Cultural Commentary

The Vietnam-Watergate Backlash
In the past year, thanks first to John F. Kerry and now to Mark Felt, Democrats and the liberal media have obliged normal American citizens to relive two connected events, the Vietnam War and the Watergate "scandal."

Sophomore Socialists
There's not a college professor in a thousand who isn't a product of the American educational incubator, which insures that people of relatively high intelligence will, if they choose a career in academia, never be forced to confront what most of us know as reality.

An Open Letter to Diversity's Victims
Those who promote what they call "diversity" have insisted that American schools provide instruction in both English and Spanish so that Hispanic children will not have to learn English. As near as I can determine, the reasoning is that Hispanic people living in the United States are at risk for losing their cultural identity if they learn the language spoken by the overwhelming majority of their fellow citizens.

An Islamist Bluegrass Homecoming
I had thought "gospel" would be on the PBS list of forbidden words, much like "terrorist" is for Reuters, which is why I was surprised when the network aired a program entitled "A Gospel Bluegrass Homecoming." I confess that I fully expect PBS, in the interest of the fairness and balance they're so noted for — wait a minute, that's Fox News I'm thinking of . . . sorry — to air a counter-program entitled "An Islamist Bluegrass Homecoming."

"Street Cred," International Style
Around the globe, the term "street cred" has come to be applicable to those who represent the interests of a people or a culture that has historically been "victimized" by western imperialism.

Raymond Chandler: An Appreciation
Let me start with this 'first principle' of Chandler's, about which I think most everyone can both agree: "Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality; there are no dull subjects, only dull minds."

You Better Hope You Fail
I've got one thing to say to leftists and Islamists in America who are looking forward to the day they somehow manage to overthrow the United States government: You damn well better hope you fail!

The Carbohydrate Conspiracy
Former Buffalo Bills All-Pro Nose Tackle Fred Smerlas, an outspoken Christian conservative, has gone so far as to suggest that there may be some sort of conspiracy associated with the fact that high-carbohydrate diets have been pushed so hard by so many people for so long.

The Carbohydrate Conspiracy Revisited
Much of the response to an earlier article, "The Carbohydrate Conspiracy," focused on how unfair it was of me to implicate liberals (and the left in general) in a so-called conspiracy to promote the consumption of excessive carbohydrates.

The Easy Allure of "Lifestyle" Choices
The values and behavior on display in the most insistent popular culture venues, particularly in popular music and music videos, are characterized by the gross over-representation of certain contemporary "lifestyles," which has given rise to the notion that "lifestyle" choices have as much validity as legitimate "life" choices.

Above the Law
From the cowardly way in which Dems in the Texas state legislature fled with their tails between their legs across the Texas-Oklahoma border in order to illegally (although Texas Republicans aren't pursuing a strategy of prosecuting them) thwart a vote on redistricting, to the Chuck-Schumer led illegal filibusters of President Bush's legislative program and his judicial appointees, Democrats are defining themselves as Marxist to the core, and they're using the time-honored Marxist tactic of subverting the laws of our country to do it.

Teach Your Children Well
Contrary to what Hillary Clinton and others of her ilk would have us believe, there are many reasons America works. Among them is that we're a capitalistic society. Capitalism, while it is, of course, not free from excess, is the one economic system that enables anyone, no matter what his ethnicity or his origins, to create his own means for making a living.

Heterophobia
It turns out that when they resort to namecalling, those on the Left are actually desperately trying to conceal their own phobias.

There's Gold in Them Thar Pills
Within the last several months, three events occurred that have refocused attention on the drug industry and on the fact that it's become the tail that wags the dog of American medicine.

Gender Bias
The old joke goes something like this: "If somebody actually is trying to kill you, then you're not really paranoid." The statement is, of course, true, but that doesn't stop people from insisting that even those who are justified in the belief that they are being targeted for harm should nonetheless behave "just like everyone else."

A Response to the Harvey Milk School: It's Still Discrimination
It is a misapplication of public money to fund a public high school the admission to which is based on the "gender preferences" of students.

