This Fame Day, I’ll be continuing my past line of praising men and women who have shaped our world and yet remained largely uncredited. There is perhaps no man more deserving of our admiration and respect in this regard than Vasili Arkhipov (1928-1998): “the man who saved the world.”
Arkhipov, born to a peasant family in what was then the USSR, joined the navy, participating in World War II, and further earning distinction as being a survivor of the K-19 submarine. Yeah, as in K-19: The Widowmaker.
The Widowmaker (also called The Hiroshima), for anyone who doesn’t know, was a nuclear submarine created by the USSR. Midway through it’s maiden voyage, The Widowmaker‘s nuclear safeguards failed, forcing the crew to heroically sacrifice their lives as they took shifts to rectify the problem, Vasili among them (the crew, not the problem). This event also inspired a movie.
Now the fact that he willingly exposed himself to radiation to help save his crew mates is a feat in and of itself, however, Arkhipov’s true claim to fame was to come a year later, in October of 1962.
This was the height of Cuban Missile Crisis, and Arkhipov was serving as second-in-command on a Soviet nuclear submarine bound for Cuba. While in international waters, the submarine came into contact with a number of American vessels, which began dropping depth charges in an attempt to scare the submarine off. The submarine captain, having been without any contact from Russia for days and suspecting that a war between the US and USSR may have already started, ordered the launch of a nuclear torpedo. Arkhiphov stood up the captain, and after a heated debate, convinced him, along with the other submarines they were traveling with, to stand down. The simple result of Arkhipov’s refusal to let this torpedo be launched was the prevention of a nuclear holocaust and the saving of billions of lives. Without this man, it is almost certain that none of us would be alive today.
So here’s to Vasili Arkhipov, one of the unsung heroes of human history to whom we all owe an unimaginable debt. Thanks for being the sole barrier between mankind and its own bloody self-annihilation!
It sounds almost like a cartoonish satire of the kind of people who storm into PTA meetings demanding to know why their children have been
“exposed to filth” after discovering a copy of Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse Five, or Harry Potter in their kids’ assigned reading list. The kind of people who warn about the corrosive and unwholesome messages hidden in rock songs, or who sit horrified in front of the TV as some sensationalist dead-inside “journalist” warns about the latest secret teenager trend that’s sure to kill them/get them pregnant.
And as much as it sounds like something that’s ripped out of Footloose, Concerned Women for America is very real.
And that is an absolute shame.
Let’s take a look at some of the bilge that these guys are producing.
What caught my eye was a recent article of theirs on Malala Yousafzai, a heroic Pakistani girl and women’s rights and peace activist. In this post, the authors launch a vicious attack on Islam as being an inherently barbarous and misogynistic religion with a murderous agenda for any who dare oppose it. As the article states
“Malala questioned the station of women under Islam’s oppressive thumb, and the Taliban tried to put her six feet under the ground.”
This, quite simply, is a lie.
Yes the Taliban tried to kill Malala, and yes, Malala questioned the station of women-but what the authors of the article neglect to mention is that Malala Yousafzai is a Muslim herself.
Apparently it’s not enough that this fifteen year old girl (and she is fifteen, not fourteen, as the CWA article wrongly states) has to deal with the threat of violence and murder- she now has to endure her activism being hijacked by the “Concerned Women for America” bent on turning her sacrifice into a smear campaign against her own religion, which they claim is both “false” and “hate-filled.”
But why stop there?
The “Concerned Women for America” are also turning their ignorant ire against the “Slut Walks,” which for those of you who may be unaware, are parades of women wearing clothes of different degrees of modesty or exposure to make the point that it doesn’t matter how you’re dressed- one’s wardrobe is never an “invitation to rape” as some sex-offenders have tried claiming.
Being the moral, upstanding people that they are, CWA has sent up a howl of protest against these walks, declaring:
“The latest desperate bid for attention by the publicity-starved feminists is to sponsor SlutWalks — events where scantily clad women take to the streets en masse to claim their “right” to dress and behave however they want or to go anywhere at any time without the risk of being sexually assaulted or deemed streetwalkers.”
