Culture Clips – March 13, 2007
Science Says Bury Jesus
Oh goody, another lovely round of that increasingly
popular parlor game, "Science Says." And just in time for Lent! James
Cameron, the masterful storyteller who directed "Titantic," is clearly
banking on the special media power this game has when someone (preferably a
scientist, but a Hollywood director in a pinch will do) asserts that what science
says ... is that the Bible is wrong.
Science vs. religion, round 457!
Science says Jesus married Mary Magdelene, produced a son named Judah, and the
whole family of Nazarenes is buried in a tomb in Jerusalem. We have the mitochondrial
DNA and the Discovery Channel documentary to prove it!
When science and "The Da Vinci Code" start saying the same thing,
you have a marketing powerhouse.
The filmmakers' DNA tests suggest that the "Yeshua" remains and the
"Mariamene e Mara" remains (aka "Mary Magdalene," through
the complex theories of a Harvard professor) were not related on their mother's
side. So who knows? Heck, they could have been married, right? The DNA proves
it, unless, of course, they were related on their father's side, or Mariamene
e Mara was married to or maybe just the daughter or sister of someone else in
the tomb. Amos Kloner, a former Jerusalem district archeologist who examined
the tomb in 1980, calls the allegedly new evidence "not serious."
But the Science Says game works so well that people play it with the same dogmatic
fervor they once played The Pope Says, and for a similar reason: Because if
science really says something, you no longer need brook the irritation of tolerating
dissent.
Maggie Gallagher
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/Maggie
Gallagher/2007/02/28/science_says_bury_jesus
--
Romney, Channeling Reagan, Reveals Economic Agenda
After his well-received speech before the conservative
political action conference here last week, former governor Mitt Romney met
with two key leaders in the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s.
Romney's dinner guests were Jack Kemp, the architect of the Reagan tax cuts
that lifted the economy out of a deep recession, and former congressman Vin
Weber of Minnesota, a key leader in the Opportunity Society band of House warriors
who fought for lower tax rates to spur economic growth and entrepreneurial expansion.
Kemp has not signed on to any Republican presidential campaign as yet, but he
likes Romney's emphasis on further cutting taxes on investment and savings and
overhauling the tax code. Weber, a supporter of Sen. John McCain in the 2000
presidential primaries, has joined Mitt Romney's team and is encouraging Kemp
to climb aboard early.
The meeting illustrates how much importance Romney is placing on tax cuts in
his presidential bid and on economic advisers who share his belief in the Reagan
economic model. Reagan made tax cuts the centerpiece of his domestic agenda,
and Romney intends to do the same in his campaign for the Republican nomination.
In a PowerPoint presentation at the Detroit Economic Club last month, replete
with an economic slide show, Romney said the country would face two choices
on taxes next year, asking the business leaders, "What is the better course
for America? A European model of high taxes and regulations, or low taxes and
free trade, the Ronald Reagan model?"
"That's the choice the next president is going to make," he said,
adding ominously that the Democrats were "already working hard to implement
a massive tax increase."
Donald Lambro
Youthful Indiscretions Online
The MySpace-Facebook-dot-com generation has come
of age, and some are finding that their silly stunts have come back to haunt
them as they enter the grown-up marketplace. Others are finding that their private
moments are not so private after all.
Three young women featured anonymously in a recent Washington Post article told
horror stories of their attempts to find jobs, only to discover that they may
have been disqualified by online postings by virtual strangers. Gossip and graphics
included.
One, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate and Yale law student who had gotten articles
published in law journals, interviewed at 16 firms for a summer job and received
no offers. How could that be?
It turned out that she and others had been discussed in not-so-flattering terms
on an online message board, AutoAdmit, which is run by a third-year law student
at the University of Pennsylvania and a 23-year-old insurance agent, according
to the Post. The board boasts up to 1 million visitors a month, and postings
can be anonymous.
And vicious.
Kathleen Parker
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/Kathleen
Parker/2007/03/09/youthful_indiscretions_online
--
U.S. Doing Fine without International Violence
against Women Act
A new feminist front group called the Women's Edge Coalition is partnering with
Amnesty International U.S. to lobby for congressional passage of International
Violence Against Women Act, which would create millions of dollars of feminist
pork. The act's stated mission is to carry out a campaign of policy advocacy
and education, consulting with dozens of U.S organizations, grass-roots organizing,
and working with strategic media partners (i.e., getting the media to do their
propagandizing).
You can bet that a primary purpose of International Violence Against Women Act
money will be to lobby the U.S. Senate for ratification of the U.N. Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women so that its
U.N. monitoring committee can force U.S. compliance with feminist goals. That
agenda includes everything from requiring unlimited abortion rights to rewriting
schoolbooks to eliminate so-called "stereotypes" and gender-specific
references.
Our senators are taunted with the assertion that the United States should be
embarrassed because 185 countries have ratified the U.N. Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, while the United States has not.
I'm glad the Senate so far has had the good sense to reject a treaty that fraudulently
makes naive people believe it will improve the lot of U.S. women.
Pakistan has ratified the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women. That's the country where a tribal council ordered
a young woman gang-raped to avenge her brother's crime of being seen with an
unchaperoned woman from another tribe. Gang rape is common in Pakistan.
Phyllis Schlafly
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