The state of the culture

Since I'm on record as being dismissive of the whole beuaty pageant thing, I almost hate to end up taking the side of Carrie Prejean, the Miss California who may have been denied the USA title for having the "wrong" answer to Perez Hilton's question about gay marriage. Is there anybody out there more mean-spirited and self-involved than Hilton? I think he is not a very good representative of the other members of his group and might set back their acceptance by mainstream America for a very long time.

Not the usual snideness about Earth Day today, just a point that the Us vs. the Earth mantra got old a long time ago. This guy, who thinks it's time to dump Earth Day, captures my sentiments pretty well:

I don't worry about the earth. I'm pretty certain the earth will survive the worst we can do to it. I'm very certain the earth doesn't worry about us.

Dispatches from the education front. In West Virginia, the soft bigotry of lowered expectations takes root. School officials in Marshall County may stop requiring students to complete their homework:

George Will calls on Edmund Burke, St. Paul and the ghosts of Fred Astire and Grace Kelly to denounce a great modern evil: Denim?

Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. But the appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves.

The entertainment world has been abuzz about Susan Boyle, the Scottish woman who wowed the audience and judges of "Britain's Got Talent." Here's the clip, if you're one of the handful of people who haven't seen it on TV or YouTube.

This should be the most interesting juxtaposition you encounter this month. First up, a production of "The Vagina Monologue" is generating controversy and even a little fear in Kyrgyzstan:

Central Asia is not known as a region where women have tried to assert their rights.

[. . .]

For the Little Lost Lamb Hall of Fame, today's nominee is -- Phil Spector:

“It hasn't been a very pleasant life,” Spector told writer Mick Brown in a rare 2002 interview. “I've been a very tortured soul. I have not been at peace with myself.”

A lot of people are mad at Tony Dungy, of all people. The White House has invited him --"another gay rights opponent," as On Top magazine's Web site puts it -- to join its Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhoold Partnerships. Dungy spoke at a fundraiser for the Indiana Family Institute, which apparently is a subversive organization that preaches biblical values and biblical ethics:

They do know how to have fun in Ohio:

Newark police say that Konink saw a neighbor riding a motorized bar stool shortly before the man wrecked while trying to make a U-turn.

Police say that Kile Wygle, 28, had one too many before wheeling his homemade oddity around the neighborhood on March 4.

Wheee! Time travel is fun. You nod off while sampling the Internet in 2009, and you wake up in 1970:

Believe it or not, there are men in Muncie who not only support feminism and feminist ideals, but identify themselves as feminists as well.

But that doesn't mean some people aren't surprised by meeting men who support the social, political and economic equality between the sexes.