Word: peninsulas
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...Peninsula continues to wage its political battles the only way it knows how: without reference to methodical thinking or subtle argumentation. There is nothing probing about these photographs, nothing instructive. They will not convince anyone, and by now, they will probably not shock too many either. They sure do come in handy, though, when you desperately want to grind an ideological ax without getting caught up in the messiness of serious contemplation...
...Peninsula advertises itself as a magazine for readers. And it is, in a sense, a magazine aimed at readers--picture-readers. In the current issue of Peninsula, the editors have once again decided to give pride of place not to a learned argument against abortion or affirmative-action but to sensationalist photographs with callous captions...
...shall not provide a graphic description of the photographs--good taste forbids it. Suffice it to say that Peninsula has out-done itself. The monthly provides us not only with the now standard photo of an aborted fetus, but also a photograph of Shannon Lowney's casket, she of Brookline Planned Parenthood fame. What the editors make of these photographs, how they read them, I shall leave for you to consider...
...Peninsula's sensationalism is all the more surprising considering the magazine's historic commitment to the academic canon, the "Great Books" approach to learning. What motivates such an educational philosophy if not a reverence for the fantastic power of words to shape our cultural horizons? Does it not naturally follow that balanced, carefully wrought analysis, and not graphic gore, ought to be the bread and butter of today's conservatives...
...Peninsula's decision to go beyond words, or rather, below them, points to a larger crisis in American conservatism. The shrill, populist conservatism embodied by Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich is hostile to intellectual culture. That hostility is not utterly unfounded. It is no secret that academia has historically been antagonistic to the Right, and never more so (in America) than in the past score of years...