Archive for the ‘Culture Wars’ Category

Kari Lake Wants Republicans to Focus on More Than ‘Culture War’ – Newsweek

Former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake called on Republicans to focus on more than just fighting the "culture war."

"Social issues are incredibly important. We must fight and win the culture war," Lake wrote in a tweet on Friday afternoon. "But the 2024 election will be all about fixing our economy and preventing World War 3. @realDonaldTrump is the ONLY man for that job."

The comments by Lake come amid ongoing fights over culture issues in the U.S. such as the controversy surrounding Bud Light and its partnership with transgender influencer and activist Dylan Mulvaney, as well as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' fight with Disney and the "woke" community.

This month, Mulvaney posted a video on Instagram showcasing her partnership with Bud Light in an effort to promote her transition to a woman. The partnership led to widespread criticism against Bud Light and calls for people to boycott the brand. Many right-wing voices, such as Lake and Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, called for supporters to avoid buying Bud Light.

On April 5, Lake posted a tweet saying that while at a rally with supporters in Iowa, many refused to drink Bud Light because of its partnership.

"I have to share something hilarious with you guys. I'm in Iowa with hundreds of voters tonight for a rally. There was an open bar that RAN OUT of beer...Except for one brand... @BudLight Go woke, go BROKE. Sad!" Lake said in a tweet.

Lake also recently responded to reports that two Bud Light marketing executives took a leave of absence amid the ongoing controversy.

"When Conservatives fight the culture war we win. They call us the "silent majority" for a reason," Lake wrote. "But we can no longer afford to be silent. There's too much at stake."

As Lake told Republicans to look at other issues the nation is facing, DeSantis was also recently criticized for focusing "too much time on the culture wars."

While speaking with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow last week, former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said that DeSantis "spends way too much time on the culture wars, and that begins with Disney and includes many other things."

"Woke is important, but you can't have that as a replacement for a bold, growth-centric economic plan," Conway added.

DeSantis previously filed legislation seeking to remove Disney's self-governing status after the company criticized the Florida governor's so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill.

Newsweek reached out to Lake's press office via email for further comment.

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Kari Lake Wants Republicans to Focus on More Than 'Culture War' - Newsweek

The culture war Biden’s eager to fight – POLITICO

Welcome to POLITICOs West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration.

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Presidential campaigns often are waged on whether or not the country is ready to turn the page. President JOE BIDEN wants his reelection bid to hinge on whether or not there are pages to turn.

The presidents team has made the issue of book banning a surprisingly central element of his campaigns opening salvos. He referred to GOP efforts to restrict curriculum TONI MORRISONs The Bluest Eye was the third most banned title in America last year in his first two campaign videos. He presents himself in each video as the defender of the countrys core values, a bulwark against an extreme Republican Party rolling back Americas freedoms.

The campaigns first TV ad, a 90-second spot running in seven states over the next two weeks as part of a seven-figure buy, warns Republicans seek to overturn elections, ban books and eliminate a womans right to choose. Biden followed up with a tweet hitting MAGA extremists telling you what books should be in your kids schools. That followed the explicit reference to book bans in Bidens launch announcement video Tuesday.

The early focus on book banning is part of the campaigns attempt to reinforce a broader message, said one Democratic adviser involved in the effort: Biden is the only one standing between the American people and a Republican Party determined to roll back rights and limit freedoms.

People just dont understand why we should ban books from libraries, said the adviser, who spoke with candor about the campaigns strategy on the condition of anonymity. So its a measure of extremism and another thing [Republicans] are trying to take away.

Bidens message is based on mounds of research by Democratic pollsters over the last several months, as the presidents advisers and the Democratic National Committee have expanded the constellation of pollsters and data analysts tracking voter attitudes and the effectiveness of certain messages.

The potency of book bans, along with issues like abortion and gun safety, is quite clear, according to multiple people familiar with the campaigns data.

Book banning tests off the charts, said CELINDA LAKE, one of the Democratic pollsters who tested the issue for Democrats. People are adamantly opposed to it and, unlike some other issues that are newer, voters already have an adopted schema around book banning. They associate it with really authoritarian regimes, Nazi Germany.

The campaigns private research aligns with public polling on the issue. A CBS News/YouGov poll in February found that more than 8 in 10 Americans opposed GOP efforts to ban books that focus on slavery, the civil rights movement and an unsanitized version of American history. And a Fox News survey this week found that 60 percent of Americans including 48 percent of Republicans find book bans problematic.

Republicans led by Florida Gov. RON DESANTIS, who appears likely to run for president, have leaned into the culture wars by leading efforts to bar those books, and others about LGBTQ topics. Theyve framed the push as an effort to protect social indoctrination via school curriculum. Lake sees it as a political gift to Biden.

