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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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i feel like rotherham is just the same shit as the catholic church but no-one actually learned the lesson of the catholic church. if people are doing bad stuff then you need to stop them from doing bad stuff. preserving the 'institution' or some other higher value is just some scam the bad people are using to convince you to continue letting them to do the bad stuff.

There doesn’t seem to be any actual kidnapping associated with the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals. There was quite a lot of grooming and giving minors alcohol and things of that nature, but no violence involved.

If you think that you've been sold a bit of a bill of goods on both. The Catholic church scandal was bad, but is currently paralleled by what still goes on in public schools every day. And the CC was largely a scandal about homosexual pederasty, so in many ways our public schools as currently run are worse. This Rotherham stuff is way worse, there is violence, kidnapping, gang rape, and cover up by not just the rapists and their private groups, but government officials.

Would you link to something that summarizes what goes on in public schools today?

This is the report associated with the school district I am most familiar with: https://cpsoig.org/uploads/3/5/5/6/35562484/cps_oig_fy_2022_annual_report.pdf

Here is one that is more national in scope: https://dfipolicy.org/press-release-new-dfi-report-uncovers-a-systemic-failure-by-federal-state-and-local-authorities-to-prevent-sexual-abuse-of-students-in-public-schools/

While it is true that public schools are bigger than the church, they are also bigger in raw numbers than the church ever was, and the unions + admins exhibit similar behaviors to church leaders in protecting sexual predators in schools.

There is a similar problem (probably even worse based on my experience) in foster care. Even worse so in the housing facilities for the children awaiting foster care.

And yet, all of those pale in comparison the the Pakistani gangs. The priests, teachers, and supervisors are groomers who eventually would typically engage in some sort of pseudo-consensual relationship with a minor. That is very bad. What the Pakistani gangs did was more like kidnap, drug, and rape akin to what was going to happen to the daughter and her friend in the movie Taken, except with 10 year olds.

And yet, all of those pale in comparison the the Pakistani gangs. The priests, teachers, and supervisors are groomers who eventually would typically engage in some sort of pseudo-consensual relationship with a minor. That is very bad. What the Pakistani gangs did was more like kidnap, drug, and rape akin to what was going to happen to the daughter and her friend in the movie Taken, except with 10 year olds.

What are you talking about? Almost all the grooming gang cases involved ‘grooming’, hence their name. They would find underclass girls hanging around outside schools and offer them alcohol, drugs and takeout food and that is how they would become involved with these men. They didn’t kidnap girls off the street because that would inherently run the risk of abusing girls who came from non-underclass families.

That's the initial contact, but eventually the girls were detained in many cases.

They are not the same. Rotherham was worse. Much, much worse.

Did priests douse children in gasoline and threaten to light them on fire if they told their secrets? Did they keep children prisoner for days, weeks, or years without letting them see their family? Were people arrested for rescuing their loved ones from a pedophile priest? Were people thrown in jail for "hate speech" against the church? When the abuse was revealed, how do the media react? Did they cover it up or did they shout it from the hilltops? Did they make Oscar-winning movies movies about the heroic journalists who uncovered the abuse, or did they throw them in jail?

They are not the same. Rotherham was worse. Much, much worse.

It was a worse instance of the same thing, much in the way that pancreatic cancer is worse than prostate cancer despite them both being cases of cells multiplying faster than they ought to.

You’re actually correct, in that many of the offending priests were cleared by the police in the presence of pretty damning evidence.

Apropos Spotlight, I found it decent enough, but when the movie ended I thought "That's it?" It felt like it should have had another hour.

Discussions about Spotlight are invariably about the politics rather than it being a noteworthy entry in cinematic canon, because it's not. The Martian would have been a better-aging winner, and Fury Road was on the slate. The Big Short probably should have won, but one was another chance to dunk on the long groveling church and the other was about bankers. A tidy microcosm of power, that.

I rewatched The Big Short recently and found it not nearly as good as I remembered it being. Despite Adam McKay's comedic background, I didn't find the "funny" bits funny at all (and the meta fourth-wall breaking bits were just embarrassing). I think it would have worked better as a straight drama with no postmodern jiggery-pokey.

Margin Call, which I watched for the first time more recently, was to my mind a more intelligent, entertaining and tonally consistent take on similar material (and what a cast!).

Yeah, frankly it was a boring movie that won because it hit all the right liberal circle-jerk notes. Remember when newspapers made so much money that they could hire 4 journalists for an entire year to cover one story? That's the way things should be, right?

Zero rewatchability value.

Michael Keaton is always great though.

The big short still won "best adapted screenplay" along with 25 other accolades (a list with its own Wikipedia article).

I drew this exact comparison several years ago. My sister was very annoyed.