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From the NOR Dossiers

Pop Culture & the Entertainment Industry

Merchants of Casual Sin
July-August 2024Oprah and the age of casual sinning she embodied, coupled with therapeutic celebrations of the same, must be met with a heavy dose of hard reality.
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Jack Kerouac’s Creedal Moment
May 2024Jack Kerouac should be remembered as an artist, specifically a Catholic artist. This is what he asked of us in front of Bill Buckley and the world, a year before his death.
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Mystic Chords of Memory
June 2022Would I have learned to appreciate classical music — and even the very best of jazz or blues — if I hadn’t first learned to appreciate the best of rock and pop?
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Quackery Reducks: A Discussion of Spiritual Consumerism in Post-Christian America
July-August 2020People today are perhaps more gullible than at any time in history and likely to believe just about anything.
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The Golden Age of Quackery
May 2020The West's turning away from Faith and the sacraments has opened a void we now try to fill with whatever hucksters come up with next.
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Social Media & the Decline of Human Reason
March 2020Christians need to be aware of how the structure and agendas of tech platforms like Facebook establish tyranny over religious and rational discourse.
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Why I’ve Tuned Out National Public Radio
September 2019NPR’s programming has drifted downward and to the Left: the expectable, inevitable, massive movement of most institutions in a democracy.
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The Hollywood Scandal Behind the Clerical Scandal
March 2019U.S. media and the American judicial system will gladly go after a high-ranking Catholic priest or bishop but will run cover for powerful Hollywood directors and actors.
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Finding Security Behind Closed Doors
December 2018The sexbot is a tool that uses us and mocks our weakness. It is a vision of Hell: inhuman, ruthless, mendacious, comfortless, and cold.
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The Strange Magnetism of Virtual Fisticuffs
November 2018What happens when a fairly obscure writer picks a fight with a Christian YouTube celebrity who has over 200,000 followers?
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Emblem of an Exhausted Era
October 2018"Novitiate" is a film to be expected at the bitter, burnt-out end of the sexual revolution. It is not so much a movie as a cry for help.
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The Rise of the "All-Conquering Female"
March 2017In movies today, it is not enough to show women as intelligent, savvy, and good; they have to portray men as stupid, witless, and irresponsible.
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Nothing Sacred, Nothing Profane
September 2016If we leave our young people with a hollow core, they may fill their emptiness with whatever they find, no matter how poisonous it might be.
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The Curse of Total Sexual Freedom
June 2016The valorization of unrestricted freedom in regard to sex — precisely because it is morally corrupt — proves psychologically debilitating as well.
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The Canticles of Genderspirit
May 2016The entire premise of gender theory is that the mind and the body needn't be in concert with each other at all. But hit pop songs say precisely the opposite thing.
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Anthem of the Auto-Confessing Bad Doctrine
January-February 2015Liberalism is pop culture, and pop culture is liberalism. It flows out in a torrent from the amps of the tattooed crooners of our woe-befallen land.
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The Birth-Control Box in the Living Room
November 2014Research has uncovered a link between soap operas and lower fertility rates in Brazil, Mexico, and Kenya. In fact, some countries have "a history of using soap operas to cut fertility."
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Is Adulthood in America Dead?
November 2014Consumerism smothers culture and production is a thing of the past. Is it any wonder that men of today are alienated from the very concept of manhood, and are retreating into the cocoon of childhood?
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The Apotheosis of Sports
October 2014Sports stadia are replacing cathedrals as places of weekly assembly. Center court at England's Wimbledon has, in fact, been dubbed "the cathedral of tennis."
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The Fourfold Problems of Facebook
July-August 2014Neil Postman's ideas about media are timeless, and many of his observations about television can be applied to social media.
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The Primetime Blues
November 2011The family's natural orientation toward becoming a school of virtue and love demands difficult decisions by parents on the media they and their children consume.
