UFO abduction expert David M. Jacobs on WSPC Culture Wars!

You definitely want to check out the podcast of the latest episode of Culture Wars right here.

Ernabel Demillo and I had an excellent discussion with Temple University Professor, Dr. David M. Jacobs, one of the most prominent experts on the UFO abduction phenomenon and a historian of the UFO controversy.

Dr. Jacobs is the author of books like Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of Alien Abductions, The UFO Controversy in America, and The Threat.

Check out this new book!

I just needed to put in a quick plug for a new book by one of the best guests we had appearing on Culture Wars this year.

Karen Sternheimer, USC sociologist and debunker of the media-made-kids-killers/drug-addicts/sex-maniacs nonsense has just come out with her new book, Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture: Why Media is Not the Answer. Check it out and just calm down, let junior play with video games, listen to that rap song, and just get over your media paranoia!!

Paranoia can ruin your health!!!

And listen to all the Culture Wars podcasts right here.

Culture Wars 9/17/09

An all new Culture Wars radio show is less than 24 hours away!

Listen live from 12:05 to 12:45 Eastern time as Ernabel Demillo and I give our take on some of the most colorful headlines and look at the lives of journalists covering some of the most dangerous hotspots in the world.

What makes someone cover a war? The action? The excitement? The money? The journalistic ideals? Join us as we talk to guest Todd Baer and find out.

Listen live at www.spc.edu/WSPC

And listen to our past podcasts at www.culturewars.libsyn.com

OK, enough is enough!

Well, I, for one, am getting a little tired of the ongoing saga of all the outrage over Rep Joe Wilson’s “You lie” outburst last week. As you can read in the story here, Wilson has just been officially rebuked by the House of Representatives for his breach of decorum and, mainly, for his refusal to apologize on the House floor.

This whole circus, in the meantime, is inspiring a lot of sanctimonious ruminations about the state of American culture and just how much of a “coarsening” of the culture is going on. Others still – Democratic others, to be sure – are shaking their dismayed heads over the Wilson outburst being just another example of how ugly and dangerous the debate over health care is turning into. This is just one more example, they say, after the nasty and loud “town hall” screaming matches going on all across the country about health care.

It’s about time – especially for the Congressional Democrats – to get over it and put a cork in all the righteous outrage over a coarse culture and the disappearing decorum.

Was Wilson out of line yelling at the president the way he did? Yes.

Should he have apologized to Obama? Sure.

Which he did and now it’s time to move on. Congress has much more important things it should be troubling itself with than the lack of decorum. As I recall, by the way, it wasn’t entirely civil and proper to start booing George W. Bush during a State of the Union address either. And other than decorum, I think a major problem this country could possibly be facing is that enormous deficit our grandkids will be paying off. That’s something to get worked up and worried about, not Wilson’s refusal to apologize yet again.

And let’s also stop romanticizing a past of perfect civility and good manners in American politics. Because it never existed!! If this was the early nineteenth century, the president just might have challenged Wilson to a duel over the public insult.

As for the anger over health care, the loud town hall debates, and the insults hurled at Obama from the right-wing…Sure, many of the charges and name calling are ridiculous and out of line. But, then again, such constitutional provisions as the right to free speech, assembly, and the right to petition the government give everyone the right to vent their anger at lawmakers. In a lot of places in the world, people would be arrested and killed if they insinuated half the things the conservative right has yelled at Obama.

And, then again, perhaps concern, fear, and anger might even be warranted with the sort of debt this country is sinking into and an administration whose health care plans have, for far too long, remained vague about how to pay for an overhaul of the system and still maintain quality health care.

For those looking for the root causes of all the anger and rancorous debate, perhaps it’s the fact that the president had one too many comic books written about him and YouTube videos made where he is portrayed as a superhero, a savior, and a messiah, and too many fluff pieces written about his wife's sleeveless dresses. Perhaps this seemingly endless public honeymoon is to blame for his vague healthcare promises and seemingly flip declarations that he was certain that the healthcare overhaul would all be done by this fall, no problems, no concerns, no disagreements, no debate. The president’s time to be a celebrity is over and it’s time to be a leader in a democracy that allows for such sticky and uncomfortable rights as debate, criticism, and the public airing of anger and mistrust of the government.

Culture Wars Podcasts!

The premiere episode of the new season of Culture Wars is now available on podcast. To download a free episode, just go to www.culturewars.libsyn.com and point and click.

In today's episode, hear me an Ernabel Demillo recap a wild media summer, from Michael Jackson to Ted Kennedy...and the more harebrained 9/11 conspiracy theories!

If you have I-pod, subscribe to the show for free!!

The Culture Wars are back ON!

On Thursday, September 12, at 12:05 pm, a whole new season of "Culture Wars," with yours truly and Ernabel Demillo will be back on WSPC!

