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The state of the culture

I could just scream

Ascream "The Scream" is one of the world's most recognized paintings, though not in a way its creator probably would have appreciated. "What was once a serious expression of existential dread is now a self-mocking symbol of the stress of modern life. 'Stuck in traffic?' asks an ad for a Scream keychain.

A wrongful life?

This case from Australia should give you pause, no matter which side of the abortion debate you're on.

"Whether it is better never to have been born at all than to have been born with even gross deficiencies is a mystery more properly to be left to the philosophers and the theologians," the New York Court of Appeals wrote in a 1986 decision rejecting a similar "wrongful life" claim. "The implications of any such proposition are staggering."

The seed of matricide?

I know a lot of people are praising this woman for being brave enough to take drastic action to change her daughter's behavior. But I think the girl's reaction -- "Coretha, a soft-spoken girl, acknowledged the punishment was humiliating but said it got her attention. 'I won't talk back,' she said quietly, hanging her head." -- probably masks a seething resentment. If I were that mom, I'd be sleeping with one eye open from now on.

Krossing over

If you don't understand the Kookie family tree, you don't know television history, and if you don't know television history, you're missing a lot of the current state of American culture.

Judge for yourselves

The letter to the editor from Ken Brown of Delphos, Ohio, who complained about the trailer for a child-prostitution movie shown at a PG family-friendly film, has generated some interest. Indiana Parley links to it and includes mention of some kids in a New York theater who thought they were going to see "Chicken Little" but saw something very different.

Culture war? What culture war?

Are we becoming less polarized? Or maybe we really weren't that polarized to begin with:

But Fiorina argued in a book, "Culture War?", that the notion of a polarized America was a myth to begin with. The true polarization, he said, was always in the politicians - offering starkly different choices to voters - and in the media, eager to portray a conflict and more exposed to political junkies in New York and Washington.

Stolen childhood

When I was around 8 or 9, I inadvertently saw that year's Christmas presents at the back of a closet. I kept pretending for a couple of months, but that was the real end of Santa Claus in my young life. I had learned an adult secret before my parents were ready to let me in on it. It seems overly simplistic to admit it now, but the discovery brought a profound sense of disillusion.

Pretty woman in an ugly world

Former supermodel Tyra Banks goes undercover as a fat woman and is shocked -- shocked! I tell you, shocked and dismayed!! -- to find people "pointing and laughing" in her face." She had no idea "it was that blatant." She thinks obese-bashing is the "last form of open discrimination that's OK." Really.

Village idiots

If a public education is supposed to be a collaborative effort between parents and the society at large (and some of us still hold on to this belief), what are we to make of this ruling, which basically tells parents they have no say in the matter?

Give this idea a big U

Hawaii is going to begin issuing "standards-based" report cards for its elementary students, which will replace the familiar letter grades with ME (meets with excellence), MP (meets proficiency), N (approaches) and U (well below), along with four pages of details parents are sure not to understand. It seems like progress to some people. It sounds like edubabble to me.

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