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On shining examples

On Thanksgiving the annual Go!bbler family fun run was held at the old brick-and-mortar location of Go! Running in the Heights area of Little Rock. Many runners, dogs, strollers, and walkers showed up for a fun run through the Heights and Hillcrest area. The entry fee? Canned goods and non-perishable food items for the Arkansas Foodbank.

The gathering has occurred for over 10 years. The 2020 version was virtual and still managed to raise over 12,000 meals in food and cash donations.

I first met Gary and Erin Taylor when I got serious about running in 2015. Not only did they create a great store, but a great running culture prevailed in Little Rock. We had Thursday night runs, the Go! Mile annual race, and the Thanksgiving run. The physical store is no longer, but the coaching, the passion for running, the volunteerism, and the camaraderie remain. The Taylors are shining examples of truly giving back to your community and giving thanks.

COLIN HALL

Little Rock

Confusion on climate

Many people question the scientific consensus on climate change and human involvement with that change. Once again it seems that the culture wars became a big part of that, and when Al Gore became closely tied to the issue, many conservatives' kneejerk reaction was to take the opposite stand. Unfortunately for this country and the world, climate change, like pandemics, doesn't care about political leanings. Not long ago, one letter in this forum questioned why only "liberal" sources believed in climate change or human involvement. While this is not the case, unfortunately, it is the perception.

Recently the U.S. House held hearings with the CEOs of Big Oil, and let's hope it is the beginning of the end of climate denial. It did not get the publicity it should have. Below is the transcript of a small portion of that hearing. Chair Carolyn Maloney of New York made it easy for anyone. You can see if for yourself at about the 4:45 mark of the video at http://www.pbs.org.

Maloney: Mr. Woods, CEO of Exxon, do you agree that climate change is real?

Darren Woods: Yes.

Maloney: Thank you. Mr. Lawler, CEO of BP America, do you agree that climate change is caused by human activities?

David Lawler: Yes.

Maloney: Mr. Wirth, CEO of Chevron, do you agree that burning fossil fuels is a significant cause of climate change?

Michael Wirth: Chairwoman, we've been clear on where we stand, and we accept the current scientific consensus that the use of fossil fuels contributes to climate change.

The oil companies funded junk- science groups that denied and/or muddled the debate for years to protect their profits, they refused to commit to stopping this in the hearing also. Their own websites now tell a different story on climate change, but they fund junk science that helps confuse people. Don't be confused!

GREG ROUNTREE

Scott

Keeping people safe

Little Rock is not safe, and the mayor isn't doing enough to fix it.

While the number of murders in Arkansas during 2020 grew by an astounding 34 percent from the prior year--over 15 percent greater than the national increase of 29 percent--Little Rock's rate of increase in homicides surpassed the state's already high tally (to which Little Rock significantly contributed, of course), with a 36 percent increase for the same period. And that increase is layered on top of the upward jump from the prior year.

This year is even worse than last. Little Rock is now in the middle of the absolute deadliest year it has seen in almost three decades. And digging deeper only reveals cause for greater concern.

In 2021, 301 were people shot, stabbed, or seriously hurt in Little Rock, and, of course, the year isn't even over. That's three times the total seen in 2015. And just last week, a carload of thugs sought to carjack a couple in the tony Heights neighborhood, firing some 30 bullets at the victims. The mayor's disappointing response to one of the victims was to tell her that he's praying for her.

That's insufficient. We need our politicians actually working for us. To too many politicians, listing tangible items on a door hanger, like increasing the number of giraffes at the zoo, is more important than the seemingly more ephemeral quality-of-life issues that affect everyone's daily lives--safety and security first among them. The single most important function of government is to keep the people who elect them safe.

The mayor has lost sight of the fact that he works for, and is responsible to, the electorate--his bloated distance-creating security detail notwithstanding. The mayor is failing at his primary task of keeping the peace. Public safety isn't a right or left issue. It's a right or wrong issue. And, so far, the mayor is coming up wrong.

ROBERT STEINBUCH

Little Rock

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OPINION | LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: On shining examples | Confusion on climate | Keeping people safe - Arkansas Online

Lately, some Board of Education meetings are scenes straight out of Fahrenheit 451. At both Lindbergh and Mehlville, parents are demanding that books theyve deemed offensive be taken off the shelves of the school library.

Just like critical race theory, library books appear to be the latest boogie man for parents of school children to latch onto, convinced that these books will corrupt their childrens minds or teach them other unsavory things. Its just another chapter in Americas culture wars.

