Category: Social Analysis

Found while flipping through the Great Quotes file:

"It may be that the greatest proof of the effectiveness of social disapproval is its demonstrated ability to turn on itself." –Judith Martin

How true it is that the only socially disapproved sin these days is Social Disapproval, which is sometimes indiscriminately referred to as Judgmentalism.

Who is Judith Martin? You may know her better as Miss Manners.

CLICK HERE.

Judith Martin is one of my favorite secular social commentators. If you also are a fan, you can read her column in archive at the Washington Post.

GET THE ARCHIVE.

Did you think Ace Ventura was the only pet detective around? Turns out there really are professional Pet Detectives out there who will implement the Missing Animal Response (no kidding) to track down on-the-lam Fidos and Fluffys.

"Pet Hunters International (PHI) is the first-ever pet detective academy that trains and certifies pet detectives and search dogs to track lost pets. PHI was founded by Kat Albrecht, a police detective-turned-pet detective who pioneered what are now called Missing Animal Response (MAR) services.

"MAR services mirror the same investigative techniques, technologies, and strategies that police detectives and search-and-rescue technicians use to solve missing persons investigations. PHI certifies ‘MAR Technicians’ to use high-tech equipment (amplified listening devices, night vision, baby monitors), cat detection dogs, trailing dogs trained to track lost dogs and horses, analytical methods like search probability theory and deductive reasoning to predict the distances that lost pets travel, and the collection and analysis of physical evidence. The MAR Technicians that we certify are typically animal lovers who are interested in working with animals and/or in training a dog to track lost pets."

VISIT THE SITE.

I know what it’s like to love a pet and would be besieging St. Francis of Assisi with prayers and pounding the pavement in search of a lost animal friend of mine. But I can’t get over the feeling that "pet detective agencies" are just another manifestation of Western society’s tendency to idolize their pets.

If a list of qualifications were drawn up for a stay-at-home mom, some radical secular feminists would add to the list "Intelligent human beings need not apply":

"Linda Hirshman, a feminist US writer on cultural issues, has told the world why she thinks staying at home with the children is an occupation ‘not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings.’ She complains at length that the feminist movement, while making some gains in public life through legal activism, has largely failed in the one area where it counts most: the family.

"She upbraids women who stay at home for failing the feminist agenda, saying, ‘They do not require a great intellect, they are not honored and they do not involve risks and the rewards that risk brings.’

"Writing in the November 2005 edition of The American Prospect [sic, it was the December 2005 issue], Hirshman admitted that the real intention of the feminist movement was not ‘equality,’ but to destroy what she calls ‘the unreconstructed family’ of a husband and wife rearing children. She writes that the goal was to see as many women as possible abandoning family life for high-level professions and politics."

GET THE STORY.

It wouldn’t surprise me if radical secular feminists of the Hirshman mold would prefer that children be hatched from pods and raised by Big Brother.  In any event, such sentiments certainly demonstrate the raw hatred of children that makes more understandable — though not any more excusable — the commitment of radical secular feminism to abortion.  After all, if Intelligent Human Beings cannot be bothered to raise children, why should the IHBs among us suffer the indignity of bringing preborn children to birth in the first place?

Confidential Aside to Lifesite.net:  It would be extremely helpful to your readership to provide links to the articles in question.  I thought that there was only one link — to The American Prospect article — to search out.  Turns out there were two.  The older article from TAP and a recent article from The Washington Post, the Post article and not the TAP article per se being the reason why the current brouhaha is raging.

After once again riffling through the Great Quote Files, I pulled up the following:

Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. –James M. Barrie

Who was James M. Barrie?

CLICK HERE.

As a side note, I loved the recent movie about Barrie, titled Finding Neverland, but don’t recommend it to anyone who thinks crying over movies is a weakness.

GET THE MOVIE.

GET THE REVIEW by co-blogger Steven Greydanus.

When I saw the following article, what immediately crossed my mind was Shea’s Law that a culture that despises virginity despises children:

"Britney wannabes — rev up your credit cards, there’s a double-wide load of styles to choose from. There’s the winsome ‘Baby Beater’ tank tops, the mini basketball uniform with ‘Jr. Pimp Squad’ across the jersey or the T-shirts that read ‘My Mom Is a MILF.’ (I’d explain MILF, but this is a family newspaper.)"

And what thoughts were behind this brainchild’s birth? Why, pure selfishness, of course! Color me surprised.

"Where does such design genius come from? I had the pleasure of speaking with the brainchild behind Pimpfants Inc. yesterday, as one Jared Parsons explained his eureka moment. A former skateboarder, he was shopping for clothes for his first son, who’s now 5 and quite a fashion plate. ‘I wanted him to dress how me and my friends dress,’ Parsons said, ‘but it’s hard to find baby clothes like that.’ Gee, I wonder why. Parsons and his friends use the word ‘pimp’ to mean ‘styling,’ he explained, and just as he was wishing he could buy his infant some styling clothes it came to him: Pimpfants. ‘Wow,’ he said to himself, ‘that’s a really good idea.’"

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Katie Allison Granju for the link.)

I have liked Shelby Steele ever since his book The Content of Our Character came out back in the nineties.

I had to pass on this excellent opinion piece by Steele, from today’s Wall Street Journal.

Anyone with even a casual interest in U.S. History will appreciate the insight that Steele draws from our military experiences since WWII.

His premise is that White Guilt causes us to wage war only at a level tolerable to our enemies. The subtitle of the piece asks the question "Why is America so delicate with the enemy?".

His exploration of the meaning of the term "white guilt" alone makes the article a worthy read.

Our enemies see our restraint as weakness and they are correct, in a sense. From our perspective, we may see it as self-imposed weakness that comes from strength. Our enemies don’t feel they have the luxury of moderating their war efforts. We apparently do.

