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We’ve Become a Society of Pop Culture and Keeping Up With the Kardashians
Townhall.com ^ | November 11, 2019 | Rachel Alexander

Posted on 11/11/2019 4:12:34 AM PST by Kaslin

Remember when the TV show Leave it to Beaver was the height of pop culture entertainment? About a nice family of four with good values? How far we’ve sunk since then. Now Americans watch all kinds of trashy shows and movies instead. Reality shows like Keeping up with the Kardashians portray a family with loose moral values who are famous only because one of the daughters made a sex tape and has an enormous behind. Yet millions of viewers watch this vapid family, who are not trained actors, regularly. It debuted in 2007 and is still going, as one of the longest-running reality TV shows ever. 

Movies are now geared to 12-year-old boys. They’ve become so loud and full of violence that they are intolerable to a large portion of the population. There’s been an increase in action-figure movies since they cater well to that young demographic. Rotten Tomatoes compiled a list of the best movies of 2019 so far and it is full of violent action-figure movies and horror movies. There are also movies like Sauvage, which takes a “non-judgmental approach” covering the journey of a male prostitute. Hail Satan? portrays a positive look at the Satanist movement. 

A friend of mine recently saw the new movie Midway. It’s a remake of a previous version, about the Battle of Midway which took place during WWII. He was disappointed because the new version did not stick to the original facts. Instead of chronicling the events, it followed a few primary characters and was merely loosely based on historical facts. He also noticed that the movie went over other aspects of Pearl Harbor, not just Midway, which was unlike the original version — as if the people watching the movie were too ignorant of the rest of that history and needed the background. 

The TV show Game of Thrones is listed as the third most popular TV show of 2019 by Tell Tales. The only thing I know about it is that it is prominent for many nude and sex scenes. The fifteenth most popular show is The Handmaid’s Tale, which deliberately confuses a Judeo-Christian country with a theocratic regime. Women are treated as property and forced to give birth. Mocking our Judeo-Christian heritage, one of the things that made this country great, has become popular entertainment. 

R&B gradually evolved into hip-hop and rap, which contain degrading lyrics about women and the glorification of violence. In 1989, the rap group 2 Live Crew released a song, Me So Horny, with disgusting lyrics about women. At the time, it created an uproar. Now? Rap groups regularly release songs with revolting lyrics and no one bats an eye. It’s become a part of the culture. Their latest fad is lyrics attacking the police. As if that’s something cool to do.     

A decline in reading continues. People are replacing books with smartphones. They are choosing to engage in chatting online over reading. They’re also watching a lot of TV and videos. Fewer people are patronizing the arts. The younger generations would rather sit at home on their smartphones. 

The TV show Game of Thrones is listed as the third most popular TV show of 2019 by Tell Tales. The only thing I know about it is that it is prominent for many nude and sex scenes. The fifteenth most popular show is The Handmaid’s Tale, which deliberately confuses a Judeo-Christian country with a theocratic regime. Women are treated as property and forced to give birth. Mocking our Judeo-Christian heritage, one of the things that made this country great, has become popular entertainment. 

R&B gradually evolved into hip-hop and rap, which contain degrading lyrics about women and the glorification of violence. In 1989, the rap group 2 Live Crew released a song, Me So Horny, with disgusting lyrics about women. At the time, it created an uproar. Now? Rap groups regularly release songs with revolting lyrics and no one bats an eye. It’s become a part of the culture. Their latest fad is lyrics attacking the police. As if that’s something cool to do.     

A decline in reading continues. People are replacing books with smartphones. They are choosing to engage in chatting online over reading. They’re also watching a lot of TV and videos. Fewer people are patronizing the arts. The younger generations would rather sit at home on their smartphones. 

People drop swear words on social media like it’s no big deal. I find I cannot retweet a lot of so-called conservatives on Twitter because they use too much profanity. Twitter is also dumbing people down with its character limits on tweets. Gone are long words since they take up too many characters. Same with a lot of punctuation for the same reason. It’s hurting the English language. Why would anyone want to major in English What can be done? Push back against the changes and elect conservatives to office. Pressure companies like Twitter into changing their policies. They don’t need to limit tweets to 280 characters. Put pressure on Hollywood to cut back on the trashy movies and shows. Some of this is already being done and making a dent in the deterioration of culture. But far more needs to be done. Too many people are complacently sitting on their couches doing nothing as the country declines around us. It’s a huge battle and there are a lot of powerful entities to take on, but the alternative is further decay and the decline of our once great civilization. anymore just to have it scrapped in one of the major areas where people engage in speech nowadays? A study found that using Twitter as an educational tool brought students’ test scores down. 


