I just happened upon this 1999 George Carlin comedy routine -- a slick, pointed and . . . well, Carlinesque . . . critique of religion. I found the Carlin video on a sassy site populated by lots of non-believers: "God is for Suckers," a site that makes Dangerous Intersection's presentation look rather…
The conservative right loves to use the term “family values” as a token cover for their backward bigotry. Used in opposition to abortion, gay rights, or even the increase of women in the workplace, “family values” summons a particular image of the conservatives’ imaginary era of perfection and bliss.
Many people refer to this image as a real time, probably somewhere in the 1950’s; “the good old days” when men worked to support their families, women stayed happily in the home with the children, no one divorced, and no children ran off to live renegade alternative lifestyles tainted with wanton sodomy, teen pregnancy, or drug abuse.
We may have even heard older people reminisce about “the good old days” in terms that make the time seem authentically wonderful: “no one locked their doors”; “neighbors looked after each other”; “marriage meant something back then”; “it was a simpler time”, and so on.
Even if we don’t buy into the conservative agenda against basic equal rights, we may concede that the world has become a much more frightening, complicated place, and that a time period such as the allusive 1950’s seems preferable, even tantalizing.
Unfortunately, no amount of regressive activism on the part of Republicans can return us to a grander time, because those “good old days” simply never existed. I like comedian Lewis Black’s take on the shiny 1950’s ideal:
…“It was called the ‘50s. The wife cooked and raised the kids and sent the husband off to work, where
I like money. With money I can clothe myself, pay for my grandchildren’s piano lessons, drive a reliable car, eat some great food, and visit friends in faraway places. I don‘t want a barter economy, especially since I have nothing physical to barter for necessities, unless you count the endless reams of paper I can generate. But this American drive to get rich, and get rich now with a minimum of effort, is doing us in.
Some people use the lottery. Lotteries, or gambling in general, do not particularly offend me. I do think they are the resort of people who failed 6th grade math, and I dislike the false advertising claiming the lottery benefits our school systems (the percentage going to education is way too low to make that an advantage of lotteries). But I don’t think they ought to be illegal (funny how they don’t pass laws requiring that we eat our Brussels sprouts, everyone is too busy trying to outlaw the fun things, like alcohol, sex, etc.).
Some people “collect” things, believing that if they buy every coffee mug with a logo on it, someday their ‘collection’ will be worth millions. I think collections are junk that gather dust and requires me to buy shelves or boxes or storage space to put it (think of George Carlin’s monologue on buying so much stuff that you have to buy stuff to put your stuff in or sell some stuff to buy other stuff). That doesn’t seem to be …
The Missouri supreme court has ruled that a law banning sexually explicit billboards is--gasp!-- unconstitutional. This should come as a surprise to no one. But of course religious groups are stunned. They will try to appeal. Personally, I resent all the JESUS! billboards and the propagandistic ones that declare Pornography…
Humans are creatures with limited attentional capacity. We don’t have the time or brainpower to personally investigate every claim that comes our way. We don’t like questioning ideas to which we’ve become accustomed. Evil-minded people only need to get those lies into our heads. Once in there, those false ideas rattle around for a long time. How to best get false information into people’s heads? Employ a Trojan horse maneuver, i.e., plant credible-seeming information into our brains when we are young using credible intermediaries (such as our parents) through the use of the mass media. And it always helps if the proponents of deceit are well-financed while the proponents of the truth are not. Once false information is safely in their heads, humans are willing to carry it around for decades, disseminating it to yet others and even fighting for it. No, I’m not writing about Iraq. Today’s case study is cow milk. Yeah, the kind of milk you probably drink. Why drink milk? You’ve probably seen lots of those slick ad campaigns. You’ll hear lots of claims that it is important for humans to drink cow milk. Before I go further, here are my disclaimers. For my first 4 ½ decades on this planet, I poured milk on my cereal. About five years ago, my wife and I began to suspect that our youngest daughter was lactose intolerant. People who are lactose intolerant can’t properly digest milk. We thus switched over to soy milk for her. I also switched …