Recently in Culture Category

The WSJ yesterday had a depressing story about the baseball card industry. In order to reverse a decline in sales, card companies are including ever creepier relics as "chase cards" -- big ticket prizes that entice collectors to keep buying packs.

I blogged once a long time ago about how bizaare relic cards are (money quote: "Yes kids, for months worth of your hard-earned lawn-mowing money you can purchase a shred of lycra which caressed the rear end of your favorite second baseman/left fielder."), and it seems it's gotten even creepier. It seems some card companies have upped the ante, moving from second class to first class relics:

Ms. Artusa, a baseball-card collector since the 1970s, found something unusual in one pack -- a scratch-off code that pointed her to a Web site. The site told her she had won something too delicate to include in a regular pack: a single strand of hair from the head of Abraham Lincoln.

Click through and you'll see the article is not dated April 1st.

For a long time now, the baseball card industry hasn't been about baseball and this is further proof:

The industry has since streamlined, but "the good old days of building a set, one 15-card pack at a time, are pretty much over," Mr. Kelnhofer says. While cheaper packs today go for around $2, he says, "the card makers' survival is predicated on attracting and keeping the collectors who make the big-ticket purchases."

Those are people like Ms. Artusa, who got the Lincoln hair. The night she and her husband came across their prize, they were going through a case priced at $1,800 and containing 192 packs of baseball cards.

What is this but legalized gambling?

For all you ladies who grew up watching The Sound of Music and wanting to find your very own Captain Von Trapp, you probably don't want to read this review of Christopher Plummer's memoir. I did learn, however, that his daughter is "Honey-Bunny" from Pulp Fiction and the axe murderer in So I Married and Axe Murderer.

Also, this one's for Brandon: "A 65th Birthday Tribute to Joni Mitchell."

My You've Got Mail post below was chosen as the best answer by the guy who originally asked the question on Ask Meta Filter.

Hooray for the narcissism and misguided optimism of the 90s!

Hackers redirect Epilepsy Foundatin website to pages with "images pulsating with different colors."

This should be prosecuted as attempted murder.

This interview with doctor and author Daphne Miller from Gourmet is worth your time.

Miller's new book, which explores the health benefits of traditional diets from around the world, is going on my "library list."

From the "Hell in a Handbasket" file:

If you have an hour to spare, check out this fascinating NPR podcast. It's Sudhir Venkatesh reading from and discussing his book "Gang Leader for a Day." Venkatesh is a sociologist who for his dissertation studied the relationship between the Chicago crack-gang Black Kings and the Robert Taylor housing projects where they operated. If you've read "Freakonomics", you'll recognize Venkatesh from the why drug dealers live with their mothers chapter.

To all the ladies:

Becoming Cary Grant

PJ O'Rourke on the Boomers coming of age - Social Security Age.

...is the simultaneous combustion of the heads of feminists all over the English-speaking world.

There's a lot to unpack there. First off, you gotta wonder where this guy gets his grant money.

More seriously, I do recall a comment by a female friend of mine that one of the reasons she got hit on so much at her office was that she was the only lady there who wasn't chemically neutered.

Really, this is intuitive, and the evolutionary theory posited in the second paragraph can be turned right around. It may benefit women (evolutionarily, not morally, of course) more for the signs of their fertility to be discernible to ensure that a mate is available at the right time. Even if he doesn't "stick around." In fact, looking at the reproductive tendencies of our own lower classes confirms this: women using less birth control, men not sticking around, very high birth rates.

Which, ahem, is why marriage and the traditional family are so important. Without it, society has no effective way (outside of legal coercion) of matching up fathers with the children they beget. With the drastic weakening of marriage we've seen over the past several decades, we have - ta da! - lots of fatherless children, even with widely available birth control. (Which gives the idea that men are good at sniffing out fertile women a little more credibility.)

- Bob Herbert on Bill Crosby and Dr. Alvin Poussaint's noble crusade to encourage men to be fathers.

Or maybe some feel the tyrannous need to force all religion except irreligion out of the public sector.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what "teaching" consists of in Chicago Public Schools (emphasis mine, and no offense, mom):

These damn religions kids won't swallow my pro-abortion propaganda! As Shea would say: reason #983643264923432 (or whatever he's up to these days) to homeschool.

Lest you think there's some looming merger of religion with Illinois schools, the author's hissy fit (complete with pictures of BLACKS IN CHURCH to really scare you!) is because the state legislature overrode Gov Bla's veto of a bill requiring schools to hire chaplains break at noon for the Angelus teach Scripture, scrap evolution for young-earth creationsism start with a moment of silence.