Youll see Democrats up and down the ticket running on this, she said.

You can read the full story here.

MESSAGE US Are you LEVAR BURTON? We want to hear from you. And well keep you anonymous! Email us at [emailprotected]

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This one is from reader JAMES DUFFY. Which first lady saved GEORGE WASHINGTONs portrait?

(Answer at bottom.)

WHATS JOE WATCHING? The president isnt a religious viewer of any one show, but he regularly catches MSNBCs Morning Joe from the White House residence. And hell keep an eye on CNN throughout the day in the Oval Office thanks to a small, gold-framed television designed to blend in with all the family photos arranged atop the credenza behind the Resolute Desk. Eli wrote about this and other aspects of the presidents media diet for POLITICO Magazines media issue ahead of Bidens appearance at Saturdays White House Correspondents Dinner.

EIGHT-YEAR-OLDS, DUDE: The kiddos (a range of ages, actually) of White House staff took over the campus Thursday as part of Bring Your Kid to Work Day. President Biden spent 24 minutes in the south driveway, taking questions ranging from his favorite color (blue) and biggest inspiration (his parents) to his favorite color rose (white), ice cream (chocolate chip) and todays breakfast (egg, bacon and cheese on a croissant). He couldnt quite recall where all of his grandchildren live or the country hed traveled to last until a child reminded him by shouting out, Ireland. Biden, whose trip just two weeks ago drew international press coverage, marveled at the response. Howd you know that? he joked.

That was preceded by an on-the-record morning briefing, where the children of some White House correspondents asked press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE several questions. She was able to reveal that Biden likes spaghetti but said she would have to look at the data to answer what his longest motorcade had been. Its a good question. You actually stumped me.

[Sam here: Look, I dont wanna be too harsh. But these kids couldnt have come up with a follow up to the favorite ice cream question? Also, President Biden: What are you, in college? Who eats that type of breakfast?]

HE DROVE HIS CHEVY TO THE LEVEE At Wednesday nights state dinner, South Korean President YOON SUK YEOL surprised the crowd by singing DON MCLEANs 1971 hit American Pie. Bloombergs JORDAN FABIAN notes that Biden said, I had no damn idea you could sing. Heres a video of the rendition, courtesy of C-SPANs HOWARD MORTMAN. Biden also tweeted the performance and his presentation afterward of a guitar signed by McLean as a gift to Yoon.

PASSION FOR (NOT DISCLOSING) FASHION: Speaking of Wednesday nights affair, first lady JILL BIDEN didnt disclose what she was wearing to it, overtly rejecting that tradition, especially given how clearly her staff thought through every aspect of the state dinner, NYTs VANESSA FRIEDMAN reports. In that context, not to include the details of her dress who made it, its color or design or material seems a deliberate decision. Its the statement of no statement. (Alternate theory: why announce details that KATE BENNETT will just tweet out?)

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: If youre going to read about Bidens reelection bid in the context of his questions over his age, theyd probably point you to this report by the WSJs KEN THOMAS and CATHERINE LUCEY, Why Joe Biden Decided to Run Again. It offers the rationale for his candidacy from some of his closest friends and advisers.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESNT WANT YOU TO READ: RUY TEIXEIRAs reasons why the president could lose reelection in Thursdays edition of The Liberal Patriot newsletter. Teixeira writes that Biden is an extraordinarily weak candidate, and goes into detail about how Trump may be a stronger opponent than Democrats expect.

IT COULD BE WORSE: Sure, Biden is an older president, and his age is a concern for voters, but POLITICO Europes WILHELMINE PREUSSEN and NICOLAS CAMUT have a roundup of other world leaders who worked into their octogenarian years.

DOUG FIGHTS BACK: Former Alabama senator and longtime Biden ally DOUG JONES called out Republican presidential candidate NIKKI HALEY after she said in a Fox News interview that Biden will likely die within five years. The remarks are more than disrespectful, they are disgusting, appalling and unbefitting a candidate for the highest office in the land, Jones said.

PERSONNEL MOVES: RACHEL WALLACE, the chief of staff to White House budget director SHALANDA YOUNG, is leaving her post, and Capitol Hill alum KAREN DE LOS SANTOS will be her replacement starting Monday, CAITLIN EMMA and DANIEL LIPPMAN report for Pro subscribers.

In a rare on-the-record statement, STEVE RICHETTI praised Wallace, an alum of Bidens campaign and transition: When you look at her track record leading Women for Biden, being essential to this administration making history with a staff that looks like America, and then managing the team that is the nerve center of the Federal government it speaks to her loyalty to this President and his agenda, her commitment to public service, and her ability to get the job done.

