Category: Culture War

PLOT: An NYU professor wants to allow one of his film students to make a porno movie for his class. The university’s administation, in a shocking display of common sense, tells the student she can’t do that. The student, chastened, agrees that this is beyond the bounds of morality and good taste. The New York Times does not write a long story about it. The ACLU is not asked for a comment.
Now that’s a story that would never get greenlighted, would it? Yet everything in the first two sentences is true; but the NYT did write a story about it, and the ACLU made frowny faces about the “university acting as a moral censor.”
The student, Paula Carmicino, “planned to intersperse 30-second clips of passionate sex with scenes of the couple engaged in more mundane activities, like watching television and reading a newspaper.”
“The whole concept of it was to compare the normal behavior of people in their everyday lives versus the animalistic behavior that comes out when they are having sex,” she said. There are plenty of “animalistic” things that humans do besides sex: eating, pooping, breathing, sleeping. Funny how they aren’t as interesting.
The professor, who goes by the improbable name of “Professor de Jesus,” was foursquare behind the student. No one would imply that the professor or the students had anything other than noble motives for supporting their fellow artist, though they would have been present for the filming of the “graphic” sex.
The spoilsport administration, through its toady lacky running-dog book-burning soul-destroying mouthpiece Richard Pierce said that

…the school had long had an unwritten policy that student films should follow industry standards and was now considering putting that policy in writing. defending [sic] the university, he said N.Y.U. was considered very broad-minded on questions of artistic freedom, but had to draw the line at videotaping real sex before a class of students. He compared that to a filmmaker committing arson for a movie about firefighters.
“Someone give me a list of universities that allow sex acts in the classroom,” Mr. Pierce said. “We’re not going to be the first.”
He also praised Ms. Carmicino as a “serious and valued” student. “The history of art is replete with examples of artists producing great art under limitations,” he said.

Blasphemy! Surely this philistine knows that great art can only be created under unfettered freedom! I don’t want to hear about Bernini or Bach and their “limitations.” This is the 21st century, man!
One other priceless detail: NYU’s president is named “John Sexton.” Truly, you can’t make up stuff like this.

On a typical weekday, I’m on a computer 8-12 hours a day. They’re a great tool for getting things done, and I’m very glad for them because their existence provides a living for my family.
They are, however, a terrible waste of time for primary education, and with the exception of word processing or Internet-based research, they’re probably a waste of time for later grades, too. This article — from San Francisco, of all places! — calls computer-saturated education a bunch of b.s.:

Throughout the country, computer technology is dumbing down the academic experience, corrupting schools’ financial integrity, cheating the poor, fooling people about the job skills youngsters need for the future and furthering the illusions of state and federal education policy.

The article shows that money from intellectual, soul-enhancing activities like music and arts get a much lower priority than technology, to the detriment of the kids.
Education is a human activity. It can be supplemented by machines, but machines do not educate. Putting an excessive number of computers in schools, and using them as a panacea for true education, is thus one of the many tentacles of the culture of death, which attempts to subordinate men to processes, artifacts, and rules, rather than making those things subordinate to man’s needs.

The population of Massachusetts is half Catholic. Now they’re the first significant state to legalize gay marriage. Granted, this is judge-imposed legislation, but I find it shameful that Catholics have succumbed to the Culture of Death to such an extent. What are Catholics doing up there? Or in the rest of the godless north, which is the one of the prime nurturers for the CoD? Seems like many, if not most of them are complicit.
I’m sure Richard is going to comment on this, so maybe he can chime in with some hopeful news.

So the YWCA decided after six months that having the bisexual adulteress Patricia Ireland as their CEO and role model for the youth of America wasn’t working out, especially since she wanted to turn the group into an activist organization. Maybe soccer moms across the country notified National that they didn’t want the local Y to be turned into a branch office of NOW.
American Life League’s David Brandao wrote, back when Ireland was hired:

At first glance, it’s tempting to ask if Patricia Ireland’s task is to do for the YWCA what the Village People did for the YMCA. But the truth is, unfortunately, that the YWCA has been on the wrong side of the moral tracks for a long, long time. This bunch is already well entrenched as agents of the Culture of Death….The YWCA cannot become pro-abortion; it already is pro-abortion.

So now that Ireland has been fired, it’s only a small piece of good news, but it is good news. Just keep those pools well chlorinated, OK?

A number of bloggers have speculated whether the whole Terri Schiavo situation is really massive spiritual warfare. Here’s an interesting article on George Fellos, attorney for Mike Schiavo, from a past issue of the St. Pete’s Times. I’ve reproduced some of the more salient quotes, but it is definitely worth reading in its entirety:
————
Bibliographical info:
The spirit and the law:[SOUTH PINELLAS Edition]
SHARON TUBBS. St. Petersburg Times. St. Petersburg, Fla.: May 25, 2001. pg. 1.D
———
Felos, 49, has taken on about 10 right-to-die cases in the last decade. He balances his quest for spiritual growth with his lawyerly duty to fight.
[…]
Felos’ spiritual and professional lives intersected in a public way 12 years ago, in the case of Estelle Browning. The case gained him a reputation as the person to see when you want to let someone die.
Browning, of Dunedin, had written a living will in 1985, saying she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means if she ever became ill. A year later, she had a stroke. But the nursing home refused to stop feeding her because she was not technically brain dead. Her cousin and former roommate, Doris Herbert, asked Felos to take the case.
He wanted to see Browning for himself. She could not speak, but Felos says his spiritual side picked up on something. He says her soul cried out to his soul and asked, “Why am I still here?”
[…]
After the Browning case, Felos became a volunteer for the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, sitting and talking with terminally ill patients. On his living room shelf sits a book for hospice training, Dying Well, by Ira Byock.
[…]
“I believe that Christ was God incarnate and was resurrected. But, by the same token, I believe that there were other incarnations of God as well,” he says. “All the great religions in their essence express the same fundamental truths.”
[…]
That is what is necessary, he says, “to accomplish what I believe are Terri’s wishes.”
Does Felos believe Terri Schiavo’s soul has spoken to his?
Felos declines to answer, showing his lawyerly side. “It’s a pending case,” he says.