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: kardashians; millenials; realitytelevision
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To: Kaslin

Compare the Kardashians to a program on climate change, or Sunday night football or most anything on TV. The difference is that most Kardashian followers do not take it seriously.

Climat change and football viewers should be more like Kardashian viewers.


21 posted on 11/11/2019 6:06:30 AM PST by spintreebob
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To: bgill

“Robert was still alive so makes you wonder.”

Since the general belief is that at least the first two are for sure OJ’s, I guess he took a pretty liberal attitude towards “client servicing.”


22 posted on 11/11/2019 6:28:23 AM PST by I cannot think of a name
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To: New Jersey Realist
Woody Harrelson playing the part of Nimitz instead of Henry Fonda turns me off.

I was suprised to see douche-bag Harrelson as Nimitz, but he did a good job. He's about the same age, and the white hairpiece they gave him made him look a bit like Nimitz. It was a restrained and dignified performance. One of the best bits of casting was Luke Evans as McCluskey. He came off like a hard-bitten guy in the 1940's. The reality is that Evans is a gay Welsh actor.

The paragraph in this piece about Midway is ludicrous. the author criticizes a movie about Midway because it's not an exact remake of the 1976 version which was littered with fictional characters. With all the PC crap out there, the author picks on a movie that is anything but PC.

23 posted on 11/11/2019 6:37:17 AM PST by Sans-Culotte (With every passing day, I am a little bit gladder that Romney lost in 2012.)
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To: I cannot think of a name

That would explain their physical features.


24 posted on 11/11/2019 6:41:58 AM PST by bgill
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To: ClearCase_guy
Like, You Know, Like, Whatever, You Know?
25 posted on 11/11/2019 8:01:58 AM PST by real saxophonist (Yeah, well, y'know that's just like, uh... your opinion, man.)
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To: Sans-Culotte

Thank you (for saying the author is wrong about the movie “Midway”)!! I thought everything else in the article was spot on, but was disappointed about the movie part. I have been looking forward to seeing that movie (no movie theaters nearby), having read lots about the USN during WWII in the south Pacific. Trailers I’ve seen show it’s at least an interesting visual experience. I was born four years after the end of WWII, in the southern hemisphere, and always wondered why I have read so much about that subject.


26 posted on 11/11/2019 8:39:07 AM PST by Theophilous Meatyard III
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To: Kaslin

Romans 1: 19-32

God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.


27 posted on 11/11/2019 8:57:14 AM PST by right way right (May we remain sober over mere men, for God really is our only true hope.)
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To: Kaslin
Not exactly news. Offers no solutions.

Vulgarity and obscenity are in some places now where they weren't before, but 90% of everything is garbage and that was true even 50 or 100 years back.

We tell people they are free, and they use that freedom to watch and listen to junk. That won't change unless some massive crisis gives people a wake-up call.

28 posted on 11/11/2019 10:12:04 AM PST by x
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To: All

Fun fact. Leave It to Beaver was never in the top 30 rated programs in all of its 5 year run. So it was not the pop culture touchstone of its era.

That said, I love the show. It’s the family life I WISH I’d had rather than the reality we all faced.

And I’m exceeding proud to honestly state I’ve never seen one minute of Creeping the Kartrasians. Somehow I knew from the git go it was crap of the worst kind.

Just like Jerry Springer. Pure unadulterated humans at their very worst. And I have no interest in seeing that, thank you.


29 posted on 11/11/2019 2:42:36 PM PST by John Milner (Marching for Peace is like breathing for food.)
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To: I cannot think of a name
... when they were stiffed...

We see what you did here.

30 posted on 11/16/2019 5:54:36 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: spintreebob

Doesn’t EVERY nation need a royal family?


31 posted on 11/16/2019 5:55:52 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: xp38

It was the double entendres.


32 posted on 11/16/2019 5:59:08 PM PST by gogeo (The left prides themselves on being tolerant, but they can't even be civil.)
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To: Elsie

“We see what you did here.”

No, that was just simple slang.

There is not a person in the family that does anything for me.


33 posted on 11/18/2019 6:56:54 AM PST by I cannot think of a name
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