KLAIN SPEAKS: Former White House chief of staff RON KLAIN spoke about the criticism Vice President KAMALA HARRIS has received on an episode of the podcast, On With Kara Swisher. Sexism and racism are part of the problem. I think she was not as well known in national politics before she became vice president. And I think that she hasnt gotten the credit for all that shes done, he said. Our KIERRA FRAZIER has more.

WHOOPSIE: Fed Chair JEROME POWELL spoke on the phone early this year with someone posing as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Fed confirmed an embarrassing episode for the central bank chief, our VICTORIA GUIDA reports. A Fed spokesperson said in a statement that Powell had a conversation in January with someone who misrepresented himself as the Ukrainian president. It was a friendly conversation and took place in a context of our standing in support of the Ukrainian people in this challenging time. No sensitive or confidential information was discussed.

[Sam here again: Eli, try this trick on Biden]

HANDLING THIS ELSEWHERE: Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN and Homeland Security Secretary ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS on Thursday unveiled plans to establish immigration processing centers throughout Latin America to help slow down the number of migrants coming to the U.S., our MYAH WARD reports. Processing centers in Guatemala and Colombia should be up and running in the next few weeks, and additional details are yet to come about centers in other countries as negotiations remain underway.

TANK ANGST: Senators on both sides of the aisle are calling on the Pentagon to hurry the sending of U.S. tanks to Ukraine, saying Kyiv needs the capability now, our CONNOR OBRIEN reports. Lawmakers expressed their frustration to top defense officials in a Senate Armed Service committee hearing Thursday. Sen. ANGUS KING (I-Maine) said that if the tanks dont get there until August or September, it may well be too late.

Why Biden may have to forfeit the first contest in his re-election bid to Marianne Williamson or RFK Jr. (NBCs Alex Seitz-Wald)

U.S.-China Ties Are Spiraling. The Cabinets Stuck in a Turf War. (Bob Davis for Politico Magazine)

The dirty little secret of White House news conferences (WaPos Paul Farhi)

During the burning of Washington, D.C. on Aug. 24, 1814, DOLLEY MADISON sought to save GEORGE WASHINGTONs portrait from the fire, according to the Mount Vernon website.

She wrote in a letter Aug. 23, 1814 that she didnt want to flee the scene until the large picture of Gen. Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. This process was found to be too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvas taken out it is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York for safe keeping.

A CALL OUT Thanks to James for this question! Do you think you have a harder one? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it.

Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.

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The culture war Biden's eager to fight - POLITICO

The culture wars are alive and well in New Mexico – Santa Fe New Mexican

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The culture wars are alive and well in New Mexico - Santa Fe New Mexican

Biden’s team is leaning into this culture war staple – POLITICO

The early focus on book banning is part of the campaigns attempt to reinforce a broader message, said one Democratic adviser involved in the effort: Biden is the only one standing between the American people and a Republican Party determined to roll back rights and limit freedoms.

People just dont understand why we should ban books from libraries, said the adviser, who spoke with candor about the campaigns strategy on the condition of anonymity. So its a measure of extremism and another thing [Republicans] are trying to take away.

Bidens message is based on mounds of research by Democratic pollsters over the last several months, as the presidents advisers and the Democratic National Committee have expanded the constellation of pollsters and data analysts tracking voter attitudes and the effectiveness of certain messages.

The potency of book bans, along with issues like abortion and gun safety, is quite clear, according to multiple people familiar with the campaigns data.

Book banning tests off the charts, said Celinda Lake, one of the Democratic pollsters who tested the issue for Democrats. People are adamantly opposed to it and, unlike some other issues that are newer, voters already have an adopted schema around book banning. They associate it with really authoritarian regimes, Nazi Germany.

The campaigns private research aligns with public polling on the issue. A CBS News/YouGov poll in February found that more than 8 in 10 Americans opposed GOP efforts to ban books that focus on slavery, the civil rights movement and an unsanitized version of American history. And a Fox News survey this week found that 60 percent of Americans including 48 percent of Republicans find book bans problematic.

Republicans led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appears likely to run for president, have leaned into the culture wars by leading efforts to bar those books, and others about LGBTQ topics. Theyve framed the push as an effort to protect social indoctrination via school curriculum. Lake sees it as a political gift to Biden.

Youll see Democrats up and down the ticket running on this, she said.

But book bans dont just rankle parents of children under 18, who account for just less than 30 percent of the electorate. Some of the strongest responses in focus groups to GOP book bans came from Baby Boomers.