Isn't it interesting how hatred of religion can lead to an abandonment of reason?

This piece on the burgeoning "funsultant" business had me belly-laughing. A taste:

Jeffrey Zaslow, writing in the Wall Street Journal has two recent columns (1, 2)about the growing tendency to cast men as potential child predators. The first is about the subtle messages that are being sent (example: a billboard campaign warning against predators that shows a man holding hands with a little girl), while the second features some reactions by male readers. Frustrating reading, these articles make. Yeah, men are more likely to abuse, but when a man eating lunch in an airport with his daughter gets reported to the cops, something has gone horribly wrong.

Of course some of this (like the airport episode) is due to ignorant people overreacting, but who wins when every child looks at every man as a potential abuser?

Hat-tip: Bettnet

With apologies to all (!) my Christian Zionist readers, this is some freaky sh*t.

Is it selfish/rude/horrifyingly inhuman/just plain wrong to look at this list of Fisher Price toys that were recalled due to lead paint and note with a snicker how many of them contain the word "Elmo"?

Perhaps. Perhaps.

Uh.. not so humorous update: A factory manager at one of the Chinese manufacturers involved hung himself.

Everybody is getting into the act. Even Peggy Noonan's column is about the Sopranos this week.

Would this be a bad time to mention that I've never seen it?

This pretty much leaves me speechless.

No pun intended, but some people inhabit a completely different world.

Jim McGreevey considering Episcopal priesthood.

As far as I can tell, this is not a hoax.

What can be done?

Tom Wolfe on hedge fund managers. Frightening and hilarious.

If Imus Had Called Mother Teresa a "Ho" He’d Still Have a Job

He draws largely on Bill Donohue, who, despite making me crazy sometimes, has a job for a reason.

Noonan is excellent on Virginia Tech.

Consumerism has infantilized us all and already has our children in its death grip. NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Er, thast last post was supposed to be a humorous blurb about what I watch on TV. It kind of got sidetracked. Ah, blogging...

Anyway, the other show I enjoy, and this is an even dirtier secret, is "Boston Legal." It's slime, through and through, but it also has William Shatner and James Spader.

Anyway, my real point I wanted to get to was that the last 7 minutes of last night's show were about the funniest thing I've seen on television in a decade.

Speaking of cultural decay (er.... like 5 posts down) - I confess that I watch "Scrubs."

If I were to flatter myself, I'd say that I wish to engage the culture, and a show such as "Scrubs" provides ample fodder for criticism.

That would be a lie, however. I watch it because it is just about the funniest thing on television (and it is definitely the funniest thing on broadcast TV after 10 PM in east central Illinois). It's the closest that a live-action sit-com that I've seen has ever come to the pacing and craziness of the Simpsons - and it's well-writted, well-acted and very well-cast.

That said, I do have one observation to make. Despite being a comedy, "Scrubs" treats medical issues very realistically. (I usually don't agree with their conclusions, but whatever, I'm not looking to them to form my conscience.) The one exception is abortion. I've seen them approach that issue twice, and both times it was treated extremely frivolously.

In one episode, JD, the main character on the show, has gotten another doctor pregnant, and they're considering abortion. That itself doesn't bother me. Art is supposed to imitate life, and for many young people whose intellectual formation has come from peer groups, institutional schools and MTV - that's what you're supposed to do. It's "responsible" to determine if you should have the baby at all. That's not my "worldview," as the kids say, but I can't deny it's a widespread and generally accepted point of view.

So fine, they sit down to decide whether to have the baby or kill it. They make a list of pros and cons, and the whole thing is unserious (con: "babies are sticky"). A talking statue of Jesus tells them not to do it, while female pal Jordan tells them all about her abortion and how it saved her life (Jordan's son Jack finds out about it somehow, my memory's kind of hazy, and ends up running around the hospital waiting room screamin "my mommy had an abortion"). In the end, our smart, responsible protagonist couple melts when they see JD's friend Turk's newborn and decides to go through with the pregnancy. To hell with rationality, in the end it's all emotions.

On second thought, it's interesting that their thoughts about abortion end when they see that what they're debating isn't a choice - it's a child. Sure, that's a pro-life bumper sticker message, but it's also true. That scene alone demonstrates why the ultra-sound is such a powerful weapon against abortion. When confronted with the reality of what the fetus actually is - a human being at a very early stage of development - it's hard not to choose life.

