links for the weekend, with relatively little comment

The thread tying much of these ideas together could be said to be a thread woven across a substack. 

Maybe parenthood has made deBoer crochety in some ways but this is another variant on the peculiar moralism of progressive neoliberalism of a vaguely Clintonian aspect, and of otherwise liberal journalists and pundits who were cheerleading Gulf War 2 until they weren't. 

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/are-institutions-cool-kindof

The monomyth is as anathema in some circles as it is holy writ in Hollywood/ 

https://aeon.co/essays/why-does-every-film-and-tv-series-seem-to-have-the-same-plot

https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/elitism-a-progressive-defence

Because defenses of elitism don’t have to just come from old white guys like the late Roger Scruton, there are defenses of elitism among liberal and progressive writers.

 

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-has-american-pop-culture-stagnated

I don't really miss shoegaze here in 2025 because it meant nothing to me in 2005.  The point about stagnation seems somewhat of a piece with the Gioia I've been catching up on in the last month. 

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/notes-toward-a-new-romanticism

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/are-we-living-in-a-time-of-cultural

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-atlantic-visits-me-at-home-and

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/06/american-pop-culture-decline/682578/?gift=eZLGh34187q-iqPE_0cF5W5w9a-hoOlSTdz7c4MqgDY&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-four-horsemen-of-the-pop-culture

I don't think of Gioia as a doomsayer or a pessimist.  If anything I find his obsession with the redemptive possibilities of a new Romanticism Pollyanna-ish and his neo-Orphism is annoying.  Nobody would be surprised that someone who actually owns the complete works of Richard Sibbes might say that, though, right? I'll have more to say about Gioia's work later.  I have been trying to take a sympathetic stance to what I have seen his stated goals as being, so I get the humanistic and humanitarian ends towards which he says he's striving even if I find his neo-Orphic boilerplate Romanticism tedious and inaccurate.  But I want to let those thoughts incubate a bit.  A whole lot depends on what people mean by Romanticism and whether a given version of it was successful or not. 

 

When Ted Gioia says that cultural stagnation is way worse than cultural decline I guess that tells us what kind of Romanticism he thinks we need more of.

Becky Garrison has a three-part series at her Substack revisiting the history of Mars Hill in the context of self-absorbed gurus and teachers at a broader level.  Charting the paths of bros from the Young Leadership Network adds some extra context.  For those who haven't read this series Garrison's observation is that Driscoll was one of a number of theo-bros and while he became famous in the evangelical/conservative spin-off from the emergent church he had foibles and vices in common with the emergent bros with whom he soon parted ways.  

https://beckygarrison.substack.com/p/spiritual-narcissism-case-study-unpacking

https://beckygarrison.substack.com/p/spiritual-narcissism-case-study-unpacking-639

The Batman reference is kinda funny because I actually do recommend the late Adam West's Batman vs. Two-Face for fans of animation and Batman fans alike, and also Persepolis and The Long Way North because French-language animated films deserve a little more love in the U.S.)

https://beckygarrison.substack.com/p/spiritual-narcissism-case-study-unpacking-731

Longtime readers probably already remember my frustration with the Christianity Today podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. It seemed CT was finessing their own role in anointing and designating Christian celebrities by saying, almost tacitly, "Well, we picked this bad horse but we're not gonna pick `em like that any more moving forward.  Let's talk to and about these other, better celebrity Christians about why."  I was struck by former co-founding pastor of Mars Hill Mike Gunn's explanation of why he didn't go on record with Cosper; Gunn felt that if Cosper really just wanted to do a "lessons learned" then The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill could have been just two or maybe three episodes and not the sprawling two-dozen episodes full of bonus and not-bonus episodes we got. For the fairly lengthy conversation Gunn had in 2022 go over here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZqzlqUnn4c

As the podcast sprawled on a friend asked me what I thought about the bonus episode "CT reports on itself" because, as he put it, "Did it ... feel like a `we're doing this to cover our own asses' episode to you?"  To quote Henchmen 21 Gary ... kinda ... ?

So those are the links for the weekend and now I think it's time for something a bit different.  We haven't featured Takemitsu in a while so ...