The Biden campaign has leaned hard into the contrast of more freedom or less freedom, as the president put it in his announcement video, co-opting a quintessentially American idea and a political theme more traditionally emphasized by Republicans.

In the TV spot pushed out Wednesday, Biden pointed to GOP restrictions in many areas abortion rights, voting rights election denialism and the partys inaction on gun safety all under the umbrella of freedom. But polling and focus group research found that the messaging around book bans appealed in particular to moderates and swing voters who may have nuanced views on gender and identity but are far more clear-eyed about being told what books they can or cant read.

Those voters which include moderate Republicans, suburban voters and college-educated white people are among the demographics that Bidens team believes will be critical to win. They are also more likely to live in areas where conservatives have sought to impose restrictions on libraries and school boards.

Americans have a libertarian streak about them, and this is an absolute affront to that tendency, the adviser said. This is much more about reassembling the coalition from 2020.

Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist prominent within her partys more outspoken cadre of Never Trump activists, said that book bans have occasionally come up in her focus groups with voters.

When we talk about them, usually in the context of DeSantis, these are the things that play very poorly with educated suburban voters, she said, surmising that the campaigns emphasis on book bans is at least partly about laying the groundwork for a general election match-up with DeSantis.

They are positioning themselves to take on any candidate and to fight for those swing voters who put them over the top in 2020 and who are uncomfortable with some of the more extreme positions DeSantis and others are embracing, Longwell said.

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Biden's team is leaning into this culture war staple - POLITICO

Classical Deception: Reactionary Misappropriation of Greek Classics Fuel Culture Wars in Education – Neos Kosmos

Over the past year, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, a likely candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. President, has been waging war against higher education. From forbidding the teaching of anything related to critical race theory to severely curtailing academic freedom, DeSantis policies have been seen as a map for other conservative states and as the fruition of decades of policy initiatives.

One aspect of the Florida plan may surprise outsiders to education. As part of his goal to align the states curricula with the values of liberty and the Western Civilization, Governor DeSantis has empowered his appointees who run the states honor college, New College, to move the school to a classical liberal arts model that emphasizes a traditional brand of education and scholarship.

In a climate where the liberal arts are continually under threat and institutions around the world are cutting back on the humanities and creative arts in favor of STEM fields and vocational credentialing, Floridas return to classical models might sound good. But for those who remember the culture wars of the 80s and 90s, theres a whiff of Allan Bloom and The Closing of the American Mind: a reactionary dismissal of one field of the liberal arts (studies in race, sociology, gender, etc.) in favour of a poorly defined, and coercively instrumentalised, tradition, and while these debates take place, institutions continue to cut programs and reallocate resources elsewhere.

The problem with comparing now to the late 1980s is that the current champions of classical education fail to understand it, understand it all too well and intended to shut out new voices and ways of seeing the world, or cynically use the example to manipulate various constituencies. As someone who cares deeply about higher educations potential to do good and who advocates for a nuanced understanding of what the liberal arts are and what they have done in the past, I am troubled nearly as much by the misuse of classical education as I am by its weaponization by cynical opportunists.

Heres a good example of this crowds superficial thinking. Recently, Jeremy Wayne Tate, the CEO of the Classic Learning Test, tweeted Classical education, formerly known as simply education, inspires young people to live lives of heroic virtue. If we want young men to act like Odysseus, they need to hear the story.

Along with many others, I questioned this approach to Homer on social media, merely listing plot points from the Odyssey to ask what it means to act like Odysseus such as 1. lose 12 ships of men, 2. Cry on the beach for seven years, 3. Kill 108 people at home; 4. Let son hang enslaved women; 5. Get ready for war with your own people While many were amused, the list elicited some strong reactions.

Odysseus wasnt always heroic

Homeric heroes are not simple figures. Yes, Odysseus returns home and is reunited with his wife and son after extreme suffering. He may exhibit cunning, resilience, and tries to find balance between the massive egos of Agamemnon and Achilles; he seems keen to end the disastrous Trojan campaign the Greeks embarked on, but he is also depicted as a bad leader.

He also tends to make selfish decisions that often undermine his own goals. My point in listing out the plot is that epicand by extension, a classical educationcannot work as a simple call to imitation. Ancient literatureindeed, all art and literature worthy of the titlesoffers an opportunity to engage in a repetitive and sequential process of contemplation and interpretation. It is not a list of qualities to emulate or of figures to venerate in turn.Over a generation ago, the cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner argued that the human mind has two modes of thought, the paradigmatic mode and the narrative mode.

