The culture war

Sneakers? Check. Morning TV show to pass 40 minutes on an elliptical machine? Check. Soft-core porn advertising for the commercial break? Check.

Who knew you could burn so many extra calories at the local gym just being humiliated by the content of an ad for designer watches? Thanks to Italian fashion icons Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, we can all cringe with embarrassment while three anorexic-looking twentysomethings engage in the latest TV and advertising fad: Sexual threesomes.

You are probably wondering how sexual perversion and timepieces go together in a television commercial. Me, too.

Apparently the target audience for the brand D&G Time includes promiscuous young adults with upward of $650 to spend on a simple wristwatch. I guess when the watch is all you plan to have on at the end of the day, it had better be special.
 

Back in September, my husband, a law professor, asked if I would host one of the student groups for which he serves as a faculty adviser for a gathering at our home. I spent a delightful afternoon helping the group put on a barbecue to launch the semester while listening to them banter about myriad issues, as law students tend to do.

This made me wonder: Are lawyers taught to argue among themselves, or are they born that way? Hard to say.

One thing these aspiring lawyers didn't debate were the basic principles that brought them together as a student group; namely, the tenets of their Christian faith. This was a gathering of a chapter of the Christian Legal Society (CLS), a national organization of lawyers, judges, legal scholars and law students whose stated purpose is "seeking justice with the love of God."

Seeking justice now brings CLS to the highest court in the land.

 Here in the Midwest, we know a thing or two about climate change. Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes. It'll change.

Perhaps it's my casual attitude about weather generally, or maybe my cynicism about big science, but the revelations of data doctoring by climate scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit didn't come as a surprise to me.

With so much at stake, one must only follow the massive money and political power trails to assume there's more to this issue than an uptick in the temperature. Climate change is the issue through which citizens of the U.S. could be forced to subject our Constitution and ourselves to the sovereignty of a worldwide governing body. The ramifications for our liberty and lifestyles of an international treaty on climate change are truly frightening - much more so than melting ice caps.

My community is a state capital and a college town, which means I live in a geographic bastion of political correctness. To wit: A recent headline in my hometown newspaper actually read: "Celebrating diversity."

Setting aside the lack of journalistic brainpower that prompted such a cliche - above the fold, no less - the story about a "multicultural appreciation event" (formerly known as an "ethnic festival") offered up just one more example of the general obsession with multiculturalism as an end in and of itself.

With Thanksgiving and the Judeo-Christian holidays upon us, I fully expect a series of equally creative headlines in the coming weeks such as "Giving thanks for diversity," "Interfaith services celebrate diversity" and "Holiday meals celebrate diversity."

Truly, the most fervent among the diversity movement are headline writers.

Thanks to Oprah Winfrey's interview of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, I'm heading out to buy her book, "Going Rogue: An American Life."

Like millions of Americans, Mrs. Palin intrigues me, not because I'm a huge fan or a huge skeptic, but because despite mountains of media content produced about her, she remains a mystery.

Those who want the stereotyped, "Saturday Night Live" image of Mrs. Palin to hold up as fact argue that the mainstream media has offered an accurate picture of the woman and that picture is "I can see Russia from my house."

Photo: Screen caption of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Tuesday was one of those days when the news can confuse us. Just as millions of Americans tuned into the painfully moving memorial service at Fort Hood, Texas, honoring 13 Americans whose lives were extinguished by an Islamist soldier in their midst, entertainment news carried headlines about a record-setting war game now available wherever toys are sold.

"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" from video game publisher Activision is predicted to be the highest grossing first-day release in the entertainment industry. It's supposed to make more than any book, movie, DVD or video game ever has made on its initial release, including all of the "Harry Potter" iterations.

We ought not be surprised, but we ought to be concerned.

It's probably just a matter of time until burglary suspect Kane Kellett files a lawsuit claiming he was denied his right to free speech.

What with the perverse, modern-day interpretations of our constitutional guarantee of expression, one can only imagine the damages he will try to collect for being held in contempt of court simply because he flipped off the judge.

For now, Mr. Kellett sits in a McHenry County, Ill., jail, where one might hope he is learning a hard - if not overdue - lesson on the importance of civility. Or not.

It has a long way to go to make its organization's name a reality, but the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood claimed an important recent victory.

CCFC has for years sought to reveal the truth about so-called educational videos designed ostensibly to increase the brainpower of growing babies. Studies show no measurable gains in intelligence or verbal skills associated with baby videos. In fact, researchers at the University of Washington found that for every hour per day of screen viewing by infants aged 8 to 16 months, a measurable decrease occurs in communicative development.

In 2006, CCFC filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint against Baby Einstein and brand owner Disney, charging that the company's marketing misled parents into thinking the videos could positively impact development and learning.

Today's observation: Is it any wonder our teenagers are confused? They're surrounded by absurd mixed messages from adults that defy logic and fly in the face of common sense.

To wit: A Georgia school's ban against religious messages on high school cheerleader banners. For at least five years, the Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe cheerleaders have held up large paper posters through which the football team crashes to enter the field at the start of their Friday night battles. The purpose is motivational, and no one has ever complained that the banners were inappropriately religious.

In fact, the community loves them.

But a parent's notification to the school district that such posters violate federal law has forced the cheerleaders to cease using motivational phrases from the New Testament...

There had to be a dozen mismatched suitcases - big ones - all stuffed to capacity and secured with luggage straps, but the one I noticed first was a small, pink overnight bag with a teddy bear sticking out of the front pocket.

Its owner stood in the airline-ticketing queue clutching an American Girl doll while all around her, family members hugged and cried.

It didn't take long to figure out what was happening; the little girl's family was moving from Michigan to Hawaii, where they hoped to find work. The ambivalence on her face seemed to say this move wasn't a happy family adventure.