Its worth noting that the books being challenged are not mandatory reading for students. These are not books being assigned in a classroom or being read aloud by a teacher. These are books that are available for check-out from the library. No one is forcing anyone to read these books.

It also appears that these challenges disproportionately challenge books by Black authors and other people of color, or authors from the LBTQ community. Although Im sure thats just a coincidence.

Its certainly not my job to determine whether a book is too sexually explicit, profane or otherwise unfit to be kept on a library shelf, but thats also not the job of culture warriors or anyone else. Good literature can sometimes make people uncomfortable but censorship should not be the immediate response. Besides, once it starts, where does it end?

Putting blinders on children through banning books does more harm than good. It narrows their viewpoint of the world and what it offers, and can cause them to become ignorant towards people different than them. It also shuts down discussion on sexuality, diversity and racial injustices.

Books are supposed to teach or inspire. They cant harm you and if a parent deems that books maturity level is too high for their child, simply dont let them read it. Demanding that no one have access to literature that makes you uncomfortable harms everyone in the long run.

Doesnt the most learning happen when youre considering new ideas that take you out of your comfort zone?

Banning books is step in the opposite direction.

Even if we dont agree with them, books in our schools and our libraries need to be protected.

View post:
Banning books takes away from growth and learning - Call Newspapers

Amna Nawaz:

We're witnessing the newest evolution of the culture wars, a term first popularized nearly 30 years ago in a book by James Davison Hunter. He's also the executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies and Culture at the University of Virginia. And he joins me now.

James Davison Hunter, welcome to the "NewsHour." Thank you for making the time.

So, it was 30 years ago you used this phrase culture wars. You were trying to capture sort of the national divides and debates over issues like abortion rights and LGBTQ rights and the role of religion in schools. How have the culture wars from 30 years ago changed? What's different today?

James Davison Hunter, University of Virginia: One of the most important differences is the ways in which the culture wars have now become class culture wars.

Progressives tend to predominate in the upper middle class, highly educated professionals and managers. And traditionalists, conservatives tend to cluster in the middle, lower-middle and working classes. The class differences are highlighting real differences in life chances and opportunities, the horizons of the future that mean so much to everyday life.

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Why cultural and political divides seem to be getting worse - PBS NewsHour

THERE is much talk in the media these days about culture wars, being woke and the dangers of cancel culture but they are concepts few people really understand.

In a Times Radio poll in February, respondents were asked what they think culture war means. Only 7 per cent came up with a relevant answer, 15 per cent got it wrong, and a whopping 76 per cent said they didnt know. However, just because people dont know what a culture war is doesnt mean theyre not in one.As long as you have a class system there will be culture wars: a conflict between the hegemonic culture of the elite and that of the oppressed classes. These simply reflect the conflict between class economic interests.Today, with the sharpening of the class struggle and an increasing awareness of the bankruptcy of capitalism, the global ideological struggle also becomes more acute.

Faced as we are by existential problems, the struggle for ideological and cultural hegemony becomes increasingly significant but also more acrimonious.

We have seen a highly effective protest by women around the Me Too movement, alongside Black Lives Matter and the global campaign demanding radical action on climate change. Such grass-roots movements are challenging widely held belief systems and traditional hierarchies.At the same time these are being challenged and dismissed by the ruling elite. Instead, minor issues are being blown up out of all proportion in order to sideline real protest. When the Queens photo was removed from the common room at Magdalen College, there was outrage in the media and the uproar over Englands football team taking the knee or the debate over the removal of the Rhodes statue in Oxford, are all only symptoms of a wider and deeper shift in attitudes.

A reportby the Policy Institute at Kings College London, based on a major research project about culture wars, found that while there are many important differences between Britain and the US, there are clear echoes of the US experience, where we could be at the early stages of a trend seen in the US already in the 1980s and 1990s.

The report says that many peoples views on cultural issues have become tied up with the Brexit debate, while peoples party-political identities, although not as strong, show similar alignments. This provides the conditions for more all-encompassing division, as compromise across these divides becomes harder when cultural perspectives become a core part of how we see ourselves.

Old-style political parties are struggling to articulate what needs to be done. This has presented an opportunity for right-wing populist politicians and narratives to fill the void.

The present battles within the Labour Party under Keir Starmer are also symptomatic of these culture wars, with claims of anti-semitism being instrumentalised by the establishment to bash the left. The divisions that have opened up within the Labour Party are to an increasing extent grounded in differences in cultural politics between its middle-class metropolitan supporters and its traditional working-class base.

