Two links for you to view and reflect on. (NOTE: some links for further study provided at the bottom, which may spark some serious commentary in the future, special thanks to RightWingProf a blog well worth your time).
Guilt: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America and why it's a harsh dose of reality to burst the bubble of la-la-land coating a huge chunk of this country.
By the way, I love Ann Coulter - I love the fact that she has the guts to actually say what millions of people actually think but don't have the guts to say - someone has to do it, and if we didn't have her, we'd have to invent her.
Andy Breitbart's Big Hollywood - my new favorite blog, because the worst mistake the conservative movement in this country has ever made, was to cede the arts, academia, and the public forum to the far left. Well, to be honest, I'm not sure if it's really so much ceded as much as "sucked so bad that it left a gaping hole the other side rushed in to fill."
I'm not going to sugar coat things, the reason why a lot of conservative culture lost out over the past 30-40 years is that it was guilty of the same things leftist-driven culture in America has since come full-circle to suffer from as well
1) The number one rule of cultural endeavors: entertain. If you don't entertain on some level, you lose people's interest, and quick.
2) Don't suck (see rule one).
3) Don't assume that "silence is agreement/compliance" or that everyone in your desire audience is on "the same page."
4) The echo-chamber/preaching to the choir effect.
Let me illustrate this as best I can, awkwardly and incompletely. I'm 31 years old, and growing up, I think nothing did more damage to image of Christianity in America and its subsequent devaluation than the following things: Christian rock, and an overreaction to media-driven fake controversies (re: heavy metal music, video games, Dungeons and Dragons, and throw a hand up if you remember these - Jack Chick pamphlets) which turned out to be chasing shadows more than anything else.
On the first - the reason why for most of its existence Christian rock has been mocked and ridiculed has been first and foremost, it was bloody awful as far as being "rock" music goes. It was parodical. Treacly, mealy-mouthed, saccharine to the point of encouraging diabetes, it promoted less an image of a loving God than a Peter, Paul and Mary sleepover guaranteed to do one thing: get your child beaten up at school. Seriously, what it did was contribute to an image of "Christianity is for wusses" and "Christianity makes your kid into a passive victim" or, come to possess a "persecution complex" as my dad used to put it.
Christianity in America, Catholic and otherwise, was in a long downward trend because it turned off its young men, and still does in many ways. Nothing has been more harmful than the image of "Jesus, the guitar playing-sandal wearing wandering hippie." That's not what I was looking for in a God, and trust me, scratch deep enough of just about any other man in this country who's lost his drive for Church, and I bet you'll hear the same thing. If I have to self-describe my religious views, well let me put it this way - Military Chaplains get the idea that "turn the other cheek" doesn't mean "be a passive wuss" - something that I think far, far, far too many mainstream preachers and parents believe. In another life, I would have made a good Templar Knight, Hospitaler, or Teutonic Knight perhaps. There's a reason the Norse worshipped Odin, and Yahweh of the Old Testament had a penchant for well-earned butt-kickings too don't forget.
Now to be fair, Christian rock has finally started to come into its own, mostly in the form of Christian metal (no, not Stryper) but honest-to-god metal bands like ZAO and Living Sacrifice, who might scare the pants off of many parents, but I guarantee you have probably done more to rehabilitate the image of Christians among the young than any number of sermons, crappy cartoons, horrible young adult novels, especially non-offensive to parents, etc, which typically fail because they end up being pale attempts to model successful works which succeed because they seemed to capture real life and all its fun and faults to a greater degree, contained some not-so-Christian themes and ideas.
It was Christianity's run for cover, fleeing from reality and retreating inside a plastic bubble in the post-'60s era, that did so much damage. Nature abhors a vaccuum. Ironically enough, as Breitbart's new site really demonstrates, the Arts driven by "liberal" points of view, have fallen into the same trap. I think it's great to see the other side, for once, in its annoyingly self-righteous, moralistic, and arrogant way, hoisted on its own petard. Much like the conservative movement has been (and I think often deservedly so) for the past 35-40 years.
Here's some things to ponder about, for cultural conservatives, Christian, libertarian or otherwise.
NO ONE likes to be beaten over the head with message. Message also doesn't make up for poor art. Poor art is poor art, I don't care what your politics are, but unfortunately, there's a population of various fanboys who will buy stuff because it fits their "scene" or their "lifestyle" or whatever they call their little club of everyone non-conforming together these days. As a self-proclaimed punk rock/indie kid, I couldn't stand the way that punk bands, especially "Straight-Edge" or "Hardcore" bands would sell records just because they were straight edge or hardcore, having little to do with the actual quality of their work. (Re: I'm talking to you Earth Crisis, in particular).
