Culture

Twenty-nine years ago, Congress held hearings on violent video games that descended into farce. The absurdity was best captured by Senator Joe Lieberman, who at one point pulled out a plastic arcade gun and began waving it at the witnesses (he didn't shoot them, thankfully, lest he have to insert more quarters). Lieberman, who chaired the hearing, said he was deeply concerned about violence in video games. Less so about violence in Iraq, where he voted to send American sons and daughters nine years later. Yet while the hearings have been widely ridiculed, they did give us something valuable. Fearful of government intervention (and of losing health points to Senator Lieberman), the video game industry created the Entertainment Software Rating Board.

Two days after a May 24 elementary school shooting left nineteen children and two teachers dead and another seventeen injured, the wife of Britain’s Prince Harry made an unannounced visit with her camera crew to the Texas town of Uvalde. Vanity Fair said, “She was spotted placing a bouquet of white flowers near a makeshift memorial,” not bothering to rewrite the press copy. Was spotted? In real time during the outing, aggressive publicists at Archewell were shopping and circulating copy and photos to media, getting instant pickup by Yahoo News, People, Elle, and other outlets worldwide. “The forty-year-old Duchess of Sussex — wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a blue baseball cap — reached down with her head bowed,” articles said, one after another.

Cockburn is not a parent, at least so far as his public records are concerned. However, even he knows that taking children to a Pride parade is not the best idea for a family field trip. Heather Tirado Gilligan, the author of this Fatherly article, disagrees. She writes, “Pride Parades and the Pride festivals that follow are noisy and crowded. They’re filled with sights that may be new to kids, like public nudity and kink.” If Gilligan wanted any chance at all for her point to succeed, why would she mention “public nudity” and “kink” in the first two sentences? Taking a kid to a sex parade is like bringing a baby to a gun range: it sounds just a bit like bad parenting.

The trial that captured the attention of the country — or at least a handful of TikTokers — came to an end yesterday. A Virginia jury found that actress Amber Heard defamed her ex-husband Johnny Depp and vice versa. While both parties were held to be liable, Depp was awarded $15 million in damages whereas Heard was only awarded $2 million. It was a major defeat for Heard who expressed her disappointment in a statement shortly after the verdict was read. “I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband,” she said. The “mountain of evidence” Heard is referencing might not have been enough to sway the jury, but it was somehow enough for the Washington Post.

May is Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which if you work for the government or for woke capitalists, you probably already knew. It’s a time, we are told, not only to celebrate the achievements of Asian Americans, but as HR departments and Diversity, Inclusion and Equity offices declare, to help us understand the racism Asian Americans face as “persons of color.” One such example of the many trials and tribulations endured by Asian Americans as objects of micro-aggressive racist behavior is what a 2021 New York Times article referred to as “The Cost of Being an ‘Interchangeable Asian.’” This apparently occurs when non-Asians misidentify one Asian for another Asian, typically in the workplace.

Stepping off the plane at LAX, the protagonist in Christopher Buckley’s comic novel Thank You for Smoking breezily observes that “arriving there always made it feel like Friday, even in the middle of the week facing a full workload.” There’s just something about LA’s perfect weather, attractive people and sense of living for tomorrow that instantly lifts your spirits. Born and raised in Boston and having spent most of my adult life within the narrow mental and professional confines of the Acela corridor, I used to be the typical East Coast snob when it came to America’s second-largest city. Sure, I acknowledged, the temperature is always a sublime seventy-two degrees. But how can you endure the traffic? Yes, it’s difficult not to stare at every other person.

America is sorting itself out by class and kind, back to blood and political pedigree. The demographic trend favors the so-called red states and the metro nodes inside these dominions. Austin, Reno, and Nashville beckon. Meanwhile, academic towns like Eugene, Chapel Hill, and Burlington draw gentry blues trying to escape crazy and crime but who are not in tune with Tulsa or Fargo. For big-city emigrants, fatigue with misgovernment, ill-spent government largesse, and racial disorder are part of the picture. As much as they are seeking uncrowded real estate, runaways are searching for courts, authorities, teachers, and stable neighbors whom they can trust.

Cockburn has always said that when the going gets tough, the tough gets going…to a bar. But when the going gets tough for giant corporations — in this case, “tough” meaning $50 billion in lost subscriptions for Netflix — companies tend to get going in whatever direction will induce the mob to keep paying for their goods and services. Netflix has done just that by updating its “corporate culture memo” to let employees know they may have to work on material that triggers them. And letting them know if they don’t like it, they can leave. Over the course of the last several months, as he kept searching in a stupor for The Crown in the wee hours, Cockburn began to notice an increase in the amount of Netflix programming featuring in-your-face progressive messaging.

In the wake of comedian Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special The Closer, activists both online and off warned that Chappelle’s jokes about the trans community would lead to real-world harm, even murder. Instead the trans community has struck first by attacking Chappelle onstage. In his special, Chappelle tells the story of a trans person and friend who defended his stand-up material. Chappelle offered his friend career help by having her open for him on stage. Yet after being bullied by the trans mob for supporting Chappelle, his friend committed suicide. Earlier this week, Chappelle himself was physically attacked at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, during a comedy set that saw many famous faces, including Elon Musk and Chris Rock, in the audience.

It’s Cinco de Mayo, and if you so much as think about using this day to indulge in Chili’s Margarita of the Month, I will have you undergoing sensitivity training faster than you can say “extra salt on the rim.” You see, applying a firm image to a person, thing, or group is wrong (even if it means massive profits for our Mexican neighbors by way of 335,000 gallons of tequila consumed on a single May 5). Or at least NASCAR thinks so, as the corporation plays politically correct whack-a-mole with drivers who say things they don’t like. The latest victim of almost-cancel culture is Denny Hamlin. Last Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway ended with Kyle Larson “battling for the win approaching the start-finish line,” reports the Charlotte Observer.

Recently, I came down with a severe case of climate anxiety. Not because I was worried about global warming but because the globe wasn't getting warm enough. It has been an unseasonably cold spring here on the East Coast. As recently as two weeks ago, a winter storm thrashed the Northeast, while last week the temperature here in Virginia kept getting stuck the 50s. Of course, our science-positive betters insist that a single spell of cold weather can't be used to challenge the climate change "consensus." But then they also seize upon every drought, heat wave, wildfire, hurricane, tornado, flood, derecho, hailstorm, rainstorm, power outage, riot, and coup in Myanmar to argue in favor of climate change. So no wonder some are feeling a little on edge.

How do you take your coffee? With cream? Sugar? A splash of white shame? “The unbearable whiteness of coffee” is the click- and race-baiting headline of a Fast Company article that’s making the internet rounds (my innocent online purchase of Chemex coffee filters must have prompted this suggested guilt trip). I really didn’t want my most sacred morning ritual — and bright spot of many afternoons, for that matter — to be added to the list of things I shouldn’t enjoy because it’s racist. So I poured myself a large mug of fortifying Joe — potentially my last — and gripping it tightly, read the dreaded article and did some digging.

My husband and I recently attended the virtual childbirth classes offered by the hospital where I am registered to deliver our first child. We are classic first-time parents. We have no idea what to expect. Excited and terrified, we’re aware that no matter how much we prepare, there is really no way to. So we signed up for the six-hour class on a Saturday, hoping to get some sense of what labor would be like and the standard procedures at the hospital. The three nurses who taught the class had been bringing babies into the world for well over a decade. They seemed funny and capable. However, it wasn’t long into the training before they started referring to us as variations on a theme of pregnant: “pregnant people,” “pregnant persons,” “birthing persons.