To the Best of Our Knowledge, a show from Wisconsin Public Radio, had a great program last Sunday on the influence reviewers from New York and Los Angeles have on national readers. They ask, “Do you ever get the feeling that everyone’s reading all the same books and listening to all the same music, and seeing all the same films?” They talk to a few good people who have opinions on that, mostly Wisconsin people oddly enough.
All posts by Phil
Ruining Sex
Our friend, Hunter Baker, points to an interesting interview with Raquel Welch, which ends on how our sex-saturated culture is ruining sex for most of us. “I just imagine them sitting in front of their computers, completely annihilated.” It’s curious that the interviewer says she may come across like a prude, as if that’s one of the worst positions one could be in.
In the Spirit of Freedom, You Should Be Ashamed
James Taranto describes how the public discourse over Rush Limbaugh’s characterization of Sandra Fluke’s argument before Congress has spawned a “meta-kerfuffle” among professors. One prof praises Limbaugh’s argument, while detracting from the two words he apologized for, and his university’s president scolded him, both in print.
“I am outraged that any professor would demean a student in this fashion,” Seligman writes. “To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in this way is about the most offensive thing a professor can do.”
The implication is that by treating Fluke with disrespect, Landsburg has behaved unethically. That’s bunk… Seligman’s shot at Landsburg is the equivalent of saying it is unethical for any physician to criticize Fluke’s political activism because she is a “patient.”
The effect of President Seligam’s argument may be to squash the freedom of thought and speech of students and profs without tenure. It’s happened before, he says, over just this type of argument.
“The Explicit Gospel”
He didn’t know God cared about him as a person; he just seemed to care whether he was a good person or a bad person. Kinda like Santa.
Voskamp’s Unknown Bestseller
“For 30 weeks Ann Voskamp’s book has earned a place on the New York Times bestseller list – and her neighbors don’t have a clue. People at her church found out only because the pastor shared his congratulations.”
This is a warm story about a wonderful lady (from what I can tell at this distance) who has written a stirring book on living under the mighty hand of God. It’s One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
What People Read 100 Years Ago
John Plotz describes what’s in a database called What Middletown Read, “the borrowing records of the Muncie Public Library between 1891 and 1902.”
Look Around You. What Do You See?
Tom Davis was in a cafe in Moldova and saw things he didn’t want to see. “One of the girls you will meet was trafficked from this restaurant.”
Font Expression
The Frankenfont Project, mixing up the letters of Mary Shelley’s text.
Shall We Rally for Free Speech?
I hesitate to say it, but I side with Limbaugh in the recent selective outrage. Perhaps the word “slut” is currently anathema, but haven’t several other female public figures been called the same or equivalent names without the outrage? With a hard-R-rated movie like Project X opening last week, are we really this disgusted at some hard words on a ugly topic?
The whole point of this is that a Georgetown law student and feminist activist claimed to need $3,000 of contraception to get her through school, and public taxes should provide it. Meg McDonnell describes the story as I remember it before the outcry:
Claiming that contraception coverage was financially crippling to students, like herself, Fluke ended her testimony by saying: “We refuse to pick between a quality education and our health and we resent that, in the 21st Century, anyone thinks it’s acceptable to ask us to make that choice simply because we are women.”
Fluke claimed the costs of contraception were steep, saying that roughly 40 percent of Georgetown women struggle with $3,000 contraception bills over the course of a three-year law school term. But many quickly debunked her claim, notably The Weekly Standard, who found that Target in DC sells generic birth control pills for $9/month to those who do not have insurance.
That sounds like typical, ridiculous political rhetoric that gets politicians and newspapers moving again, and I’m having a hard time believing it should not be ridiculed. No one wants to deny women contraception; some of us are fighting the idea that every healthy provision can be paid for with federal taxes by the good will of congress.
The Whole Story or Muddled Opinion?
This is funny, but I have to wonder if it shows more the problems of our cultural multiversity, each of us flailing around for a bit of real ground to stand on, than it does the whole news story as the advertisement suggests.