Why does David Brooks have a New York Times column when you don't? Because he is able to look at the big picture and discern the Big Trends that are "sweeping across the United States" and the "true motive forces" behind them.
Today, for example, the incisive Brooks notes that areas where the population is growing the fastest also tend to have higher birthrates and more children. Lesser minds might view this as almost tautologically obvious, but not Brooks. He sees a Big Trend — possibly even the kind of broad, sweeping generalization that he could turn into a book examining this mysterious connection between higher birthrates and the presence of more children.
Beyond the thuddingly obvious demographic observations, Brooks does point out an actual trend, but it's nothing new. He calls it "natalism," but it used to be called "white flight."
Robert Reich describes the same phenomenon — " we're segregating more and more by income into separate localities" — and he doesn't think it's a good thing.
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Michael Crowley, in Slate, on entirely sanctified family matters guru James Dobson:
The subject of homosexuality seems to exert a special power over him, and he has devoted much idiosyncratic thought to it. When discussing gays he spares no detail, no matter how prurient. In Bringing Up Boys, he gleefully reprints a letter he received from a 13-year-old boy who describes wiggling his naked body in front of the mirror to "make my genitals bounce up and down" and admits to having "tried more than once to suck my own penis (to be frank)." Dobson believes that such adolescents suffer from what he calls "pre-homosexuality," a formative stage which results from having a weak father figure. Dobson further contends that homosexuality, especially in such an early stage, can be "cured." His ministry runs a program called Love Won Out that seeks to convert "ex-gays" to heterosexuality. (Alas, the program's director, a self-proclaimed "ex-gay" himself, was spotted at a gay bar in 2000, an episode Dobson downplayed as "a momentary setback.")
To be frank, I was going to juxtapose that with the appropriate excerpt from the script for Clerks, but this is a family-friendly blog.
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Dobson's Bringing Up Boys could wind up on the list of banned books in Alabama if Rep. Gerald Allen has his way. The state lawmaker, Newsmax reports:
… has proposed a bill banning books with gay themes and protagonists.
Under his legislation, public funds could no longer be used to buy "textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle."
… If the bill becomes law, "public school textbooks could not present homosexuality as a genetic trait and public libraries couldn't offer books with gay or bisexual characters," said the paper.
(NewsMax doesn't bother to say which paper.)
"Heather Has Two Mommies" and other books aimed at overtly promoting or describing gay lifestyles would of course be banned.
But so, too, would some fiction-based literary classics such as "The Color Purple," "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Brideshead Revisited," each because they feature a gay character.
(Enforcement would seem to present some difficulties. Consider, for example, "Romeo and Juliet" — is Mercutio a permissible character, yes or no?)
The prospective law also would ban any materials promoting sodomy or other acts prohibited by Alabama law. And it would prohibit books that feature heterosexual couples who also engage in similar acts.
So The World According to Garp is out, but Hotel New Hampshire is probably still okay.
(Thanks to the folks in comments who alerted me to this story.)
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Potential coffee shop names that may or may not result in trouble with Starbucks' legal department:
* Billy Budd's
* Fletcher Christian's
* Apollo's
* The Face Man's
* File's
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Dear Patrick Goldstein,
If you're going to quote pundits decrying "strident Hollywood activists and their palpable contempt for regular people" you should try to find some who aren't on the payroll of Gov. Arnold "girlie men" Schwarzenegger.
Oh, and before you write anything else about John Mellencamp, you might want to listen to his duet with Travis Tritt.
Hack.
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Geoffrey Lean in The Independent (via Cursor) summarizes the Bush administration's environmental agenda for the next four years:
1. "… open up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling …"
2. "… encourage the building of nuclear power stations …"
3. "… a comprehensive review of the Clean Air Act …"
4. "… a review of the Endangered Species Act …"
5. "… an attack on the National Environmental Policy Act …"
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
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Finally, Slate's Daniel Gross relays this wonderful bit of description from TheStreet.com's James Cramer, describing Wal-Mart:
"The stores are dowdy. The aisles are ugly. There's nothing exciting or different or even colorful at Wal-Mart. It feels almost Soviet in its selection and presentation."
There's a revelation, or a prophecy, lurking in that phrase, "almost Soviet."
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