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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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He knows reds don't have the temperament or interest to "show up" for museums or libraries

Well... isn't that just a skill issue then?

Regardless of the institutional form it takes, there will always be culture of some kind, and it will indeed belong to those who show up. A purely destructive strategy with no positive program for cultural production of your own is not viable in the long term.

Well... isn't that just a skill issue then?

You can argue that. But it seems that the obvious counter argument is that these institutions positioning themselves so badly that they lose their funding is a skill issue as well, no?

That is to say, the argument that "if you lose something, it's a skill issue" has the current outcome as a perfectly acceptable option. Given that the original post is arguing for the continued funding, it can't just boil down to that.

Kind of hard to organically developed conservatives into institutions when they face overwhelming hostility to their presence there. The lack of conservatives isn’t just some organic thing - it was explicitly designed that way

A purely destructive strategy with no positive program for cultural production of your own is not viable in the long term.

Knocking down the old, controlled-by-the-enemy, institutions can be a precondition to having production of your own. Note that they have been pushing out conservative culture for a very long time. In the Floyd push ABC canceled their top-rated show because the actress offended their sensibilities, a popular Disney actress from their most popular show was fired for similar reasons, and other popular conservative shows (like "Cops" and its imitators) were also canceled.

In the Floyd push ABC canceled their top-rated show because the actress offended their sensibilities

Which show was this?

That happened before the Floydenning, though.

Some three or four years prior to that they also cancelled Last Man Standing when it was the second highest show on their network for reasons that definitely had nothing to do with Allen's politics, they just didn't want to do comedy any more. It ended up moving to Fox due to public support.

Your point would be better taken if they didn't continue to make the show (Roseanne) except under a different name (The Conners) and just say that her character died.

For the most part ratings don't matter anymore because they're all too low. And anything that just says "ratings" is likely bullshit because the amount of people that watch it also doesn't matter or hasn't in the past, it was all the demo, 18-34 year olds who watched. Years before what your talking about Harry's Law was I think also the second highest rated show on NBC but it got abysmal demo ratings so they cancelled it despite it being owned by the network.

Last Man Standing was not owned by ABC it just happened to air there and at that point they're only making money on commercials so while ratings might matter there, the fact that FOX actually owned the show makes more sense why they'd pick it up if it was cancelled elsewhere.

More and more shows have very little value if they're not owned or anomalistically high in ratings (speaking for terrestrial television). Funnily enough, both of those things were true for ABC and the Roseanne revival. Though the Conners didn't drop much in the ratings so they probably saved an enormous amount of money, but it remains to be seen how much value they lost in the brand, because selling The Conners to a streamer probably loses you money if you instead had seven more seasons of Roseanne.

I'm pretty sure last man standing was developed at ABC and purchased by Fox after the cancellation. And while I am all for abandoning ratings, they are still the metric the industry uses to gauge success. Also I think Roseanne Barr getting ousted despite being a top earner is still a pretty solid point, although it wasn't mine.

I'm nearly certain it was 20th Century Fox but I can understand the confusion as by the time show actually ended 20th Century Fox didn't exist anymore and became 20th Century Television when Disney bought them which also happens to own ABC so really the show ended in the hands of ABC anyway in a roundabout way.