The politics of culture wars, particularly as being waged by the present government, also have the potential to inspire fundamental bigotries leading to ever greater and more damaging divisions.

The attempts by the Tory government to get Paul Dacre appointed chair of media regulator Ofcom and the similar manipulation of key appointments in the public sphereare all part of a more extreme politicisation of culture by the elite. If the ruling class manages to successfully shift public focus towards more symbolic and emotive issues, its a change that can be more easily exploited and directed by the cynical.

The journalist Matthew dAncona says, Whats interesting now is the speed with which cabinet ministers or indeed No 10 respond. That to me signals were into a different kind of political game. One where a strategy is at work. (Quoted in an Observer report by Andrew Anthony, June 13, 2021.)

The culture wars suit the Johnson way of doing things, he says. Hes good at things that involve short, memorable slogans and showmanship.

Certainly if we look at the US, where the modern incarnation of the culture wars was first identified, the conflicts over abortion rights, gay marriage and the climate catastrophe have been fought, at least by one side, from an explicitly religious perspective.

The US sociologist James Davison Hunter gave popular currency to the term in his seminal 1991 book Culture Wars: the Struggle to Define America. He argues that they were about the orthodox versus the progressive. That division fits the situation in Britain, too, but without the religious element.

The left sees issues of identity those concerning race, gender and sexuality as battlegrounds of progress versus stagnation. They are struggles about liberating oppressed minorities from under the dominance of white male power. But as the battles have become more complex, particularly around transgender issues, there is a danger of identity politics getting in the way of solidarity and joint action. The ruling class is all too ready to exploit such divisions in order to maintain control.

On the left, we need to be constantly aware of how culture is key in the battle of ideas. If we wish to challenge and defeat ruling-class hegemony, we have to expose the inhumanity and banality of its culture industry, particularly in films, social media and television. The left has to challenge ruling class ideology in all its forms, not just in the workplace and on the streets.

Read more:
You can't be a pacifist in the culture wars - Morning Star Online

For those of us who have tried (and doubtless failed) to write about the culture wars in a spirit of honest, open-minded good faith, Jon Ronson is something of an icon, said James Marriott in The Times. His 2015 bookSo Youve Been Publicly Shamedremains the definitive account of online cancellation, and its warnings of ever more rancour to come have proved depressingly prescient.

Now he is back withThings Fell Apart, a superb BBC Sounds podcast about the genesis of the culture wars. Ronson starts by looking for their pre-Twitter history, and finds it in the battles the USs religious Right fought against abortion and gay rights in the 1970s and 1980s. He identifies this conflict as the first important intersection of moral fury and new technology, when Evangelical Christians took to the new mass medium of satellite TV to try to ban books and stir moral panic. Its a bleak but riveting listen.

Aimed at adults and older children (it includes bad language and uncensored accounts of gruesome and violent events),Lets Talk About Myths, Baby!is a millennials take on Greek and Roman mythology, said Charlotte Runcie in Prospect. This is first-class educational entertainment: witty and sarcastic commentary from a modern-day perspective is mixed with rigorous scholarly research.

On a completely different subject, Id recommendBad Cops, a BBC World Service series in which Jessica Lussenhop, ofThis American Life, looks at one of the USs most corrupt police units, the Gun Trace Task Force in Baltimore, in an effort to find out why good cops go bad.

The world is awash with cookbooks, but milestone recipes the true keepers are rare indeed, said Dale Berning Sawa in The Guardian.The Genius Recipe Tapes, a weekly pod by Kristen Miglore of the website Food52, explores one such recipe per episode, and talks to its creator. Listening to her descriptions of what she loves about these recipes from the way Rachel Roddy slow-cooks her beans in the oven, to the whole lemon Ruth Rogers puts in a startling strawberry sorbet is a lip-smacking pleasure in itself.

Another great podcast for home cooks isRecipe Club, from the American chef David Chang and the journalist Chris Ying. The fun of this one is that many of the recipes discussed are sourced the way most of us decide what to cook for dinner: by Googling. Its a bit millennial, a bit punk, very entertaining.

Less recipe-focused and more discursive isHoney & Co: The Food Sessions. London restaurateurs and columnists Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer talk to guests drawn from the food scene, mostly in Britain, ranging freely across food-related anecdotes, tips and experiences.

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Podcasts of the week: culture wars, cops and cooking - The Week UK