i try to read the articles before commenting but i couldn't get past the repeated use of "slut-babymother"
Theodory Dalrymple provides the most literate commentary on the vulgarization of culture. See his columns in National Review and City Journal.
I've noticed in recent years that people increasingly feel they have to established their bona fides of victimhood so that they might be taken seriously.
This is 180 degrees from the cowboy attitudes of another time, where you would refuse to complain publicly about the ordinary pounding life hands out, where you would be embarrassed to complain about the ordinary pounding of ordinary life. Where a guy with a broken arm would assure you that it didn't hurt, where a guy that just lost everything would assure you that "we'll be alright, see to the others who need help more than we do"...
There are still people like that, thank God, they are the people that hold everything together. But in the age of Oprah, they are fewer and fewer.
I love those people, though.
Reminds me of a case I saw on Court TV a while back. A teenage girl had murdered her grandmother and set the house on fire to cover up her crime. In court, she complained that the police who arrested her did not treat her with respect. "Everyone has the right to respect," she said.
I've long been wondering how to keep rights from going off the conceptual deep end. In some places it's almost reached the level where every little girl is supposed to have the right to a pony of her own. Rights language is a blunt instrument, and I suspect there are better ways of expressing justice without inventing a clash between two incompatible rights.