The paradigmatic mode, he argued, is the structure of science and logic, the mode of establishing universal truths; whereas the second mode, the narrative one, is grounded in personal experience, in relating between the self and the universal, and in bringing meaning to both through reflection and interpretation.

The narrative mode is at the center of the humanities and creative arts and occupies at least half of the traditional liberal arts. When we emphasize one approach to the detriment of the other, we lose the ability to translate our experiences for each other, to establish shared facts, and to say anything substantial about the truth.

The best examples of using classical texts for education are firmly grounded in narrative; the worst treat them as offering simple paradigms, patterns empty of their meaning. Homeric poetry is like a philosophical dialogue, a tragedy, or a painting: it invites audiences to explore its narrative through their experiences, and to compare their experiences to epic in turn. The classroom gives us time to compare our responses, both to each other, and to our objects interpretive histories.

What we often miss from the narrative function is that it is a process and not a product; it must include multiple people, and it does not cease when the bookor coursehas ended. Narrative modes also help create communities: No one reads, hears, or experiences a poem the same way every time and no one comes away with the same conclusionswe bring our experiences and expectations closer together through conversation.

The peril of misusing Homeric epic

Theres a deep peril in narrative being misused. Homeric epic is deeply aware that narrative misfires and can be interpreted in dangerous ways: it repeatedly features heroes telling each other stories from the past and disagreeing about them, failing to live up to them, or twisting them to new meanings.

Epicand all narrative artis supposed to be a vehicle for increasing our understanding of the self, of our engagement with communities, and of our engagement with time. It does not give clear or simple lessons, but instead furnishes problem sets for thinking about how we act in the world. People who claim that Odysseus is one thing (a moral hero!) or Achilles is one thing (a man of honour!) are labouring under the idea that epic is simply paradigmatic. They want to use it to teach specific things, but also ensure that it cannot teach others.

When any response to extolling the virtues of Achilles or Odysseus is critical, modern proponents of classical education often respond with rage. Sadly, this illustrates the lack of preparation for engaged, collaborative, and dialogic thinking. But it also has political ramifications: They respond violently with typical bullying tropes. Scan responses online and find homophobic attacks, ableist slurs, misogynistic, racial, and transphobic attacks. Such bullying sounds mundane, but it truly exposes the fragility that is core to an emergent neo-fascist fetish for power.

Theres a reason the traditional liberal arts are both qualitative and quantitative, narrative, and paradigmatic. By some accounts, the term liberales artes originally referred to the arts worthy of a free person, but I think we can also understand it as the knowledge that makes you a free person.

Education should cultivate greater understanding

Education should help us be more than ourselves by teaching us to understand what it means to be human, to be part of a community, to be part of history. And it should discomfort us by helping us see others who are different as real and as vital as ourselves. Every time I see a school, or a civic entity cut the humanities and the arts and double down on work training and STEM, I fear we are undermining any opportunities for people to learn and think deeply about narrative and our lives together.

These cuts are always ideologically driven under the cover of financial exigency. Divestment in the humanities, arts and even social sciences is about taking out the very disciplines that are critical of entrenched power structures.

Jerome Bruner also wrote in his book Actual Minds, Possible Worlds that if a student fails to develop any sense of what [Bruner calls] reflective intervention in the knowledge he encounters, the young person will be operating continually from the outside inknowledge will control and guide him.

This is the goal of cutting departments, of eliminating tenure and limiting academic freedom, and of excluding millions of students from the opportunities to have deep, resonant humanistic educations. People who cannot engage critically with narrative and each other will never have the skills to engage critically with media, to demonstrate meaningful information literacy, or to question the claims of their leaders.

Institutions outside of state control that choose to reallocate resources for deficit mitigation or to lean in to more popular and profitable subjects for temporarily balanced budgets abdicate our moral and ethical responsibility to seek the truth, to challenge power, and to make life better for all people.

So, when talking heads online scream about the radical leftists ruining education, and when they demonstrate neither the knowledge nor the ability to talk about the core components of the humanities or liberal arts, I see the cost were paying now for undermining education at every turn.

Empowering simplistic paradigmatic thinking is a harbinger of what education will be if we continue down this path: Boutique learning for the elite; a cudgel for traditional rhetoric and hate; and a mechanism for perpetuating some of our worst ideas.

Joel Christensen is Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at Brandeis University. He has published extensively and some of his work include Homers Thebes (2019) and A Commentary on the Homeric Battle of Frogs and Mice (2018). In 2020, he published The Many-Minded Man: the Odyssey, Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic with Cornell University Press.

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Classical Deception: Reactionary Misappropriation of Greek Classics Fuel Culture Wars in Education - Neos Kosmos