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Culture Tag

Hollywood legend Burt Reynolds passed away at the age of 82 this week from cardiopulmonary arrest. He will be sorely missed.

The Village Voice was a weekly tabloid style newspaper which focused on arts, culture, and progressive politics. It was launched in 1955 and featured contributions from various cultural luminaries over the years. In 2017, it shut down production of its print edition and now has ceased all operations.

What do you consider the most historical moments of the 20th century? I'd say the Russians raising the Soviet Union flag over the Reichstag when they conquered Berlin (damn, I so wish it was the American flag, though). Liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act. The Miracle on Ice in 1980. The Berlin Wall tumbling down. President Bill Clinton sending the first presidential email to space to Senator  John Glenn. There's obviously one more that happened in 1969. A Gallup poll from December 1999 asked the people that same question and America placing men on the moon came in at #7. I cannot imagine that feeling watching Neil Armstrong walk down the ladder and placing the American flag on the moon. ICONIC. HISTORICAL. Yeah, well, Hollywood has decided to water down history and omitted that iconic piece of history from the Neil Armstrong movie First Man.

The last time we checked on the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the group was at the center of a blue-vs-blue drama after it hired a bikini clad women to hand out non-dairy treats to the crowd at Wimbledon. Feminists were angry, claiming the organization was objectifying women. Now, in response to pressure from PETA, Mondelez International (the parent company of Nabisco), has redesigned the packaging of its Barnum's Animals crackers to "free" them from cages.
PETA, which has been protesting the use of animals in circuses for more than 30 years, wrote a letter to Mondelez in the spring of 2016 calling for a redesign.

On Sunday, the #MeToo movement received a shock when a report dropped that claimed Asia Argento, one its prominent members, allegedly sexually abused a 17-year-old male and paid him off. Argento not only denies the assault, but she has thrown her former boyfriend Anthony Bourdain under the bus and insists he paid off the accuser. Yeah, the same Bourdain that took his own life this year and is not here to defend himself.

The New York Times dropped a bombshell on Monday that revealed actress and director Asia Argento, one of the first females to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, paid off a man who accused her of sexual abuse. From the Times:
But in the months that followed her revelations about Mr. Weinstein last October, Ms. Argento quietly arranged to pay $380,000 to her own accuser: Jimmy Bennett, a young actor and rock musician who said she had sexually assaulted him in a California hotel room years earlier, when he was only two months past his 17th birthday. She was 37. The age of consent in California is 18.

Faith and family are two pillars of American culture that Democrats have worked for decades to undermine, so imagine my surprise when I read Obama's former White House Chief of Staff and current Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel making an argument for stronger faith and family values. The left, of course, is livid and think he's "blaming the victims" of the rampant violence that many parts of Chicago experience on a daily basis.  Perhaps they needn't be, however, as the cynic in me wonders if this isn't a geared response to the massive protests organized by pastors from Chicago's South and West sides.

Comparing a sitting president to Hitler is the new normal. Sarah Silverman unofficially kicked things off by dressing as Der Fuhrer on Conan O'Brien's TBS couch two years ago to hammer home that ugly message. Since then, President Donald Trump has been called Hitler countless times by newspapers, pundits and especially celebrities. That's when stars aren't comparing Trump to a murderer.

Daily Wire editor Ben Shapiro has launched a series of long form interviews called the "Sunday Special." Prior guests included Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla. One of his recent episodes featuring Dennis Prager talking about God and the Bible was particularly fascinating and I recommend watching them all.

I'm still having a difficult time wrapping my head around this one. There exist parents that are attempting to raise their children as gender neutral, thus allowing them to choose their own genders later in life. "Theybies" is what this new parenting technique is called.

I was thrilled to be able to get in touch with my inner geek this week as I had the opportunity to join one of my dearest friends at San Diego Comic-Con 2018. While I had hoped to escape politics while I was at the Convention Center, the inability of progressives to move to the next stage of the Kubler-Ross grief cycle meant that it was thrust upon me at various times.