Here's another, and I am really taking aim at (insert) fundamentalists (because they're the most well known for it, fair or not) here. Draconian, fearful condemnation of things like books, games, etc, aimed at scaring your kids or warning your kids always seem to backfire don't they? Why do you think that is? Here's why: music does not make your kid kill anyone, themselves included. It's a cop-out. It's looking for the easy target, and it avoids self-reflection and self-analysis. If you want a good case in point, just go listen to Jack Thompson (he of the ban videogames fame) sometime, and really listen to what he says - even if you think (as I actually do) that Grand Theft Auto is cultural trash, the guy is a grade-A idiot. If you really don't like a particular cultural artifact, I have a novel idea - stop funding it. Stop making it attractive by turning it into the forbidden fruit. Stop supporting fundamentally un-American idea like censorship because you don't approve. Stop adopting the same dang tactics that you claim the Left uses on you (lawsuits, bad legislation with a HOST of even worse unintended consequences towards the First Amendment or other fundamental freedoms).
If you don't like something, then don't buy it. Don't watch it. Understand this though, that the more you try to stick a kid in a hermetically sealed "bubble" of reality, the more and more of a disadvantage they are going to find themselves in the world.
Like it or not, they have to interact with the world at some point, even if you send them to religious schools, live in a religious town, etc. Overprotectiveness and overbearing hostility to the world sets otherwise good kids up for failure - rather than teaching them how to deal with the world and make good choices, instead it makes them the awkward outcast which you know? There is no such thing as "individuality" when it comes to adolescence. Telling kids that they are somehow "better" than their peers because of their suffering doesn't make for better kids, it makes for arrogant little snots - don't believe me? Go check out the kids in a creative writing, journalism, or art class sometime and see what it does to the "other side" of the equation (here's a hint - they grow up to be the tired, poor souls who churn out the same movies over and over "the suburbs suck," "jocks are evil" "traditional values are all wrong," "America is bad") - I guarantee you, if those kids had gotten more dates in high school, we wouldn't be suffering through their pathetic attempts at revenge via the Multi-Plex and Barnes and Nobles right now. Overprotective, "seal off the world" types do nothing but turn our more fodder for the Stuff White People Like crowd - aka, I love hipster Buddhist and Taoist kids especially, or as I like to call them the "ANYTHING BUT CHRISTIANITY kids because my parents did everything possible to make me hate Western culture, my fellow teens, and create nothing but resentment because I had no friends and coudn't get a prom date." They adopt a religion-of-the-month because they want something in their lives, but got turned off not by reasonable, legitimate objections to bad cultural artifacts, but because their parents, peers, teachers, etc were, well, asinine about it.
The bad news of it is this; unless they suffer from some unfortunate physical deformity or handicapped, most of the kids who get picked on in school really did or say something to bring it on themselves It's time we stopped kidding ourselves about that, and about bullying too. Bullying serves a great purpose, and I think we actually could use more of it in todays anti-septic cry-baby world (ever notice that you see fewer and fewer men as school teachers, at any grade level? Ever stop to wonder WHY for a second? Ever wonder why there's fewer and fewer men in the "helping" professions?)
But back to my main point - if you think you're doing kids a favor by shielding them from all the bad influences of popular culture, I think you're making your kid a naive sucker waiting to be sucked up into a bad crowd, who'll REALLY do damage that a session of Grand Theft Auto or listening to some old-school Judas Priest can't do. (Also, I should have made this clear earlier, I'm really talking about "teenagers" when I say "kids" here) - Point out to them first that the movie, or book, or whatever really isn't all that good come to think of it (a perfect case study - try the ultimate 20th Century "cool stuff" that seems awesome when you're 17, and unbearibly horrible by the time you hit your mid twenties, unless you're one of those losers permanently stuck in Stuff White People Like mode - "On the Road" and "Catcher in the Rye" are great exampels of this. "American Beauty" and now it seems "Revolutionary Road" are new ones - "really, the suburbs are just SO horrible. You never went to bed hungry, you had a roof over your head, but it was just so, so, sould crushing wasn't it." - When you point this out to a group of teens or smug 20 and 30 somethings, they seem to shut up pretty dang quick).
When you take the approach of ridiculing, or exposing the weakness of popular stuff, rather than pulling the reactionary "no, burn and ban it!" you actually have a real impact. You make the kid able to think critically and decide what's good or not good, instead of becoming a fearful, rodent-like wuss always looking over his shoulder for fear the "devil is gonna git ya" if you play a session of D&D (hey, once upon a time I was a Level 12 half-elf ranger too), or listen to Motorhead (I'm smart enough to know that Lemmy's lifestyle would kill and normal human being except Lemmy apparently, and maybe Keith Richards, who I am convinced is a zombie).
I don't know how much sense I made in this post, or how many people I ticked off. But if I made anyone think, then mission accomplished.
Now if you'll excuse me, time to boot up my rank 10 Witch hunter, and listen to some Maiden while I'm at it.
Update 1: These links, which Prof sent me, do a good job of encapsulating the theological and more interestingly, liturgical points I'm trying to make here.
