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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025

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Culture War Artifact Analysis: Holiday Edition - The Family Stone

There is very little to discuss about this extremely boring movie. Diane Keaton simply Diane Keatons for a long time.

It is primarily a fable about the importance of hospitality. A pack of mannerless hicks torments their guest during an important religious holiday. They make her feel like an imposition, they treat her property disrespectfully, her partner refuses to engage in the most basic of social assistance. In retribution, the gods strike down Diane Keaton.

Blue Tribe America, especially in their youth, identify with the family. This is why their revolutions will always fail. SJP, for all her faults, is clearly portrayed as absolutely innocent. Anyone who watches this movie and feels anything but satisfaction when those jackals cry is your enemy.

Happy Holidays!

Same. I started off trying to dislike SJP, because horseface and annoying, but the relentless cruelty of the family towards her got to me, and in the end I wished Claire Danes would die of cancer too.

"because horseface and annoying"

Even I, a 40 year old divorced man who sincerely misses in-office work because I did have age gap inappropriate sexual relationships with interns and that's harder to do now, thought the movie was too obvious in its direct contrasts of the sisters. Until SJP switches to clothes the family approves of at the end, we see her in less and less flattering light and makeup as the film progresses. She is made visibly uglier right around the time 2005 Claire Danes shows up. Watch how those two are visually depicted and you'll start to see that radical feminists were not making everything up.

Claire Danes is the fantasy character of the creative class men who finance and create films. Young, eye meltingly hot, and her brain can instantly be turned off by uttering a few words about deep artistic yearning. She will stand in the dark with you and describe her satisfaction seeing a totem pole erected, filling a hole in the soul of the man who thrust it into the air, penetrating the heavens. A massive, solid, powerful totemic symbol of...something. A mystery for the ages.

The SJP character makes no sense but the actual version of that woman would not be so stupid to not realize that men who talk like Dylan McDermott in that scene are indeed possessed with an overwhelming need to fill a hole but it ain't the one he's talking about.

(It's her mouth and/or genitals. In case it wasn't plain. He wants to fuck her.)

Even I, a 40 year old divorced man who sincerely misses in-office work because I did have age gap inappropriate sexual relationships with interns and that's harder to do now, thought the movie was too obvious in its direct contrasts of the sisters.

What a wild thing to just drop. Were they at least hot interns?

I didn't mention it for prurient interest. It seemed like a relevant personal detail to substantiate my argument.

But are you asking if I slept with people I didn't think were attractive? Fair if so - who hasn't? - but this was not one of those times, no.