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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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I just watched a 2008 movie called "Baby Mama" starring Tina Fey.

In the movie, Tina Fey is reading a book about childbirth and is given a "nightmare" by the possibility of her child being a hermaphrodite or, in her words, "a chick with a dick". It's clear that this is being played for laughs even though, like the rest of the movie, it wasn't really funny.

It's crazy how far things have swung in just 15 years.

Thirty years ago I flirted with a career in comedy/TV writing. One of the most reliable tropes, I was taught, dating back hundreds of years (at least), was putting a man in a dress. The evidence that this nugget was a steadfast laugh-generator was apparent in a continuous stream from Shakespeare to Doubtfire. Now, it's the one thing above all others that can never be acknowledged as out-of-the-ordinary.