The state of the culture

Roman Polanski, who drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl, in a letter to the "French intellectual" Bernard-Henri Lévy, is expressing his "overwhelming" graditude for all the messages of sympathy he has received "from across the world":

The New York Times has a ponderous piece on when it might be best to "come clean" with children about Santa, if, ahem, you know what I mean. Here is but one sentence from professor of psychology:

The change in children's conceptualization of Santa is driven in part by cognitive development.

I love it when they talk dirty like that.

An indiscriminate use of the term "homeless" is in this headline from Evansville: Homeless couple arrested after knife fight:

I have my doubts about high school students going to the nurse for certain things, but perhaps I'm reacting too much based on my own recollections and not taking into account how kids have changed:

Without discussion, the Milwaukee School Board voted 7-0 Thursday night to make condoms available at many of the city's high schools, paving the way to make Milwaukee Public Schools one of the relatively few districts in the nation to provide contraception to students.

[. . .]

I don't think the "keep Christ in the closet where he belongs" folks need any help in their efforts to ruin Christmas, but it looks like they're getting it anyway:

Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus. And he's a public health menace.

Public health expert Nathan Grills of Monash University in Australia says the beloved Christmas icon should ditch his sleigh and start biking or walking to lose his jelly belly.

Wouldn't want you to get behind on your People news, so know that early this morning came the birth of Hank Randall Basket IV, son of Hank Randall Basket III, a wide receiver for the Indianapolis Colts, and Kendra Wilkinson, who said the name was important because "it was very important to us to carry on the family tradition":

Has anybody in the history of celebrity ever gone from got it made to total disrepute quite so quickly?

Here's an interesting juxtaposition for you.

Sorry, kid, I think your old dad is just stringing you along:

Another reason to be glad I don't have kids in school these days:

It's a disturbing game with devastating consequences, and a new WTHR survey suggests it is rampant in Indiana schools.