“Buckwild” ~ MTV

Two Americas exist in the imaginings of popular entertainment and media. One is a multicultural utopia cosseted in mawkish high-mindedness; the other makes Thomas Hobbes description of humanity as “poor, nasty, (and) brutish,” sound overly optimistic.

MTV’s newest reality shows “Buckwild” and “Washington Heights” cynically indulge both stereotypes. For anyone inclined to tune in, be forewarned: This is elitist exploitation at its contemptible worst.  read more »

Will Rogers was the quintessential American. Despite being a high-school drop-out, the self-described Cherokee cowboy was an accomplished author/journalist/humorist/actor who enjoyed world-wide fame until his untimely death in a 1935 plane crash. He was witty, blunt, both liberal and innately conservative, compassionate, humble and hardworking—simply the best of who we are.

Hollywood and their toadies in media and politics agree that “old-fashioned” values are just that: Old. Add to that cornball, obsolete, narrow-minded and malignantly uncool. Not a day goes by where we aren’t reminded that it’s a new day—a day where all you need to do to be awesomely hip is ridicule all those who go to church, listen to talk radio and, God forbid, identify themselves as conservative.

It’s so fun to be a member of the cool crowd, or as writer and Fox News host Greg Gutfeld calls the “tolerati.” You can get away with being a jerk and bigot while simultaneously accusing your target of being a racist. View the Matthews-Maddow-Bashir-O’Donnell-Sharpton cabal at MSNBC and you’ll see a loathing of traditional American principles that would shock our parents’ and grandparents’ generation.  read more »

CNN.com

They just need to shut up. The bodies of more than two dozen teachers and young children were still lying in pools of blood on the classroom floors of Sandy Hook Elementary, yet the special interest flacks, pundits and psycho-babblers descended like vultures on carrion. The gun-control zealots. The pro-Second Amendment advocates. The mental health experts. The we’re-going-to-Hell-in-a-hand-basket crowd.

There will be plenty of time to debate; there will be plenty of time to navel-gaze and ask why these horrific mass murders seem to be happening with alarming frequency. Not now. Not while the presents of the dead are still sitting wrapped under their Christmas trees, never to be opened.  read more »

An Italian immigrant, Salvatore worked 12 hours a days in waist-deep rancid water, the air fetid and filthy. Any day could be his last: Cave-ins and poisonous gas explosions commonly crushed the shafts carved into the West Virginia hillside. The pay was scarcely enough to feed his family. The squalid company-owned housing was worse. When he contracted a bacterial infection that eventually killed him, his older sons, ages 12 and 8, headed into the mines each day to support their mother and five siblings.

To the mining company, my grandfather Salvatore Quattrocchi was expendable. For his kids and millions of others in the mid-20^th Century, however, their fight for fair wages and safe workplaces provided a pathway to the American dream. Unions helped make it happen.  read more »

In their chosen field, they were and are among the greatest minds in government, literature, entertainment and academia: Lincoln, Sowell, Churchill, Marx (Groucho, that is), Twain, TR and FDR, Kennedy, Rice, Wayne, Reagan, Thatcher, Paine, and Franklin.

Sixteen images displaying their words on politics, American moxie and yes, even stupidity. Nobody says it better.

POLITICAL MATTERS

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In between office parties and baking cookies, Americans are giving only a passing glance to how Washington is handling the nation’s fiscal future. Maybe we should be paying a bit more attention.

Just what are the President and Congress doing to avert a financial free fall? Well, to quote Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, it’s the same old story, same old song and dance, my friend. Sticking it to the rich and vilifying conservatives as heartless cads, President Obama is proposing $1.61 trillion in spending and tax increases versus $400 billion in cuts, which would reduce the deficit a meager eight cents on every dollar spent. Republicans, with limited leverage, are cannibalizing each other as they debate an achievable alternative. Meanwhile, threats and accusations from both sides are running amuck.

Yikes.

But we won’t let the Grinch steal our Christmas joy! In the spirit of the season, our WEEKLY MEME MASH is in honor (er, maybe "honor" isn't exactly the right word) of the leadership shown by our elected officials. We could use the laughs...

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Lena Dunham has been anointed as the “voice of a generation.” Despite the fact that she’s largely unknown, the media is gushing over the 26-year-old creator and star of the HBO series Girls and electoral virgin of Barack Obama’s “Your First Time” ad.

Glamour, which named Dunham as a recipient of the magazine’s “2012 Women of the Year” award, calls her one of the most “powerful women in Hollywood.” After an intense publishing bidding war, Random House is paying her a $3.7 million advance to share her wisdom on life. No joke.  read more »

Many in our country worry narcissism and greed is submerging our culture; that the integrity of our ancestors is becoming a relic of a bygone era. Sound familiar? This has happened to our fellow Americans before—at a much graver cost.

Native Americans today comprise a little more than one percent of the U.S. population, but before Columbus arrived 500 years ago, more than 15 to 20 million lived in thousands of tribal communities from the Arctic to the tropics. Today, Indians are rarely acknowledged at all in public consciousness. When they are, it isn’t flattering.  read more »

Welcome back, America. As the year closes we face a looming fiscal cliff, jittery stock market, $16 trillion debt and climbing, Benghazi, sex-crazed generals, and hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians. Voters reelected Mr. Obama and whether or not 58 million of us think he is the best man for the job, these issues rest on his shoulders now.

That is why our WEEKLY MEME MASH is dedicated to you, Mr. President, and all those Americans who voted for four more years of hope and change. Good luck. We're all going to need it.

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