“They propose somehow to make the point that even if what they wear, their drunken state, or their presence alone in a very vulnerable place might indicate their willingness to participate in a sexual free-for-all, women should not be subject to lewd propositions or be at risk of being raped.”
Now I could leave it right there- those two statements alone are enough to demonstrate without a shred of doubt just what vile, reprehensible misogynistic scum the CWA is made of, but just to hammer in a few more nails for safe measure, here are some of there other quotes.
Here’s a lovely little comment regarding the Russian punk-rock protest group “Pussy Riot,” recently sentenced to two years in prison for singing an anti-government song in a cathedral.
Their formal statements about the incident reveal their utter lack of morality, embrace of a “blame-everyone-but-us” ideology, and disdain for capitalism and individual responsibility. Like their U.S. counterparts, they want “human rights, civil and political freedoms” for themselves but not for Christian believers or anyone else with different beliefs… Christians around the world are facing intolerance of their beliefs and sometimes violence as well. In spite of the Constitution, religious liberty is under attack in the United States, with the federal government telling religious institutions that they must violate their beliefs and support homosexual “marriage,” homosexual adoptions, contraception, and abortion or face penalties.
Really? A handful of women sing a song in a church decrying the increasingly totalitarian state, get the ridiculous sentence of two years prison for doing so (the same action in the US would merit a fine, if that) and it’s you who are the persecuted ones.
Transgender? Give me a break! First of all, there is no such thing; it is a choice of behavior. And hope as we might, our desire to behave in a certain way does not legitimize a chosen behavior. It certainly does not entitle them to circumvent the rights of society and our moral tenets in order for them to “have their way.” Natalie Johnson, the employee in question, was quoted in an ABC interview, “I refuse to comply with this policy,” and “There are no transgenders in the world. A guy can dress up as a woman all he wants. That’s still not going to make you a woman.”
An easy call? Certainly not, but this self-righteous outrage is just plain stupid. What if the person in question had been born a hermaphrodite? How would he or she be treated then? Would that kind of ambiguity have justified the guy/gal being denied service? If that’s our logic, why not deny service to people in wheelchairs for not conforming to the societal norm? That logic just doesn’t hold up.
End of the day, “Concerned Women for America” is what cancer would look like if it were an social movement. Shame on this vile organization.
Despite our focus on American issues, we here at Culture War Reportersrecognize that in our world of ever-shrinking borders, there’s plenty more out there than just the cloudless skies of Nevada or the homeless-packed streets of Toronto (Evan, seriously- if the healthcare system’s so good, why does Canada have so many crazy people?).
Today we turn our attention to our pasty cousins across the pond, more specifically, their TV, excuse me, “Telly” (this is why you lost your empire- well, this and genocide), and how it stacks up next to ours.
CGI and Production Values
Now I have to admit- I haven’t extensively researched British and American television financing, nor have I had a chance to compare the two, taking into consideration differences in the economy and advertising fees over the past couple decades.
What I’m saying is- I’m not an expert.
That said, I don’t need to be an architect to tell you that chances are pretty good that a lot less money was put into making a tent than a condo. British TV shows, put bluntly, just seems to be vastly less funded than their American counterparts. Just take a look at this scene from America’s Battlestar Galactica.
Pretty intense, right? If there’s any poor-quality, it’s probably from the YouTube video, rather than the actual series.
Now look at this clip from Britain’s Doctor Who.
Way worse. And oddly enough, Doctor Who has a bigger fanbase than Galactica, and despite it’s ever-increasing popularity, still has to deal with props dug out of someone’s kitchen drawers. I’m not saying Doctor Who is bad- it’s not. It’s really good- only it’s tough to really feel the full effects of a horrific reveal when the monstrous alien that’s been lurking the shadows until now makes your sock-puppets look scary by comparison. I can’t claim to know the reason for it, and I’m not putting the Brits down for it- I’m simply saying that funding- especially in CGI- appears to be a significant difference between the worlds of British and American TV.
