Manners and Morals

Secular Liberal Sees ‘Consensus’ on Redefining Marriage as Terrifying

May 9, 2013
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Secular Liberal Sees ‘Consensus’ on Redefining Marriage as Terrifying

Most Americans who have an opinion about the current obsession to redefine marriage tend to think the only people standing athwart history yelling “STOP!” are conservative religious folk. They would be wrong. Certainly a large majority of people who embrace traditional morality based on revealed religion do not accept the notion that marriage is a malleable social construct that can be willy-nilly defined any which way we choose. But redefining marriage is such a bad idea, and as importantly is being done in such a…

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NY Times Review Perverts a Baroque Opera

May 8, 2013
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NY Times Review Perverts a Baroque Opera

A review in yesterday's New York Times exemplifies an error I've found to be quite common these days: the idea that strong affection for a member the same sex is equivalent to homosexuality. This line of thinking degrades elevated feelings into a category of the merely bestial: the sex drive (not that there's anything wrong with that). . . .

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Annette Funicello, 1942-2013

April 8, 2013
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Annette Funicello, 1942-2013

Annette Funicello, famous as an early Mousketeer and as the star of a string of 1960s beach movies, died today at the age of 70. I remember her well. I wasn’t one of those who had a crush on her, since her wave crested before I hit adolescence, but I was well aware of her. After working many years with Disney she got cast with Frankie Avalon in a string of silly beach blanket movies. She also had a successful career as a singer. Through…

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Portrait of a Capitalist: PBS Show ‘Mr. Selfridge’

March 31, 2013
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Portrait of a Capitalist: PBS Show ‘Mr. Selfridge’

The new series on 'Masterpiece Classic' on PBS, 'Mr. Selfridge," is a balanced, sympathetic, and wise portrait of a capitalist, a welcome example of thoughtfulness in these politicized and ignorant times. . . .

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Motown in the Morgue

March 19, 2013
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Motown in the Morgue

My first job after graduating from college was in Detroit. Prior to graduation, my high-school and college classmates and I would discuss our respective future plans — to a person we all declared we’d never take a job in Detroit. Once the mortar boards and graduation gowns were packed away, however, and wedding bells and wet nappies weighed-in on economic reality,At first, I lived in Dearborn, but eventually find an affordable house to rent in the Warrandale section on Detroit’s west side. In 1985, I…

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The Tyranny of Contemporary Cliches

March 13, 2013
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The Tyranny of Contemporary Cliches

There’s a certain type of mystery plot out there that is really starting to get on my nerves. The plot isn’t confined to a single sub-genre. The book can be set in a charming English village where an elderly lady plays the role of amateur sleuth. It can just as easily be a tough-as-nails hardboiled story about a tough wise-cracking PI. But for some reason, many authors think it’s a clever idea to use the following twist ending: the killer is gay. What does the…

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AP Redefines ‘Husband,’ ‘Wife’

February 22, 2013
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AP Redefines ‘Husband,’ ‘Wife’

An Associated Press internal memo that suggested the company's widely used journalism style guide would not recommend the use of the terms husband and wife to describe same-sex couples raised much controversy in the past week. As was to be expected, AP backed down under the withering fire from homosexual activist groups . . .

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Children Die, and Still They Ignore the Family

February 12, 2013
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Children Die, and Still They Ignore the Family

The blindness of the obvious to the modern liberal is astounding, but never surprising. I just happened to see an article today by DeWayne Wickham, an African-American, about the gun violence that threatens blacks. This national tragedy has been all but overlooked by our progressive cultural elite, except when it becomes impossible to ignore, as when recently a young black girl, 15, was gunned down in Chicago, the young black murder capital of America. This precious young lady had only the week before been to…

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The Population Bomb Bombed as Children Became a Choice

February 6, 2013
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The Population Bomb Bombed as Children Became a Choice

Growing up in the 1970s, my teenage years, and then into the 1980s, Western media proclaimed loudly and often that we were in the midst of a population bomb, and that if we weren’t careful the earth would suffocate under the weight of those teeming masses. By the 1980s millions would starve, we were told, because the earth just couldn’t sustain all those stomachs that needed to be fed. Thomas Malthus was alive and well. As Paul Ehrlich’s unjustly famous book’s subtitle put it, “Population…

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Recovering Homosexual? Trouble on the Way, No Doubt

February 4, 2013
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Recovering Homosexual? Trouble on the Way, No Doubt

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the “girlfriend” Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o never met, told Dr. Phil that he is working to "recover from homosexuality," which he compared to being a recovering drug addict. Oh boy, he’s really stepped in it now! Doesn’t he know you can’t “recover” from something you’re born with, something as genetically determined as the color of your skin or the color of your eyes? . . .

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Sexualization Blues in the New Britain—and What About the USA?

January 28, 2013
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Sexualization Blues in the New Britain—and What About the USA?

"A friend’s daughter recently started at a highly regarded boarding school. When her mother asked how she was enjoying the mixed-sex environment, the girl said quietly: 'You have to give the boys oral sex or they get cross.' Reeling with shock, the mum protested that her darling daughter did not have to do anything of the sort. 'Oh yes you do,' replied the girl. 'And you have to shave down there or the boys don’t like it.' The girl in question is not some brazen,…

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Te’o Hoax Tars Notre Dame with Embarrassment

January 17, 2013
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Te’o Hoax Tars Notre Dame with Embarrassment

Manti Te'o is in for a world of embarrassment, to be sure, in light of the revelation that his "late" girlfriend was a fiction. But there's more to the story, as Notre Dame's actions in this and other incidents throughout the past year bring its integrity into question and another major American institution shows clay feet. Corruption among a nation's authorities can undermine public confidence rapidly.

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A Nostalgic Look at the ’50s

January 3, 2013
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A Nostalgic Look at the ’50s

Mark Hendrickson writes: Why do so many intellectuals disparage the ’50s? Bashing “the man in the gray flannel suit” became an intellectual cause celebre. Writers vied to see who could heap the most scorn on the allegedly boring conformity of that receding decade, drawing supercilious caricatures of middle-class men and women of the era as superficial, plastic figures. My view of the ’50s is more benign. I recall it as a happy, safe time—almost a Golden Age in American history

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Billy Wilder’s ‘The Apartment’—A Caustic, Comic Look at America’s Changing Morality

December 31, 2012
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Billy Wilder’s ‘The Apartment’—A Caustic, Comic Look at America’s Changing Morality

My recommendation for New Year's Eve viewing, if you're inclined to watch a movie: 'The Apartment,' directed by Billy Wilder. Turner Classic Movies is showing it tonight beginning at 10 p.m. EST. It's one of Billy Wilder's best films, and it won several Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine star as a mismatched couple in New York City in 1960, a time when the nation's values were changing rapidly. Wilder catches the enormity of the shift in moral…

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‘How Great Is That?’: SNL Audience Delights in Race Hatred

December 9, 2012
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‘How Great Is That?’: SNL Audience Delights in Race Hatred

In his monologue near the beginning of last night’s episode of NBC-TV’s Saturday Night Live, host Jamie Foxx said  that in his forthcoming movie Django  Unchained, directed by Quentin Tarantino, Foxx’s character is a former slave who “kill[s] all the white people in the movie. How great is that?” This allusion to mass murder motivated by race hatred was greeted by the audience with delighted laughter and screams of approbation. See it here:

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