Tune in and catch all the action at www.spc.edu/WSPC

Sly, say it ain't so!!!

OK, despite everything on my plate today, I just need to comment on a sketchy movie rumor right now. I must do this as a film fan, action movie buff, author, and Rambo fanatic. Some of the rumors circulating on the Internet - including a sketchy and confusing voicemail to aintitcool.com by Sly Stallone himself - the plot of the next Rambo film sounds like it might take a bizarre detour into...science fiction!

And hey, don't get me wrong, I love science fiction and I love Rambo!

You can check it out at http://www.aintitcool.com/ but I think having Rambo hunting a genetically-engineered beast in the frozen northern wilderness has got to be one of the most insane ideas I've heard in a long time.

For the sake of referencing topical political issues, let me make this comparison: it's almost as insane as fearing political indoctrination during Barack Obama's speech to kids about staying in school!

The No-P.R. Zone...I like it!!

Although I generally don't care enough about reality show "stars" to comment about them, I just found this morning's interview Jon Gosselin gave on Good Morning America somehow so...refreshing and satisfying. You can also read about it here.

In a world where just about anyone who ever finds himself in front of a camera somehow seems to sound like they've already been coached by armies of P.R. people, Gosselin just said it like it was. This otherwise annoying, irritating, and utterly uninteresting human being spoke of his even more irritating shrew of a wife, Kate, their breakup, and explained how much he "despised" her. YES!!!!! My man! I mean, aren't you just tired of hearing so many public people who go through conflicts and messy breakups - people you know just detest each other - and they usually wind up talking in a sort of plastic P.R.-speak like "I still care and respect her," "it just didn't work out," "we're the best of friends" and so on and so on? Care and respect...yeah, right!

I can't believe that I'm writing this in a public forum, but Jon Gosselin on Good Morning America was the most interesting thing I heard all day long so far. And the day's more than half over!

You're fat, ugly, and stupid!

Now that a new school year is starting, one is bound to run across a lot of articles like this. You can find them online or, I bet, a lot of the various women’s and mom’s magazines will run them. It’s all about building self esteem in children. And it’s all a great, big, fly-drawing, steaming pile of bovine manure!

If I hear yet another person whining about developing children’s adequate level of self esteem, I’m going to punch them in the face hard enough to cause serious permanent damage…the kind that will give them a low self esteem, develop body image disorders, and leave them spending thousands of their hard-earned dollars in therapists’ offices trying to get in touch with their inner child and learning to love themselves.

As a person who primarily earns his living teaching in college, the self esteem movement has just about driven me to the end of my rope. This is a movement that has been turning people who have started grade school roughly in the 90s and afterward into sniveling, whining, near-psychopathically self-centered douche bags.

Is low self esteem really the biggest problem America’s children are contending with? Looking at some research comparing U.S. kids to those in the rest of the world, I think not. Guess what, folks: American kids have the highest levels of self esteem in the world. But not only do we seem to think we’re God’s gift to everything, but usually people who are the least competent, the most inept, also have the highest levels of self esteem.

And yes, incompetence and ineptitude are really important concepts. Sometimes people need to be told that they SUCK! But in the world of the self esteem movement, we have seen an educational system that tries to create a good self image among children by telling them that they are always perfect, they are flawless, they are the greatest in the world no matter what they do, and that no one has a right to ever criticize them or correct them…EVER!

This is an outrage and something that this culture will be paying a higher and higher price for with every passing year. You see, all the people who are incapable of finding China on a map, who don’t know who the U.S. fought in World War 2 (by the latest estimate, that’s about 40 some percent of the American population), who can’t name the first President of the United States, who don’t know who the governor of their own state is, who have no idea who the Vice President is, are people who all have a very high self esteem, who are in touch with their feelings, and who have learned to feel good about themselves and know that they’re special and unique little gifts to humanity from God, and they all have very unique and very important other abilities.

But that's what THEY want you to think!

This article about the Michael Jackson death hoax hoax is just priceless. Apparently someone started the online rumor about Jackson faking his death as an "experiment" to see how fast rumors and conspiracy theories have spread on the Internet. And, indeed, they spread very fast because there is still a whole crop of Michael Jackson conspiracy theory web pages up and active. As conspiracy theorists usually do, they point out all the "obvious" mistakes and inconsistencies in the "official version" of the story.

So now that the death hoax conspiracy has been outed as joke, I wonder how quickly the true believers will claim that the real conspiracy is the claim that that conspiracy is not real?

Confused yet?

Well, keep surfing the web this week because as we're heading toward Friday, the 11th, all the "9/11 was an inside job" nutbars will be busier than ever, so confusing conspiracy theories and conspiratorial fantasies will be busier than ever.

And tune in to "Culture Wars" on the 10th to hear me and Ernabel Demillo put in our two cents' worth!!!