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It's Always the Family
January-February 2010Whoever said that pornography is a victimless crime? The family is usually the first to suffer.
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Illicit Investments
February 2008Hundreds of Catholic groups -- dioceses and religious orders -- help fund their work through investments in porn-related companies.
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Fox TV Is Violent, Profane & Obscene
December 2007Fox TV, the neocons' heaviest cultural artillery, has done some of the greatest damage to the conservative cause in the culture wars.
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The Department of Defense -- Porn Trafficker
December 2007The Department of Defense wants to sell pornography, and even though the law prohibits them, they found a way to do it.
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The Filthy Speech Movement
September 2007Free Speech Movement of the 1960s-era was about civil rights. Nowadays, it's about broadcasting the "s-word" and the "f-word."
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A Double Standard
June 2007In the wake of the Imus affair: Either there should be freedom of speech for everyone, or there should be censorship for most everyone.
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Sean Hannity Promotes Contraception, Abortion & War
June 2007Neocon Catholic Sean Hannity supports abortion, contraception and the war -- and a prominent Legionary priest supports Hannity.
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MTV: A Recruiting Ground For Priests?
February 2002No diocese that has successfully attracted vocations has enlisted marketing professionals to make the priesthood attractive.
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The Folly of Trying to Outdo Wagner
January 2002Review of All Shook Up: Music, Passion, and Politics
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The Alchemy of Consumption
December 2001Go out and buy something — it's your patriotic duty!
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Smoke If You Must, But Get Rid of That Execrable TV
September 2001Television use is linked to a significant loss of intellectual ability in young children, increased violent behavior, and loss of morals.
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Needed: Warning Labels On Television Sets
June 2001Besides being a divisive medium, TV is also a destabilizing medium, a revolutionary medium, and thus a medium not very receptive to traditional values.
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"Crime Must Not Go Unpunished" — Or Was That "Unpaid"?
March 2001The "Seven [Remaining] Dirty Words You Can't Say on TV" just became six.
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Feminism in the Service of Exploitation
January 2001The splashy success of The Vagina Monologues simply requires comment.
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The Inalienable Right to Be Entertained
September 2000We should consider the possibility that habitual electronic amusement has moral as well as emotional and intellectual implications.
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Fanfare for the Not-So-Common Humanoid
July/August 2000Our culture has developed a real phobia about the simple word, "man."
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Skinheads & Rock Stars -- or Saints?
March 2000Hero-worship is so ingrained in our natures that if we cannot find a hero we may follow a pseudo-hero.
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Workers of the World, Unite! — In Front of the Boob Tube
January 2000"Prime-time roles" for "people of color on the small screen"
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Spirituality for the Self-Centered
April 1998SELF magazine boasts, “Ten Eloquent Writers Take on the Mighty Ten Commandments.” Each gets four or five hundred words to do it.
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Inside the Dream Factory (or “It’s Chinatown, Jake!”)
November 1990Review of The Unreality Industry
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Short-Term Thinking & the Decline in Values
September 1986We are controlled by numerical systems run amok — creating lists and statistics, SAT scores and Nielsen ratings, Gallup and Harris polls, and the fearsome “bottom line.”
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Bruce Springsteen: American Working-Class Hero
December 1985Springsteen describes a difficult, often lonely America, yet he is an idealist speaking of plain virtues — strength of will, hard work, generosity.
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Evangelical Television
July-August 1984The current identification of the Christian life with consumerism, suburban aspirations, and a gamut of other materialistic concerns denies the incarnation — makes it incredible.
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Socrates on “Rock”
June 1984Socrates would say that good music is music that makes the soul better, that is, more harmonious, and bad music is music that makes the soul unharmonious.
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Television’s Impact
January-February 1984TV is an effective teacher of a worldview diametrically opposed to the Christian worldview.
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Communicating Our Faith on Television
October 1983TV news is becoming the best place to tell our story. It offers opportunities for believers to express their faith in a prime time context.
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