When Monty Python is remembered these days, it’s generally for its two seminal films, Holy Grail and Life of Brian, or Spamalot, the musical inspired by the former. When aficionados of the British act’s inimitable brand of surreal sketch comedy are reminded about the television series that launched the troupe into fame, however, they usually […]
“Parentification” is a new pop-psychology term supposed to convey the trauma parents impose on their older children who are given family responsibilities. “Parentified” children supposedly carry all sorts of pathologies into adulthood, such as becoming “people-pleasers” and perfectionists. For decades, psychiatrists have noted that in dysfunctional families — say, an absent father and an alcoholic […]
June is approaching, which means the Supreme Court is set to issue all its most important decisions before justices recess for the summer. Thanks to the Democrats‘ relentless campaign to delegitimize the nation’s justice system, the arrival of June also now means it is time for media hit pieces on conservative Supreme Court justices and […]
President Joe Biden retired his “Bidenomics” brand as his popularity plummets, but the White House continues its breathless attempts to reshape voters’ abysmal perceptions of the economy. In a few sentences in a memo to the press, White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said that the president is fighting inflation by “standing up […]
Teenagers banned from malls without chaperones. Streets flooded with cameras to watch everyone while criminals go unprosecuted. People forced to take their tacos to go so employees don’t get assaulted. California is a bastion of wacky crime stories. Each time one of these stories rolls by, it is hard to imagine it being topped. And […]
The problem with pregnancy movies is that they never feel quite right. Waters break like fire hoses, and within seconds, a 6-month-old-looking baby is presented neatly and cleanly on the mother’s chest. If you’re childless, it’s unrelatable and boring. If you’re a mother, it’s unrelatable and irritating because it’s nothing like what actually happens. If […]
In his new book The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools, self-described “school choice evangelist” Corey DeAngelis makes an optimistic case that our floundering education system is not beyond repair. Invoking the slogan “let’s fund students, not systems,” DeAngelis’s cause advocates allowing families to take state-funded education dollars to the […]
Caroline Crampton’s cultural history of hypochondria begins with her own hunt for a tumor. She stares at her reflection in a bathroom mirror at work, fingers kneading her neck, searching for suspicious lumps. Tumors, she knows from experience, have “a certain texture … a hard kernel moored deep inside with a slippery casing that can […]
The combination of highly visible protests combined with the varying university responses has lately reignited the debate over free speech on campus. Longstanding opponents of free speech have suddenly declared its importance, and have noticed how recent ideas about how to erode cultural and jurisprudential free speech norms might actually be used for ill — […]
Greetings, graduates! It’s a gorgeous day out here on the Quad, and I’d like to thank the deans and the president of the university for inviting me to speak to you today. Or, I would thank them had they invited me. To be honest, I’ve never been invited to give a commencement speech, another sign […]