I don't think it was the intent of the writers to have a pro-life message; that's obvious from Jordan's story, which serves to establish abortion as a reasonable and sometimes necessary option. (Jordan's response to little Jack's waiting room abortion chant is a proud and unremorseful, "She sure did.") But sometimes the truth pokes through despite our efforts to reject it.

Normally, I'm pretty cold to the notion of self-reliance, which is why the latest issue of In Character was disappointing, which is unusual for that fine journal.

However, one piece stands out: Bill McKibben's "Old MacDonald Had A Farmers’ Market."

It brings to mind the notion of interdependence, which is a very Catholic and catholic idea. Sociologically speaking, independence as just as undesirable as dependence. Instead, the ideal family/neighborhood/society structure would be one of voluntarily interdependence. Total dependence on the state or other individuals leads to sloth and envy, while total independence leads to greed and pride as well as a general disdain for others. Mutual interdependence, recognizing the truth that man flourishes in relationship to fellow man, leads to humility and charity.

Which is a bigger sign of cultural decay?

1. Police officers with nothing better to do than file a 13 page report and make the state's attorney investigate a couple of college kids being rude, or

2. Thieves breaking into a Salvation Army safe to steal $250.

It's a tough call, but I have to say it's the first case. Petty theft is ancient as property, but it takes a special kind of modern victimological psychology as well as a much too large bureacracy with not enough to for the police and county government to get dragged into an online flame war.

I'm generally mystified by its popularity, and this blurb from the Economist provides a nice example of what non-Americans think of the "sport."

In this fall's City Journal, Kay Hymowitz takes the scalpel to Paris Hilton. Wowzers. Needless to say, it's impossible to accurately profile someone like Hilton in a family-friendly way, so consider yourself warned.

Hymowitz does a fine job, but a great companion piece would be an analysis of those who don't hate her. From junior high girls who want to be her to adult males who approve of her particular brand of skankhood.

I'm sorry, but I refused to be disturbed by the fact that Madonna is bringing her travelling crucifixion circus to Rome. Her very stage name is an insult against the Blessed Mother and throughout her career she has relished any opportunity to give the Catholic Church the finger. If her latest antics disappoint you in some way, you need to lower your expectations.

Madonna is an aging pop star who has lost whatever sex appeal she thought she once had and who clings to whatever cutting edge status she still retains by performing more and more outrageous stunts and kicking back while the ensuing outrage gives her invaluable publicity. Maybe she was once a force for changing culture, but now she's a parasite, manufacturing outrage and profiting off of it.

For goodness sake, just ignore her.

How do I know? Is it the news that Hispanics will soon become the largest minority? Is it the recent controversy over illegal immigration which drew attention to the large and growing Hispanic populations all over the country?

No and no.

Hispanics arrived on Saturday July 29, 2006, when "El Picante," an eight foot tall chorizo sausage, debuted at Miller Park to take part in the storied Sausage Race. Dressed in a guayabera with a red hankerchief tied around his neck and a sombrero, "El Picante" became an instant legend. This was his only appearance for 2006 as due to MLB's rules on new mascots (!), he cannot become a full-time sausage racer until 2007.

Here's the official press release for the event.

Dear Mama-Lu,

I promise you will never have to live in an ugly, over-sized house with tons of wasted space.

Love,
Yer hubby

P.S. You don't need to listen to the audio, the link contains a transcript.

Another stale nugget from my inbox, as reported by LifeSiteNews.com on April 18:

Please note that the complant came from university professors. Freedom of expression, tolerance, diversity, etc.

Also please note that I'm not vouching for the actual content of any of the listed books.

Punkin Chunkin.

Best analysis: "Dorothy Blades... thinks men crave the sense of power that only blasting a pumpkin into orbit in front of a large crowd can provide. 'Plus it's a drinkathon,' she adds."

Update: NPR has an audio piece with photos here.

It turns out the birth control path is killing women three times faster than the pill.

Students in world's fattest country create junk food black-market to get around school bans.

If you have children in the public schools, you need to go here.

Godspy has an excerpt of an article by and an interview with Christine Rosen of The New Atlantis and The Ethics and Public Policy Center.

The article - titled "The Age of Egocasting" - contemplates the effect that personalized entertainment technology like iPods and TiVos have and will continue to have on culture and society.

Here is an excerpt of the excerpt, but the whole, er, excerpt, is worth a read.

Full story