The state of the culture

Caught this on CBS' Sunday morning show yesterday. Coldplay's "Fix You" by Young@Heart. Go ahead and don't cry. I dare you.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=2u6k-99qcCE]

First, they came for the athletes . . .

Cheerleaders, band members, ball players, kids on the speech and debate team - any student participating in extracurricular activities - would pee in a cup under a random drug testing plan being considered at Whitefish High School.

If it's everybody's, it's nobody's (public land). If everyone is responsible, no one is (it takes a village, liability lawsuits). If everyone is special, no one is (public education): 

When Kyra Rogers was younger, she dreamed of being one of those students who had earned a 4.0 GPA - and the right to wear a white robe in the front row at Durango High School's graduation.

A rap star's secrect past uncovered, and it turns out he was -- ready for it? -- not such a bad guy:

So there was no conviction. There was no prison term between 1999 and 2002. And he was never "facing 75 years," as the singer claimed in one videotaped interview.

Remember when stars tried to clean up their pasts?

(via fark)
 

Another school system seems ready to succumb to the "competition is bad for students" sickness:

ST. JOHN | The Lake Central School Board is following the lead of the School Town of Munster in exploring the elimination of class rank.

Board Vice President Nancy Gray said she's been trying for many years to make "something like this happen."

Come on -- you were like me, thought Dr. Phil couldn't possibly look any sleazier than he already has. Were we ever wrong:

BARTOW, Fla. —  As talk-show host Dr. Phil McGraw took heat for bailing out one of the girls charged in a vicious beating of a classmate, it emerged that show executives feel they were embarrassed by a low-level producer.

When thinking about Oprah Winfrey's approach to the metaphsyical, writes Indiana Unviversity professor Kathryn Lofton, it's important to make a distinction between religion and spirituality:

The only way religion or religious belief works for Oprah is if it is carefully coordinated with capitalist pleasure. Thus, the turn to 'spirituality' -- the non-dogmatic dogma that encourages an ambiguous theism alongside an exuberant consumerism," Lofton said.

Good for the kids. Despite all the garbage they are exposed to every single day in the popular culture:

Young Americans have a reverence for national institutions, traditions and family values, a U.S. survey indicates.

A survey of so-called "millennials" -- those between 21 and 29 -- revealed the group overwhelmingly said they support monogamy, marriage, the U.S. Constitution and the military, The Washington Times reported Sunday.

Most of us in the press and the blogosphere -- including me -- were pretty tough on Jack Trudeau when the story broke about his apparent hosting of a drinking party for his child's graduation. Here's a different point of view:

Be careful whom you talk to; it coud be a crime:

After an El Dorado Hills mom reported observing a strange man speaking with her two children at each of three children's-story events, deputies arrested the man at his Folsom home.

Victor Emmer, 49, was arrested March 13 on suspicion of loitering where children gather.