Archive for 2015

PAUL MIRENGOFF: The racial politics of seating a white sex offender in the Virginia state legislature.

The 17-year old Morrissey “corrupted” is African-American. This leads some African-American delegates to insist that Morrissey cannot be permitted to sit in the legislature. White “master” praying on black subordinate, and all that.

But wait! Morrissey’s constituents are predominantly African-American. Thus, some contend it would be “paternalistic” for mostly white legislators to deny these folks the representative of their choice. Disenfranchisement of blacks, and all that.

Cornel West, call your office.

We really are living in the Crazy Years.

IS FRANCE IN THE EARLY STAGES OF A CHRISTIAN REVIVAL? “Yes, churches in the French countryside are desperately empty. There are no young people there. But then, there are no young people in the French countryside, period. France is a modern country with an advanced economy, and that means its countryside has emptied, and that means that churches built in an era when the country’s sociological makeup was quite different go empty. In the cities — which is where people are, and where cultural trends gain escape velocity — the story is quite different. . . . It was only recently that I was struck by the fact that, imperceptibly, the majority of my college and grad school friends who were Christmas-and-Easter-Catholics when we met now report going to Church every Sunday and praying regularly. On social media, they used to post about parties; now they’re equally likely to post prayers for persecuted Middle East Christians or calls to help the homeless over the holidays.”

Well, my University of Tennessee colleague Rosalind Hackett has been predicting for some time that militant Christianity, not militant Islam, would be the religious force of the 21st Century.

FOLLOWUP: Still liking the SpyderCo Endura pocketknife that SayUncle recommended.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “He constantly talked about crushing the patriarchy, which appealed to the neophyte feminist in me. An innocent search of his Yahoo! screen name had let me know he was eight inches. He would never finish, and it took all of my efforts to even get him hard. For us, sex was him staring blankly at the wall as he planked on top of me.”

THE CITIZENS’ GUIDE to Regime Change. “All of a sudden, it’s OK to talk seriously about regime change in Iran and even elsewhere. . . . If misery alone brought down failed oppressive regimes, North Korea would be a free country today.”