The state of the culture

The Oscar nominations have been announced, and I don't much care. It's not so much because I'm an old fart who thinks the movies aren't as good as they used to be (though I'm much more likely to enjoy the experience when watching Turner Classic Movies than I am when watching something new on the premium channels). It's just that "going to the movies" has stopped being one of the things I do.

I've never watched any reality TV shows, except a few minutes here and there when one of them was on right before another program I wanted to see.

For the "with friends like this, he doesn't need enemies" file:

ST. PAUL, Minnesota - In a legal effort to help a U.S. senator, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy.

A man apologizes for scribbling an obscentiy on the check he used to pay his parking ticket with, but his lawyer says he could have fought it:

The lawyer for David Binner, 45, said his client would have prevailed if he went through a trial.

"The F-word isn't what it used to be," attorney Keith Williams said. It doesn't have a sexual connotation anymore and so can't be considered obscene, he said.

If this is true, we can say there has finally been an encounter in which Britney Spears is the sympathetic one:

Troubled pop diva Britney Spears reportedly kicked television talk show host "Dr. Phil" McGraw out of her room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Saturday before being released from the facility later in the day, sources told FOXNews.com.

According to sources, Spears responded angrily when the talk show host entered the room and demanded he leave at once.

At an unmanned Redbox kiosk, you can pay your money and get a movie from the vending machine, even an R-rated one. The kiosks are at a lot of areas with high kid traffic, like McDonald's. So the fight is on:

Having received no response, Conklin is now preparing to seek a state injunction to remove the mature movies from McDonald's.

This should give pause to even the most ardent supporters of rights for the student press:

We've heard about Nazi Germany as the model of scary totalitarian states in which children are brainwashed to spy on their parents and inform on them if they do not follow accepted doctrine. Is this the same kind of thing or not?

They're watching you right now.

They counted every beer you drank during last night's Red Sox game.

They see you sneaking out to the garage for a smoke.

You might think from some of my posts that I think environmentalists are the ones most likely to go off the deep end. They might be in the top 5, but the animal-rights people are the ones who are really out there. Just a few quotes:

"The life of an ant and that of my child should be granted equal consideration."

"If the death of one rat cured all diseases, it wouldn't make any difference to me."

With "The War," Ken Burns is showing us details that we didn't know could still be learned about World War II. Maybe the series should be required viewing in all our high schools:

If high school juniors' answers to a World War II questionnaire were strung together, here's how history would look:

World War II took place in 19-something, when Theodore Roosevelt was president and the Germans claimed to be the best race.