A-holes and Insects – or Mother Nature Doesn’t Care If You’re a Good Liberal

Decades before George Clooney began using “Darfur” to swat away the unfashionable nuisance of “Iraq,” the hollow eyes and distended stomachs of starving Biafran children gave America’s impressionable “me generation” a reality check during commercial breaks.  Parents shook their heads and wrote checks.  “We have so much,” went the refrain.  “The world is so unfair.”

My pretty fourth-grade teacher, who taught us everything from math and history to a dash of entomology (study of insects), didn’t think so.  One day, unprompted, she told her class of 10-year-olds that she wasn’t really concerned about the Biafran babies because mass starvation was just nature’s way of controlling overpopulation.  (My parents were mortified.)

Margaret Sanger

Hard to fathom how, less than three decades after the Holocaust, any educated person could harbor such cold acceptance of the cruel suffering of fellow human beings - much less voice it (and to children, no less).  But whoever said the human race is on a one-way path to progress?

It’s widely assumed that, in every moment we’re alive, we’ve reached a new pinnacle – of modernity, experience, knowledge, enlightenment – that we always move forward, never back.  But what if we don’t?  What if we’re fated to make the same mistakes (disguised with innocuous new names) over and over again? (more…)

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Tags: Ahmadinejad, ants, Betty Friedan, Biafra, Census Bureau
Posted Jul 10th 2009 at 5:02 am in Featured Story, Politics, Religion | 164862210 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/07/10/a-holes-and-insects-or-mother-nature-doesnt-care-how-liberal-you-are/A-holes+and+Insects+-+or+Mother+Nature+Doesn%27t+Care+If+You%27re+a+Good+Liberal2009-07-10+12%3A02%3A16Charles+Winecoff

Britain to America: ‘Don’t Let This Happen to You!’

When I was a kid, American Idol wasn’t even a twinkle in Simon Cowell’s eye.  No, instead of Adam Lambert’s girly warbling, we listened to wrinkled pacifist Walter Cronkite rattle off the US body count as we ate our TV dinners.  (Thank God for I Love Lucy re-runs.)

But Vietnam wasn’t the only war raging.  There was a culture clash going on too, right in the privacy of our own home: the ’60s counterculture – seen in everything from Easy Rider to The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour - versus our deeply ingrained Anglophilia.  In other words, a tug of war between “social justice” and the Social Register.

Decades before it became cool to diss the Queen with an iPod, the Royals represented everything Americans were not, and never could be: educated, sophisticated, multi-lingual, above carrying cash – and worldly enough to know one doesn’t clean one’s antiques (think no housework).  Growing up in our comfy, middle class, anti-war household, I never knew if I was supposed to say “burn, baby, burn!” or “sod off, yank.”

This dichotomy took a psychic toll, which came to a head when I did my part for the revolution by proudly shoplifting a ballpoint pen from our local Lamston’s (”the establishment”).  To my amazement, my parents were not pleased.  Instead of a gold star, I received a verbal barrage of uncharacteristic cliches (”Do you think we send you to the best schools so you can steal?” ) that left me even more confused. (more…)

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Tags: "fitna", 30 rock, 9/11, Adam Lambert, Alexander Stoddart
Posted Jun 12th 2009 at 5:03 am in Entertainment, Featured Story, Media Criticism, Politics | 14870276 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/06/12/britain-to-america-dont-let-this-happen-to-you/Britain+to+America%3A+%27Don%27t+Let+This+Happen+to+You%21%272009-06-12+12%3A03%3A42Charles+Winecoff