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Down here in Australia, the Christmas/New Year period is traditionally a very slow time of year. Most of us are recovering from the Christmas indulgence and preparing for the New Years’ binge. The blessed sopor only broken by the sounds of the Aussie cricket team falling of their perch of dominance.

The domestic news is often slow as well with only the occasional shark menace to get us all excited. Even the pollies tend to take time off and spare us from their bleating spin.

However the Reverend Fred Nile has stepped in to fill that much needed void this holiday season by declaring that topless bathing be banned from ‘mainstream beaches’ in New South Wales. The call against free range breasts is not something new for the old Rev. A tradition as regular (and effective) as his prayers for rain every Gay Mardi Gras.
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Political scientist Samuel Huntington has passed away. The obits have duly noted the great influence of Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations (full text) thesis in affairs before and post September 11, 2001 and all seem to reward the Clash of civilizations unexamined as a great idea. But it wasn’t really a great paradigm for our time contrary to the popular idea.

About a year and a half ago, I examined Huntington’s thesis as part of a university course. The resulting essay I turned into a blog post over at Larvatus Prodeo titled Culture is not destiny. After reading Huntington and looking at the arguments, I wasn’t that impressed. Huntington was still mired in cold-war thinking and his explanations of why “civilizations” clash can be just as easily explained by other factors such as geographical or military/economic issues.

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If you go by the token conservative columnists in the SMH, you’d have a grand reason to think that conservatives are crap drivers. Especially when hey have a habit of making admissions of failings in their op-eds.

Miranda Devine was going on about this some months ago. This weekend, Michael Duffy joins the fray of conservative columnists offering poor excuses for their driving habits.

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CW Stoneking

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…is pretty much a no-show. Most the of the usual antagonists are busy doing Christmasy things and not all that interested in importing more needless cultural argy-bargy from the US.

But I have found a participant. As Dave says, behind the War on Christmas is the exploitation of anger and fear of the audience or constituents. So that fits in perfectly with Sydney shock jock, Ray Hadley, who as outlined by Media Mook, is waging a “one-man jihad against those he deems not Christmassy enough throughout the month of December.”

For those outside of Sydney, Hadley is basically a loud-mouthed bully with a radio show. The archetypical shock jock. He seems to have no desire for nuanced discussion or intelligent treatment of issues. Just bluster and shouting and exploiting fear and anger in his listeners.

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Gretchen Carlson, of Fox News’ comedy morning show, is outraged by, “by all these atheist displays and trying to push Jesus to the back seat on Christmas Day”. Is that so? And why would that be Ms. Carlson?

After Michelle Malkin announces she is fatigued with the War on Christmas, More »

The death of Bettie Page last week reminds us how, even given the standards of beauty change with time, real beauty is eternal. Bettie has charmed men and women for over half a century and will continue to do so even now she has gone.

Bettie’s beauty was natural. In her photographs (whether the amateur shots or the BDSM photo shoots) there was a playfulness and a sense of fun. Something lost in today’s artificial world.

Old Feminist has a good post that contrasts what passed as desirable for nekkid women in the 1950s to what is desirable for nekkid women today.

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Continuing the War on Christmas theme, let’s take a look at the official Fox Entertainment Christmas er..Holiday card. Good old Bill O’Reilly, works at Fox and that economics genius Daniel Henninger works at the Wall Street Journal (of all places!) so this may come as a shock to them that their own company may be on the Liberty Counsel’s “Naughty” slate, unless they count the blatant political visual metaphor as being somehow, “Nice”:

Recently, I was exhorted via e-mail to revisit an old Stein commentary on Snopes.com. Before reading further, I suggest you read visit that first link and read the thing before continuing.

Now I get that Stein is contrasting the cult of personality around entertainment icons with what he presumes is a lack of public devotion to God, but why? Does he think this is some new phenonmenon? And why doesn’t he mention politicians and sports figures as well? As an atheist I hear enough about God in the public theater to make me wince, and let’s be honest here, it is always about the Christian Gods (The God, Jesus, some kind of holy spirit, Mary the patron saint of images in strange places and the mother of all weeping statues, the Pope, all those gods).  What is his complaint? That other people have other interests? More »

A rare chance for a day out in Sydney and to go see a play at the Opera House. A tourist icon with all the usual pitfalls such an honour brings, the Sydney Opera House is still a marvellous place. Right on the harbour on a sunny and hot (though windy) day, it was glorious. The reason The Beloved and I were in town was to see the play The Pig Iron People.

The Pig Iron People is John Doyle’s (the alter -ego of Rampaging Roy Slaven) first play after a few TV scripts being Changi and Marking Time.

The Pig Iron People is about Liberal Street, a street in your typical inner-western suburb of Sydney. The time is 1996 and the play begins on the night John Howard was elected Australia Prime Minister. Nick, a writer moves into the street, inhabited by the perpetual warring John and Jeanette Howard, the tender Rosie and Claude and the sullen and aggressive almost reclusive German resident Fritz. The residents of the street are all in their late 50s or 60s. They were born in the 1930s and, as the play mentions, shaped by the Menzies era of the 1950s. For them, John Howard represented a welcome return to the values of that era. Indeed, Howard modelled himself on Menzies taking his attributes as well as failings including being unimaginative. The dubious accolade of a clever politician is one that applies to both past leaders.

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