Culture

Are children more likely to be abused in a homeschool environment than in a public school? That key question has emerged in response to the recent surge of parents who have chosen to homeschool their children. Late last year, I wrote in this newsletter about an anti-homeschooling series by the Washington Post. The Post series argued that parents regularly use homeschooling as a shield for abuse, most aggressively in an article headlined “What home schooling hides: a boy tortured and starved by his stepmom.”  “Most schools have teachers, principals, guidance counselors — professionals trained to recognize the unexplained bruises or erratic behaviors that may point to an abusive parent.

“It’s like a candy store 😍😍😍” That’s the way one pedophile described Instagram in a private messaging channel monitored by New York Times reporters. In the Sunday edition of the paper this week, the Times unveiled its month-long investigation into mothers who run Instagram accounts for their young daughters — and the grown men who love them for it. These women are known colloquially as the “Instamoms.”  Instamoms are the online version of pageant or stage moms. Their daughters are usually enrolled in traditionally feminine extracurriculars, like dance, gymnastics or cheer, but the activities are ultimately just a vehicle for the true goal: making their girls rich and famous.

When you work in the media as a practicing Catholic, there are few things more hilarious than watching fellow journalists repeatedly fail miserably to get even basic components of your faith correct. I will never forget seeing NBC News’s Chuck Todd tweet this about Good Friday in 2018:  I’m a bit hokey when it comes to “Good Friday.” I don’t mean disrespect to the religious aspect of the day, but I love the idea of reminding folks that any day can become “good,” all it takes is a little selflessness on our own part. Works EVERY time. Oof. Surely holding the elevator door for someone in your high-rise apartment building comes nowhere near Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross for all of humanity and its sins.

Earlier this month, Biden’s Department of Education finally submitted its proposed Title IX rule changes over to the White House for review. Biden’s DoE has been hard at work to unravel Title IX rules made by its secretary under the Trump administration, Betsy DeVos. DeVos, you might recall, had enshrined all sorts of due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct on campus amid a spate of high-profile false accusations.

Country music star Toby Keith died Monday night at the age of sixty-two after battling stomach cancer for a year and a half. Keith’s music career spanned three decades and he racked up twenty #1s, seven Grammy nominations, nearly two dozen combined wins across the ACMs, CMAs and AMAs — and was given the Country Icon Award at the 2023 People’s Choice Country Awards. In 2021, President Donald Trump awarded Keith the National Medal of the Arts. He’s a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.  Toby Keith’s legacy goes beyond his success on the music charts, and he was no stranger to criticism.

It’s been about thirty years since Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone, an essay about the declining civic and community engagement among Americans. The title of the essay came from Putnam’s observation that although more people were bowling than in the previous twenty years, fewer people were members of bowling leagues. It suggested to him that people were more frequently engaging in individualized activities, which could decrease social ties. In the years since, there has emerged another threat to community-based bowling: the monopolization of the bowling industry by corporate conglomerates.  A couple of weekends ago my husband and I went on a double date with another married couple. We grabbed dinner and then went bowling.

In 2024, right-wingers are facing a doddery, often incoherent Democratic president, an even more incoherent VP (who doesn’t have the excuse of being eighty-one) and a host of oil-leaking charlatans like Gavin Newsom. Why, in this target-rich environment, are some conservatives focusing their ire on Taylor Swift? Don’t get me wrong — America is a free country. You can criticize who you like. Me, I happen to think that Ms. Swift’s music is annoying and tedious. But to see the most popular singer in the world as an avatar for everything you hate politically seems misguided from a tactical perspective, no? Sure, it might be annoying to see her on TV at NFL games. It might vex you that she opposes Donald Trump.

Jim Harbaugh made a surprise appearance at the annual March for Life in Washington, DC last Friday, just a couple of weeks after he won the college football national championship as the head coach of the University of Michigan Wolverines. Harbaugh marched alongside about 100,000 other pro-lifers in the snowy cold and gave an impassioned speech to the crowd while introducing former NFL player Benjamin Watson.   “Thank you all for being here. It’s a great example that you’re setting. It’s testimony for the sanctity of life.” Harbaugh said. “It’s a great day for a march... This is football weather!” “You know, we all talk about human rights.

Take a look at the side-by-side above. Which woman do you find more attractive? They are both photos of Erin Moriarty, an actress on Amazon Prime’s The Boys. The comparison went viral this week for obvious reasons. The first photo appears to be from 2016. The second photo was posted on Moriarty’s Instagram a few days ago. She is twenty-nine years old in the second photo — the same age as I am.  Most people would say that the woman on the left is objectively more attractive. She looks healthier, for one, but more importantly, she looks human. Faces are not supposed to be perfectly symmetrical. In the photo on the right, Moriarty looks uncanny. Even if you didn’t have the photo on the left as a reference point, you’d know that something was “off.

The 2023 Golden Globes awards took place this past weekend, and although I never really watch these things live, I am a woman and thus biologically and socially wired to inhale red carpet photos and the celebrity gossip that inevitably springs out of award show season. This year’s Golden Globes were shockingly free of politics, and so the focus was really on the movies and the celebrities — as it should be.  That brings us to Taylor Swift, the twelve-time Grammy Award-winning country singer turned pop star. Although it seemed none of the celebs were too keen on Golden Globes host Jo Koy’s comedy routine, Swift’s reaction to a light-hearted jab made in her direction left many viewers with a bitter taste in their mouths.

Welcome back to Culture Shock! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and is gearing up for the big winter storm that is supposed to hit the east coast this weekend. The latest models in the DMV suggest we’re mostly getting sleet, which is a bit disappointing after years of mild winters and very little snow. This was my first Christmas since getting married, and it’s tough to figure out how to divide time between your family and your in-laws. We decided to spend Christmas Eve with my family and then flew to Florida on Christmas morning to see my husband’s family for a couple of days. I am very lucky in that pretty much all of my family members are conservative, so our political arguments are limited in scope.

There are many things in short supply these days, but cheapness and vulgarity are not among them. They’re everywhere right now — in politics and pop culture, among the royals, within the legacy media and across social media. Most obscene is the cheapness and vulgarity that has pervaded the conflict between Israel and Hamas and its accompanying explosion of global antisemitism.  It would be easy to attribute this collective rot to mere coincidence, but it’s more a case of compounded indecency. And nowhere more so than at the top. The coarse bravado of then-candidate Donald Trump a decade ago metastasized during his presidency into the corruption and cravenness that now dominates — and could possibly derail — his third stab at the White House.

The number of parents choosing to homeschool their children has risen sharply since the Covid-19 pandemic. There are plenty of reasons for this trend, but the overarching issue was that parents simply lost trust in the public education system, whether because of the adoption of illogical Covid policies pushed by teacher’s unions or the introduction of controversial, politicized content into curricula. It became clear over the past few years that school boards and teacher’s unions mostly don’t have the best interests of students in mind, are resentful of parental involvement and are willing to lie if it means avoiding accountability for their bad decisions. The effect of liberal control over public education? Math and reading scores in the US are at their lowest level in decades.

It’s officially Spotify Wrapped season! For the uninitiated, this is the time of year when Spotify subscribers receive their year-end data on what they listened to the most throughout the previous twelve months. The streaming app tells you your top songs, artists, albums, genres and any other cookie they’ve been tracking. Every user’s Spotify Wrapped is packaged up nicely into an immensely shareable infographic that dominates social media for days. I do not share mine because my music listening habits when no one is watching are completely embarrassing! But a lot of people do, usually to show how cool or niche their music or podcast tastes are.