blog, Hunter Baker provides a very good summary of what the Great Hate directed at former NBA star Tim Hardaway is all about: Every living American probably has received their instructions by now: "Tim Hardaway has checked out of polite society. He is not to be rehabilitated by any means. Besides, he is about five abject apologies away from being nearly apologetic enough. He has sinned against our new god who is named Tolerance. A sin against tolerance is worse in its social stigma than theft, extortion, insider trading, perjury, and spousal abuse. The Tolerance taboo is broken by hating. The penalty for breaking the taboo is to be hated. A hate for a hate as the good Book says in a socially relevant and proper interpretation." Exactly. This whole thing is siimply an open effort at intimidation, against not just Tim Hardaway but against anyone who would question the elites’ forced consensus on any issue the latter deems important. If this situation reminds you of a private-sector version of the government’s activities in 1984, you understand the situation correctly. You have been warned.
Hardaway Controversy: Michael Medved Joins the Fray
As Carl Olsen noted in our comments section, writer and radio host Michael Medved has weighed in on the Tim Hardaway controversy, agreeing with the points I’ve made here. Independently arriving at most of the same conclusions I have outlined in my analyses on the subject on this site, Medved agrees with my point that Hardaway was correct to apologize for using the word "hate" in describing his feelings about homosexuals, and with my observation that most people feel fundamentally uncomfortable with the presence of homosexuality: Hardaway appropriately apologized for his harsh remarks, but many (if not most) Americans no doubt share his instinctive reluctance to share showers and locker rooms with open homosexuals. That reluctance also explains the controversial Defense Department policy that prevents out-of-the-closet gays from serving in the United States military. Medved also points out that Hardaway’s discomfort at the idea of being undressed around homosexuals is a perfectly sensible attitude: In the wake of the nearly-universal condemnation of Tim Hardaway’s statements to a radio interviewer, the substantive issue remains. Is it a reasonable for an NBA basketball player (or a soldier in basic training, for that matter) to feel uncomfortable sharing intimate quarters with a homosexual,
Broussard on Homosexuality and Tolerance
As we noted yesterday, in the post immediately below, most of the intellectual-political-culltural publications on the right have been curiously silent regarding the Tim Hardaway controversy. Interestingly, the most forthright defense of Hardaway’s position from any writer other than your intrepid correspondent has come from ESPN.com’s Chris Broussard. Actually, Broussard’s column was posted on his ESPN blog on the very day Hardaway made his comments, before the controversy broke. Hence, Broussard defended Hardaway’s position without actually mentioning Hardaway, for the very good reason that Hardaway hadn’t made his comments yet. Broussard opens the piece by saying that he thinks the NBA is ready for an openly homosexual player. He doesn’t believe that all players will embrace the reality by any means, but that they will "tolerate" it. He notes that most of the comments by NBA players about former NBA player John Amaechi’s disclosure of his homosexuality have been very cautious and politically correct. This publicly welcoming attitude, however, is not what the vast majority of players, or American males in general, really feel, Broussard observed: Go talk to guys at an open gym in your neighborhood, and lots of the comments won’t be so polite. But America has become
Eerie Silence on the Right Regarding Hardaway Controversy
I’ve done a quick check of the major intellectual magazines on the right—such as National Review, The American Spectator, The Weekly Standard, The American Conservative, Christianity Today, First Things, The American, Chronicles, etc., plus the Opinion Journal, TCS Daily, FrontPage magazine, and Focus on the Family sites, and I found not a single article on the controversy over former NBA star Tim Hardaway’s comments opposing homosexuality. This is rather surprising given that Hardaway’s comments set off a fusillade of hatred toward him and a blatant attempt to destroy not only his reputation but his livelihood as an example to all who would question the elite’s attitude on this matter or any other it finds particularly important to its agenda. This is very interesting given that on the whole these excellent publications cover just about everything of any import (and many of very little significance), including a wide variety of cultural questions. One can find reviews of the new movie Ghost Rider on several of these sites, for example. On the Hardaway matter, however, there has been an eerie silence on the right, even though the major media have been all over the story for the past week, and have been
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