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In Praise of… “Functional” Technology

December 3, 2011
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In Praise of… “Functional” Technology

Writer Thomas Hayden has made quite a stir in the blogosphere recently with his provocatively titled post “In Praise of Crap Technology” on the site The Last Word On Nothing. Acting as a sort of modern day Martin Luther going up against the seemingly unassailable papal fortress of the Steve Jobs legacy, Hayden eschews high-end toys like the iPhone in favor of cheap, sturdy stuff that actually works. He cites his $20 Coby MP3 player, his Roadace 404 bike, his durable-but-unlovely pair of eyeglasses, and…

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‘The Death of the Hat’

September 26, 2010
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‘The Death of the Hat’

I was struck by the men in the photo above, gazing upon Cary Grant and Constance Bennett in a scene from 1937′s “Topper.” The head of every single man is covered. Even the women are sporting chapeaus. For these folks, the hat strikes me as a mark of adulthood and maturity. If a man wears a hat today, it’s of the ball cap variety, and can hardly be described as a garment representing adulthood. The one-time Poet Laureate Billy Collins wrote a fascinating poem about…

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The A-Team: It Crawled from the ’80s

June 13, 2010
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The A-Team: It Crawled from the ’80s

  I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of reading/hearing all of these so-called cultural critics going on and on about how dreary and materialistic the 1980s were. I grew up in the ’80s. I effing loved the ’80s–and still do, without disclaimer or apology. I got to see Empire Strikes Back on opening night and had my interest in history jump-started by Raiders of the Lost Ark. The small screen boasted Magnum P.I., Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, The Winds of War, The Cosby…

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Rise of ‘Good Girl’ Culture Shows Value of Liberty, Ideals

September 17, 2009
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Rise of ‘Good Girl’ Culture Shows Value of Liberty, Ideals

          The rise of "good girls" in the culture is a natural outcome of the freedom that makes the Omniculture possible. We should make sure to preserve that freedom, and a respect for the value of ideals, if we want more of those good outcomes, S. T. Karnick writes.

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Flabby Action Hero Wins Big at Weekend Box Office

June 9, 2008
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Flabby Action Hero Wins Big at Weekend Box Office

Kung Fu Panda won the box-office race in its opening weekend. Here’s a clue why.  

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Attacks on Mexican Emos Reflect Nation’s Fundamental Social Problems—and Political Causes Behind Them

April 1, 2008
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Roving gangs of young men in Mexico are beating and terrorizing teenage boys who like "emo" music. The situation shows the value of respect for rule of law and the pressing need for a culture of liberty.

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“Hot Ghetto Mess” TV Program Under Fire

July 11, 2007
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“Hot Ghetto Mess” TV Program Under Fire

At least two companies have pulled their ads from the upcoming July 25 premiere of the Black Entertainment Television (BET) program Hot Ghetto Mess which is based on the popular website of the same name. Expressing the same attitude as the website, the program will show viewer-submitted videos of stupid things people do, with an emphasis on the black community. It will also feature comedy, pictures, music, and man-on-the-street interviews to "shine a spotlight on prevalent images in pop culture and examine what role they…

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Academy Award Nominations Reflect Cultural Shibboleths

January 23, 2007
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Academy Award Nominations Reflect Cultural Shibboleths

The nominations for this year’s Motion Picture Academy Awards were announced today, and they basically repeated those made earlier this year by the Golden Globes. Dreamgirls was left out of the Best Picture nominations, rather surprisingly according to Hollywood insiders, and Sacha Baron Cohen was not nominated for his performance in Borat, which was not a surprise. (The Academy seldom honors broad comic performances, except those that are intended as serious. . . .) The AP story noted that ethnicity appeared to be a plus…

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Fattening Up Fashion Models

December 20, 2006
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Fattening Up Fashion Models

Here’s an interesting item in our ongoing series of observations that everything happens in the Omniculture. Women’s Wear Daily reports that photo editors are beginning to retouch photos of seriously underweight fashion models in order to make them appear . . . healthier: PUTTING ON THE POUNDS: As the body mass index of runway walkers continues to make headlines, skinny models just might present a whole new problem for editors. Everyone has a story of a celebrity cover slimmed by Photoshop, but several editors have…

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A Good Quote on Masculinity

December 18, 2006
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A Good Quote on Masculinity

The estimable Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune quotes former NBA Utah Jazz coach Frank Layden on current Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, who just achieved his 1,000th victory as a coach in the NBA, regarding Sloan’s legendary toughness: Sloan replaced Frank Layden in 1988, and this was Layden on Sloan: "Nobody fights with Jerry because you know the price would be too high. You might come out the winner, at his age, you might even lick him, but you’d lose an eye, an arm ……

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Guest Article: The New Avant-garde: Clean Comedy

December 4, 2006
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Our friend Mike D’Virgilio has posted an interesting article on a cultural trend toward "cleaner" products and has kindly granted us permission to present it to you here. Mike’s article notes something important about the Omniculture: everything happens, and while there is much on what traditionalists would call the extremely bad end of the spectrum, there is also much more than in recent decades on the more wholesome end of things as well. Here’s Mike’s article: I guess if you live long enough you pretty…

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Jerry Garcia on the Omniculture

December 1, 2006
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Our Reform Club colleague Tom Van Dyke sent us this nifty quote from the late Jerry Garcia, of the rock band The Grateful Dead, in which Garcia observes that the real action in changing American society actually happened before the hippie revolution of the mid- to late 1960s, as I argued in my two-part article on the Omniculture a few years ago: "It’s pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old…

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Here Come the Big-Mouth Idiots

November 30, 2006
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There is something rather interesting and revealing in all the recent controversies about celebrities running their mouths and acting like peabrains. You’ve heard about these controversies on the news, of course, such as Mel Gibson’s drunken diatribe against Jews, comedian Michael Richards’s racial slurs in response to being interrupted by a heckler during a disastrous nightclub comedy routine, Danny DeVito’s drunken rant against President Bush on The View yesterday, etc. That’s the Omniculture for you. Everything happens, and everything gets on TV or the Web,…

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The Art of “The Batman”

October 28, 2006
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The Art of “The Batman”

I’ve been out of town at a conference for the past few days, and haven’t had much of a chance to post items on the site. I’m back, however, and you can expect the flow of wisdom to become a ferocius torrent. One thing that struck me recently was upon viewing an episode of the current Warner Bros. cartoon series The Batman, which runs on KidsWB, a Saturday morning block of cartoons. The program premiered in 2004 and is in its fourth season, somehow. What…

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What Happens in Vegas . . .

October 13, 2006
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What Happens in Vegas . . .

Regarding the well-known Las Vegas promotional ads claiming that "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," the allusion to them in last night’s episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (see the item immediately below) vividly reminded me of how revolting I’ve always found that ad campaign to be. Yes, revolting. The claim, of course, is that running wild in a strange town has no consequences. The subtext is that prostitution is legal in Nevada. Hence, for married folk the implication is that you can be…

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"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard
"To judge the quality of a cultural product is not to begrudge the preferences of the people who purchase it. It is simply to apply timeless, objective standards in assessing these products."—Ilana Mercer

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