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POPSGet to Know… Screamin’ Jay Hawkins! Before Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister, Marilyn Manson, etc., it was Screamin’ Jay who laid the foundation for Rock ‘n’ Roll’s theatre of the macabre as early as 1954. He also was an early example of the sort of alpha hedonism we might now associate with Motley Crue. While it would be an overstatement to credit him with the birth of Metal, his relationships with dark theatrical presentation, moral panic, powerhouse vocal styles, and women set the stage for myriad shock rockers to follow. Song titles include “Alligator Wine,” “Frenzy,” “Feast of the Mau Mau,” “Constipation Blues,” and one other song I’ll tell you about in a sec.
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POPSIslam and Homophobia - The Gay Sons of Allah The reason I clipped this....well that should be obvious.... No one has the right to murder and torture another person. No one. So what is it that Christians are doing to gay people? Reading them Bible verses? Oh, hells bells, that's "emotional terrorism," I forgot.
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POPSThe epidemiology of overweight and obesity: public health crisis or moral panic? Yet despite all of the moral connotations ascribed to weight gain, we have little idea exactly why people weigh somewhat more now than they did a generation ago…. So what if the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’ is largely an illusion? What if higher than average weight turns out to have neither much medical nor moral significance? The answer to these questions, all of which we believe are strongly suggested by the epidemiological literature, go far beyond the issues of body mass and health. The current scientific evidence should prompt health professionals and policy makers to consider whether it makes sense to treat body weight as a barometer of public health. It should also make us pause to consider how propagating the idea of an ‘obesity epidemic’ furthers the political and economic interests of certain groups, while doing immense damage to those whom it blames and stigmatizes.
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POPSAre Gamers Scared of Sex? Australian gamers seem particularly fearful of sex and the Australian government, via the classification guidelines, has been making sure we don’t see anything ‘naughty’ involving pink bits since 1993. Extreme violence against law enforcement officers and innocent civilians in games is sweet – just as long as you can’t see a penis or vagina. When the Australian game classification scheme was initially created, the biggest fear was the combination of sex and violence. It goes without saying that no sane person wants a game where the player can rape or commit sexual violence but that can never happen without specific programming and no commercial publisher in the world would ever contemplate it. Getting game publishers to show consensual sex scenes between adults seems a big enough step.
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POPSObesity: the New Moral Panic This is a well written article so clipped as an exemplar of a point of view that many may share, and many may not. Its underlying claim that concern over the future is fuelled by an underlying anxiety and failure of confidence and postive orientation to the future is of broader interest.
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