I think many Iraq war critics fail to grasp what a tricky job it is to make war against a weaker and poorer nation, even if the job needs doing. The truth is that we could squash Iraq like a bug. We could carpet bomb their cities into oblivion and set up whatever kind of government we durn well pleased, but we don’t. If we had no scruples, we could easily make the insurgency impossible. We could pour three times the current number of troops into Iraq (as Colin Powell has suggested). The fact that we don’t is a topic worthy of serious investigation, and Steele does an admirable job.

Steele sees the same White Guilt induced paralysis throughout the West. He also sees it in our seeming inability to take any kind of intelligible position on immigration.

Not that White Guilt in itself doesn’t have its place. We should rightly feel shame at some of our national sins; slavery, wanton destruction of native populations, the headlong rush into hedonistic materialism following the industrial revolution. It was likely our own imperiaslism, exported to Japan, that came back to us in WWII.

We have laboriously overcome some of these national sins. We are yet paying penance for others, and some we are still actively engaged in (that would be the hedonism thing).

Clear sighted commentary like this, from Shelby Steele and others, helps us to put things into perspective and move on, completing our penance for past sins, and leaving us free to tackle our current ones.

Everyone should read this.

GET THE STORY.

From the Great Quotes Department:

"If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent." –Isaac Newton

Who was Isaac Newton?

CLICK HERE.

I rather like the cartoon of Newton under the apple tree since it illustrates his observation that great discoveries owe as much (if not more) to patient attention as they do to any inherent genius on the part of the observer, but I thought I’d better include a more lifelike image as well.

Tim J here.

I like to tune in to MTV occasionally, just to keep an eye on what’s current, you know… ordinarily, its pretty desolate. Not much in the way of creativity or beauty or even talent.

– Begin Aside… I don’t see how viewers are supposed to tell one Hip-Hop video/song from another. They all have the same theme; I am better than you because I drink "X", I drive a "Y" and I have a bigger ammo clip to go in my "Z". I also have more bling, more (ahem) etc. than you.

They all have the same fly girls. The posse straight out of central casting.

Okay, does this remind anyone of Disco? Wasn’t there a big disco backlash because (almost) everyone got tired of the shallowness, the gold chains, the slimy sexuality? Granted, what we got in its place was Hair Metal, but at least there was a healthy disillusionment with the overblown worldliness of the whole disco scene. Remember "Disco Sucks" shirts? Anyone remember the Insane Coho Lips? I think another backlash is overdue. Hip Hop sucks. – Aside Over.

Once in a while, though, I run across something of interest. I saw a video the other day by Pink that actually gave me some genuine belly laughs. It’s called "Stupid Girl" and is a send-up of the ditzy, over-sexualized, pampered, shallow, anorexic female stereotypes that so pervasively confront our kids in the media. I generally like well-done parodies, and I really enjoyed this one.

But, Pink is only half right. It appears she has bought in to the brand of radical feminism that says the best way to find your true womanhood is to think, talk and act like a man. So, rather than presenting a sane alternative to the Bratz doll image of femininity, Pink seems to think that girls should… play more football? Wear Vans? What if you’re not into that, either? What if you just want to be a normal girl?

As much as Hair Metal and Punk were a reaction against Disco, the Thong Generation is a reaction against Radical Feminism. Gender will out, no matter what Patricia Ireland says. All the tiny tees, clingy skirts, frilly undies and makeup are a misguided but natural response to the attempted forcible negation of true womanhood in the culture. I would wager that most girls really don’t mind being girls.

For decades, girls have been taught how stupid (if not evil) men are, and then they are taught that if they want to really be a success in life, they should act more like men.

Pink is no role model for young Catholic girls, either (she has her own issues), but her parody of Paris Hilton femininity is spot on. Too bad she can’t see the forest for the trees right now, but she may be on the right track.

VISIT PINK’S SITE & PLAY THE VIDEO. (Warning: Pink is not a nice Catholic girl, or a role model for same. The video conatins language and images that may offend some viewers).

From our Great Discoveries In Science Department, researchers have confirmed what social conservatives have been warning a dismissive society about for years: Sex in the media influences youngsters to experiment on their own.

"Sexually charged music, magazines, TV and movies push youngsters into intercourse at an earlier age, perhaps by acting as kind of virtual peer that tells them everyone else is doing it, a study said Monday.

"’This is the first time we’ve shown that the more kids are exposed to sex in media the earlier they have sex,’ said Jane Brown of the University of North Carolina, chief author of the report.

"Previous research had been limited to television, said the study which looked at 1,017 adolescents when they were aged 12 to 14 and again two years later. They were checked on their exposure during the two years to 264 items — movies, TV shows, music and magazines — which were analyzed for their sexual content.

"In general it found that the highest exposure levels led to more sexual activity, with white teens in the group 2.2 times more likely to have had intercourse at ages 14 to 16 than similar youngsters who had the least exposure."

GET THE STORY.

When scientists say this, it is Big News; when social conservatives — particularly traditional Christians — say this, it is shrugged off as starboard paranoia.

I couldn’t decide whether to file the following Great Quote under About Writing or Social Analysis. I settled on Social Analysis because I think it has a point that is broader than its original context as a remark on literary creativity.

"You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." —Jack London

For those of you who have never heard of Jack London…

CLICK HERE.

For those of you who have and who also happen to like sci-fi, here is an interesting factoid about Jack London from Wikipedia:

"Jack London appears briefly as a character at the end of Star Trek: TNG [The Next Generation] episode ‘Time’s Arrow,’ Parts I and II as a hotel employee. Mark Twain advises him to go to Alaska."