A good article on the moral panic and art but this statement makes no sense:
The culture wars back then always seemed to be about keeping culture from kids. Now the moral panic appears to flow in the opposite direction. The moralizers are young people, not their parents.
Last week we all saw very not-young senators deliver in tones of extreme outrage and in complete seriousness, “you made flatulence jokes, sir?!?” The moral righteousness is a drug that doesn’t discriminate among its addicts.
Good article, but gets weaker at the end. Could’ve been a lot shorter and would’ve been better as a result.
LikeLike
The jokes he said were about flatulence were about drinking to excess & ingesting drugs to excess. They knew this. That was why it was hard to keep a straight face.
LikeLike
36 YEARS AGO. That’s my whole conscious life. The word ridiculous doesn’t begin to describe a moral panic about teenage drinking 36 years ago.
LikeLike
I opened up this thread to make Z’s point (that it wasn’t about flatulence, and the senatorial incredulity was about the evident lie, not about fart jokes) — and I will just add that THAT is the problem. Yes, it was 36 years ago, so why lie so transparently about it now? Instead of presenting himself as a mature adult with some level of critical distance from his idiotic younger self, BK came across as someone who never grew up.
LikeLike
“BK came across as someone who never grew up”
Never growing up is the modern ideal, which is why so many adults come across as cranky infants with no empathy or ability to understand why the universe shouldn’t provide them with anything and everything they need.
LikeLike
Because admitting that you drank too much 40 years ago to people who pore over teenage yearbooks for evidence of today’s unhireability is suicidal.
The Democrats had my support until the word yearbooks was uttered. Once that happened, and everything that came after, that was it for me.
If someone told me just a few weeks ago that I’d be glad over a nomination of an anti-abortion justice, I’d laugh in their face. But what I’ve seen since then – I’m not down with that. I grew up in the USSR. We had no restrictions on abortion until 20 weeks and very few past that. And it was still a horrible place because of people and practices like the Democrats have shown us. I can’t be for this because I know where it leads.
LikeLike
“anti-abortion justice”
I’m sure the last thing that the republican establishment wants is to overturn RvW, the second that happens they have to have another culture war issue and… they don’t have it (they barely have RvW).
But I felt the same, the whole accusations seemed so… deranged (esp from outside of the country) that I was almost glad he was confirmed….. almost.
The dog that didn’t bark is his terrible record on unions (that would have been a much better point to attack instead it went completely ignored while everybody engaged in lurid teen porn fantasies). It’s almost as if modern feminism (and intersecionality) are about erasing worker rights and class as a focal point for social organization…
LikeLike
In the meantime, Trump renegotiated NAFTA with protections for worker rights. Of course, we’ll hear that workers support Trump because they are all Nazis and racists and not because they are excited about a higher minimum wage and worker protections. Of course. The word myopic doesn’t begin to describe this endless screeching about racistsandsexists.
God, people even made the Kavanaugh case somehow about race, even though both Kavanaugh and Ford are equally white and privileged. And it’s not working except to overxcite an already very cooky group of out-there fanatics. Trump’s approval is rising. The Senate will remain Republican. If there’s one more stunt like this one before the election, Republicans will keep the Congress, too.
And yet the only explanation for everything we get to hear is racistsandsexists, racistsandsexists, racistsandsexists. Like a broken record. And I’m like, God, stop with your racistsandsexists. Talk to me about NAFTA, about opioids, about the globalization, about jobs. Enough of this repetitive and boring memes about “old white men.”
Sorry for the rant but I’m so disappointed by all this.
LikeLike
“Trump renegotiated NAFTA with protections for worker rights”
During the election, most people assumed he was lying… I assumed he was telling the truth (like me, he’s a child of the great compression) but couldn’t deliver on anything he said (and I intensely disliked his public TV persona). But he’s coming closer to delivering on his promises than I ever thought possible. He’s still not very good, but he’s well on the way to becoming…. kind of acceptable (if he can get the horrible, horrible republican party machine on board)
LikeLike
Plus, he’s been good on foreign policy. No invasions, strong support for Ukraine, great anti-Russian sanctions, good work on North Korea. Good collaboration with the new Mexican president. We were promised WWIII once he got elected but it’s been the exact opposite. The worst that can be said about him in foreign policy is that he made people laugh at the UN. Compared to invasion-happy Obama and Bush, it’s beyond minor.
LikeLike
The dog that didn’t bark is his terrible record on unions
Nobody cares about unions. Or rather, no Republicans care about unions (unless they happen to be police).
Schumer needed to keep every member of his caucus (including the independents) and flip three Republicans in order to defeat the nomination (since judicial filibusters don’t exist anymore). Republicans just had to make sure not to lose votes.
It was always going to be a long shot and the dude had a better than even chance of being confirmed no matter what came up. But Schumer should’ve been able to keep his caucus in line at least.
Every fucking election season people bleat about voting for Democrats and ask to contribute to the party and they always cite the fucking Supreme Court.
Speaking of unions, Clarissa hasn’t posted about her governor’s race in a long time.
LikeLike
As for the governor race in IL, I’ll vote for JB, obviously. I’m not madly enthusiastic about him and his campaign is ridiculously poorly run. But Rauner’s anti-JB ads actually make a good case for JB. I’m now a lot more pro-JB before Rauner started making his case for him. The result is uncertain but this is one election where I know who I’m voting for and I’m happy about it.
LikeLike
JB is JB Pritzker, for those who are out of state. The unions stand with him, obviously.
LikeLike
The question was about what the atmosphere was when the attempted rape took place. It was relevant.
LikeLike
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment