The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

It's official: Stupid Facebook memes have become just as ubiquitous as Starbucks coffee shops. In fact, if anything, that may be understating matters. This especially seems to be the case after gun-related tragedies, like the one that took place in Charleston, South Carolina last week, come to the news-front. Just yesterday, I saw a Facebook meme which showcased the character Stewie from  Family Guy  sporting a gun and supposedly uttering these words: "So if guns kill people, I guess pencils mis spell words, cars drive drunk, and spoons make people fat." Yes, we've heard similar arguments before; yes, they've been debunked by Critical Thinking professors nationwide; and no, it doesn't seem these individuals will ever get the point, but still, I feel the need to rebut it. First off, I find it quite humorous that this meme's author, in trying to appear clever, actually misspelled the word misspell (no, it's not "mis spell"). However, give...

Speaking at the Koch brother-funded Right Online conference this past weekend, conservative blogger Bill Whittle said this: "Any audience of people that grew up with classical Superman automatically love this country, because Superman is about the best America we can be. When Superman was all over the pop culture, we were a nation that loved this country. Now, twenty years after the peak of Superman's popularity, along comes Gilligan's Island . That's pretty neutral in terms of politics. Really about the only message you can get from Gilligan's Island is if you want to get off the island all you have to do is kill Gilligan. But if you're a young person out there today and you can finish the theme song from Family Guy , then all the anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, anti-morality messages of Family Guy  are in your head as completely and thoroughly as that theme song is. You're programmed by the pop culture, you're programmed by story...