With Donald Trump defending the size of his hands, Ted Cruz dropping out of the race the week after recruiting former opponent Fiorina as a running mate, Hillary Clinton marketing a fundraising “woman card” to take advantage of Trump’s misogynistic gaffe, and Sanders supporters arguing that voter fraud is to blame for his losses in New York and Arizona, the 2016 presidential campaign has been nothing if not entertaining. But just ask Katniss Everdeen—whether you find the games entertaining or deadly depends very much on where you are in the system. Welcome to the 58th quadrennial American Presidential Hunger Games. The term “Bread and Circuses, or “Panem et Circenses”, was used by Roman author Juvenal to describe the political strategy that kept the diverse and contentious Roman … [Read more...]
Stop Blaming Parents for Our Society’s Failures
Yet another parenting article popped up in my Facebook feed this week. Not a How-To parenting article, which is annoying enough, but a You’re-Doing-Everything-Wrong parenting article. Generation X’s Parenting Problem, published in 2015 but making the rounds again now, is a diatribe about how today’s parents are doing everything wrong. Life was so great when we were kids. Parents today are stressed-out maniacs who need to relax. We turned out fine. Kids these days have it too easy. If only parents today followed their parents’ and grandparents’ choices, everything would be great. The problem is, we don’t live in our parents’ or grandparents’ world. Just like the insipid and ubiquitous memes about how "My childhood was awesome: I was beaten with a belt and I learned respect", these … [Read more...]
The Hidden Cultural Values of Massholes and Y’all Qaeda
Y’all Qaeda may be the newest sarcastic term for the Oregon militiamen, but embedded in the critique of militiamen as terrorists akin to Al Qaeda and ISIS (another favored term being Vanilla ISIS) is a regional slam. The use of “y’all” in the term is a signifier that these are country folk, with all the negative stereotypes that follow the category. And I’ll bet my daughter’s current college fund (don’t get excited, there’s like 3 dollars in there) that the term will spread well beyond the current militia-tastrophe. As a current resident of New England, I can tell you that the image behind the term is precisely how many northerners perceive almost all of the rest of the United States, from the South to the mountainous West: insincerely polite, “Y’all” and “ma’am” talking, racist, fascist, … [Read more...]
