Category Archives: Popular Culture

A Former NPR CEO

visits the half of the country that the media hates:

For an entire year, I embedded myself with the other side, standing in pit row at a NASCAR race, hanging out at Tea Party meetings and sitting in on Steve Bannon’s radio show. I found an America far different from the one depicted in the press and imagined by presidents (“cling to guns or religion”) and presidential candidates (“basket of deplorables”) alike.

I spent many Sundays in evangelical churches and hung out with 15,000 evangelical youth at the Urbana conference. I wasn’t sure what to expect among thousands of college-age evangelicals, but I certainly didn’t expect the intense discussion of racial equity and refugee issues — how to help them, not how to keep them out — but that is what I got.

Two issues with the piece: My usual complaint that there is nothing “liberal” about these fascists, and he’s not hard enough on his former colleagues. But it’s a nice start.

Hey, Media!

You started it:

Every television show you watch, every movie, every woman’s magazine, every comedian, and, yes, every news program tells you you suck. Your country sucks. Your culture sucks. Your religion and your morals suck. And you personally are one of those dumb-ass racists who clings to his Bible and talks funny.

If you believe your country should vet its immigrants, you’re racist. If you voted for Donald Trump, you’re racist. If you make a joke about Barack Obama on Facebook, you’re racist twice. If you think motherhood is a woman’s highest calling, you’re sexist. If you take it ill when Islamists blow you up in the name of their nasty little god, you’re Islamophobic. If you know that a man is a man even if he says he’s a woman, you’re transphobic. If you think it’s fair to debate whether homosexual actions are moral or not, you’re homophobic.

Every day. From every outlet. All the time. And now people are angry. Wonder why.

New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger says he told Trump his anti-press rhetoric could lead to violence. But the media’s anti-Trump rhetoric already has led to violence: public officials rat-packed and bullied, Trump supporters harassed, White House spokes-lady Sarah Sanders having to live under guard. And yet when Sanders pointed this out to Look-At-Me-I’m-Jim Acosta, Acosta stormed out of the room. Hell, if he doesn’t want to hear the truth, he could just stay home and watch CNN.

Trump didn’t create antipathy to the press. He just tapped into it. I’d have done the same thing, but less crudely. After all, it’s what bloggers have been doing for many years now.

Gay Pr0n

I don’t know why it would be surprising that women like watching it. As the article notes, most pr0n is made for men, and not particularly debonair men. If I never again see fellatio in pr0n, it would be too soon. I really do think that the proliferation of terrible pr0n is a cause of a lot of sexual dissatisfaction among millennials, many of whom likely don’t know what good sex is, because they don’t understand how unrealistic most pr0n is.

[Via Instapundit, who has the obvious explanation from a former girlfriend]