The Tyranny of Re-Education
The practice of detaining, not to say enslaving, people for the purpose of educating them to "right thinking" (that is, to the doctrines of a totalitarian regime) was of course commonplace in Communist dictatorships. But while the very idea of such practices brings a chill to the heart, the troubling truth is that they are also carried out in America today.

It's the Drugs, Stupid!
Ripper is dead. He died of an overdose of prescription psychotropic drugs which he was pounding (taking in excessive quantities) during an on-line chat/videocam session with a number of internet acquaintances.

An Introductory Conservative Internet Lexicon
In the interest of furthering understanding of what's going on on the web, where free speech is actually honored, here is a brief lexicon of terms and acronyms you're likely to encounter when, to quote the late newscaster John Cameron Swayze, you're "hopscotching the world for headlines."

The Power of the Word
A June 11 Gannett News Service story by Fredreka Schouten contained this lead: "Pre-schoolers in the federal Head Start program still lag behind average students in reading and math skills when they enter kindergarten, according to a report released by the Bush administration." The conditions at the root of this situation are even grimmer than Ms. Schouten's article suggests.

Teddy Ballgame
It's my contention that it is much easier to bring a frozen corpse back to life if you don't surgically decapitate it. Unfortunately, in the case of baseball immortal Ted Williams, the simple precaution of keeping head and body together during cryogenic interment was not taken, and because of this, Williams' hopes for resurrection have been all but irremediably dashed.

Science in the Service of a Political Agenda
What happens when the scientific community ceases to be a disinterested and objective contributor to the public debate? What happens when policy makers stop accepting the input of the scientific community in deciding public policy, or accept the input only of those whose political views support a politically correct position?

Clearing the Air About the FDA's Legalization of Prozac for Children
The point that is consistently ignored or obscured by those writing about the recent FDA decision to legalize Prozac for children as young as seven years old concerns the effects that psychotropic drugs can have on human brains, particularly on the developing brains of children and adolescents.

A Discussion of Abortion Rights, Religious Fundamentalism and More
Now I agree that the killing of pro-abortionists by anti-abortionists is not to be tolerated under any circumstances. I also observe, however, that the killing of pro-abortionists by anti-abortionists almost never happens, despite the tremendous heat and passion generated on both sides of the abortion issue.

A Half Dozen of Hollywood's Best
How long has it been since you were hit on by a Hollywood celebrity? If it's been more than a year, ladies, you've missed out on a new crop of pickup lines that will have you champing at the bit to get back to the L.A. party scene.

Some Thoughts on the Microsoft Euro-Monopoly Verdict
The European Union last week fined Microsoft approximately US$ 613 million for taking advantage of what it described as a "near monopoly" in the area of desktop computer operating systems. Near monopoly, indeed.

Mo' Better Liberal Media
New York Times reporters have been telling lies and presenting opinion as fact — often in the service of a Leftist, anti-American agenda — at least since the paper's world-renowned fact-checkers allowed Walter Duranty's blatant (and readily refutable) untruths about the famine in the Soviet Union to see the light of day in the early 1930s.

Truth, Justice, and the AOL Way
For what it's worth, I'm in sync with America. I'm tuned in to what America thinks and feels about the important issues of the day. Translation: I always vote with the majority in those online polls AOL presents to its members several times a week.

Global Cooling
A 1975 Newsweek Magazine article contained the following interesting information: "A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968."

Dan Rather: Born Too Late?
The liberal media are so blinded by the hatred on which their political agendas are founded that somehow, in the dust kicked up in the current melee, they've managed to characterize Saddam Hussein as innocuous and the United States as the purveyor of evil in the world.

If You Can't Get a Life, Get a Website
It's been made abundantly clear lately that Left/Liberals object to others criticizing what they say on the grounds that such criticism is somehow an infringement of their right to freedom of speech. What's missing from this Liberal whine is, as many have pointed out, the understanding that free speech is guaranteed to all Americans.