Pretty Faces
You’ve probably heard jokes cracked about this. Not the “British are ugly” or the “British have bad teeth” jokes- the fact that the people on British television have the audacity to look like the people you’d see on the street.
That’s not to say the Brits don’t share the American weakness for fantasizing and glamorizing each and every facet of life, but it’s pretty clear that it’s nowhere near on the scale we have here in the US. Here- take a look at the leading characters of the American version of Being Human.
The guy on the left is decently attractive, as is the girl, and the guy on the right looks more or less like a life-sized Ken doll. Idealized people- no question about it. Now look at the same characters in the British original:
There’s not a huge difference between the girl (the blonde girl is another character- ignore her), and the dark haired guy certainly isn’t his American counterpart and stop looking at that guy’s ears! Yes, they’re huge- they’re gargantuan– and no, this isn’t just an unflattering photo- they actually are trying to escape his head in the first three seasons.
The point is, when it comes to their actors, the British are- well, appear to be- considerably less shallow. They don’t need a couple of supermodels to tell a compelling story of murder, secrecy, and perversion- and speaking of which…
Raunch Codes
Watch this clip- but before you do, get all children and Weslyans out of the room.
Pretty nasty stuff, right? Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
People complain that American media is nothing but sex and violence, but believe me- those Axe commercials are prudish compared to the Brits (and indeed- most of Europe). We may give the Brits a run for their money when it comes to blood and gore but never will we compete with them when it comes to explicitness of this degree. It’s almost to the point where it’s not even repulsive- you’re just impressed at how logic-deafeningly far they take it.
But only almost.
The Dying and the Dead
It’s been said that the difference between British comedies and American comedies is that American comedies begin with everything going wrong and end with everything being fixed, while British comedies begin with everything going right and end with everything falling apart. I wouldn’t call a story where everyone dies of scurvy at the end a comedy, but then again, I don’t whittle my life away on a miserable island full of alcoholics and skinheads.
I can say that because the only people who hate the British more than the Irish, the Kenyans, the Indians, the Chinese, the Australians, the New Zealanders, Iranians, and the Egyptians are the British themselves.
The simple fact of the matter is that there is this viciously self-deprecating mentality that pervades every element of British culture (barring fox hunts, which are just weird) that couldn’t be further removed from the general sense of optimism that you tend to find in America. Just take a look at British crime series.
Now I’ve seen quite a few, and while this certainly isn’t universally true, what I’ve typically found is that British murder mysteries focus on the whole “Whodunnit?” element, whereas American murder mysteries either have a “How’d he do it?” or a drive to keep the murderer from murdering again. Gross over-generalizations, I know, but it does seem to be true that American crime series episodes end with the detectives patting each other on the back for having done justice, while British crime series episodes end with the detective giving some despairing monologue about the tragic depravity of all mankind.
Because that’s a very depressing (and therefore, British) way to end the post- allow me offer this:
To say I’ve been ragging a bit on the British would be an understatement, and no- despite our attempts to be unbiased, we here at Culture War Reporters don’t care much for contemporary English culture. That established, there may very well be something to be said for the Brit’s here. Is it pretty? Not remotely, but for all the weirdness (from our perspective) that British TV has to offer, it can’t be denied that it’s simply more “real” than American TV. The sets aren’t shiny, the people aren’t (exclusively) gorgeous, and a stories of sin and murder actually recognize human suffering. There’s certainly a lot from British TV that merits imitation here in America.
Except for sexually explicit sausage commercials. **** that.
This Fame Day, I’ll be continuing my past line of praising men and women who have shaped our world and yet remained largely uncredited. There is perhaps no man more deserving of our admiration and respect in this regard than Vasili Arkhipov (1928-1998): “the man who saved the world.”
Culture War Reporters 