9.4.26 Gloria Steinem’s legacy, All the President’s Men, and whimsical inventions in everyday English

0:00Good morning, the woman who took feminism from Francia idea to cultural norm has died. We'll talk about glorious dinams influence and more with John Stone Street ahead today on Culture Friday. Also today a thriller that turned watergate reporting into legend. You tell me what you know and I'll confirm. I'll keep in the right direction if I can, but that's all. All the presidents men turns 50. Max Bells revisits the movie and the story America remembers and later George Grant with a whimsical word. It's Friday September 4th. This is the world and everything in it from listeners supported World Radio. I'm Merna Brown and I'm Nick Eiker. Good morning. Up next Mark Melingor with today's news.

1:01The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to step in and allow new restrictions on mail-in ballots. The government filed its emergency appeal late Thursday afternoon a day before ballots start going out for the midterm elections. Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order allowing the U.S. Postal Service to withhold ballot delivery in states that don't submit lists of eligible voters or use envelopes falling outside certain design specifications to make a Simmons opposes the president's effort. The consequences are immediate millions of Americans rely on voting by mail, including older adults, voters with disabilities, caregivers, students, military families and Americans living abroad. She is one of several plaintiffs taking the administration to court over this. A federal court in Boston had been hearing the case this week before the White House filed its emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. Just last month, the high court

2:05overruled a block by a lower court and allowed the president's executive order to proceed while administration officials worked out the specifics of carrying out the order. Since then the White House has released more details on how the restrictions will be implemented, prompting a federal judge to again temporarily stop the president's order from taking effect. The president says his order will secure future elections, opponents say it's unconstitutional and turns the postal service into a federal gatekeeper for the administration. The Missouri Supreme Court has handed President Trump a midterm election setback. Late Thursday, it blocked redrawn congressional districts backed by the president from being used in November's elections and ordered a statewide vote on whether to keep or reject the new voting map. Missouri's Attorney General says she will appeal the ruling to the US Supreme Court. Meantime Maryland's Supreme Court handed Democrats a victory Thursday. It reversed two lower courts and

3:06ruled a proposed constitutional amendment on redistricting written by the state's Democrat led General Assembly will go before voters on the November ballot. Republican state delegate Ryan Niraki says the move is concerning. You get back to the question of separation of powers. It's the only time that I can find in the history of our state that the legislature has taken that prerogative to write the language itself. Democrats already hold seven of Maryland's eight house seats. This ballot measure won't affect the midterms, but would allow lawmakers to redraw new districts for 2028. Vice President J. D. VanT is casting doubt on Iran's claim that a US missile strike hit a home where a wedding was going on this week, killing a handful of people. The Iranian state media has not been a very good scribe about what's happened in the conflict as far. So I'm extremely skeptical of this. Vance handled the White House press briefing Thursday. He defended President Trump's decision to

4:07confront Iran, saying the country's nuclear threat needs to be removed. Vance also says there are no plans to restart negotiations to end the conflict. We're not talking to them and we're not going to talk to them unless they stop shooting at commercial shipping for the moment. The president is pinning his hopes for ending the conflict on a pressure campaign aimed at collapsing Iran's economy. After six days of deliberations, the jury is still deadlocked in the trial of Lindsey Clancy. The mother in Massachusetts accused of murdering her three children on Thursday. Clancy's lawyer Kevin Reddington said a note to the court indicated 11 of the jury members had their minds made up, but says the 12th quote refuses to listen to the law unreasonable doubt. He asked the judge to replace that juror with an alternate. If we come back here in a half an hour with a mistrial because of a because of a juror that has just spurned the instructions of this court. It's a shame.

5:08It's a real shame. The judge did not remove that jury member, meaning it is back to deliberations today. Plymouth County assistant district attorney Jennifer Sprig agrees with the judge's decision. There's no way to determine what the deliberations are. Who's correct? Who's incorrect? And nor should we attempt to because that's part of deliberations. It's not clear along precisely which lines the jury is split. Clancy could face life behind bars if convicted or get committed to a psychiatric hospital if found not guilty by reason of insanity. And if the judge declares a mistrial, she will remain in custody. The prominent feminist activist Gloria Steinem has died for decades. She was one of America's leading voices in the feminist movement. Her activism included pushing for better working conditions for women, founding Miss Magazine, a publication largely written by women and sadly advocating for the killing of children in the womb through abortion. Here's a clip of Steinem at the women's March in

6:11Washington, DC back in 2017 after President Trump's first inauguration. Just this March in Washington today required a thousand more buses than the entire inauguration. A thousand Gloria Steinem was 92 John Stone Street assesses her impact in today's culture Friday, just a couple minutes away. The first steps toward constructing President Trump's planned triumphal arch will swing into motion over the next couple weeks. That's according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgham, who says crews are just about ready to begin excavation work. The arch is planned to be 250 feet tall and serve as a new gateway into Washington, DC, though it is being challenged in a lawsuit. Critics say it will over the years, but it will be a wasteful time in the future. The shadow the Lincoln Memorial and impede access to Arlington National Cemetery for an extended period of time.

7:15I'm Mark Mellinger coming up all the President's men turns 50. We will have a review of the classic political thriller. Plus George Grant will be along for word play. It's Friday, September 4th. Glad to have you along for today's edition of The World and Everything in it. Good morning. I'm Nick Eiger. And I'm Ernab Brown. It's Culture Friday. Enjoying us now as John Stone Street, President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good morning, John. Good morning. And happy 35th. Yeah, congratulations. I always say that about myself. That is not my age. You and me both. Well, John, a little family business here. 35 years ago this week, Chuck Colson aired the first Breakpoint commentary. He said the culture's deepest problem wasn't

8:20simply immorality. It was that Americans had stopped asking the great questions. What is truth? What is ultimately real? What are we living for? So 35 years later, was Colson right about the problem and has it gotten better or worse? You know, in a way, Chuck Colson with that very first commentary was quoting Voclav Hauvel, the great Czech dissident, who said something very similar, that the problem with a modern man is that that he knows less and less about the meaning of life, but that he thinks less and less about it and it bothers him less and less. And Chuck was absolutely right. I mean, it's one thing to get morality wrong. It's another thing to lose the foundations of moral decision making. And I think that's what he saw was the inevitable result of a secular culture, secular making God less and less a belief in something outside of ourselves and more and more a matter of subjective choice and personal preference. Well, then you lose the fixed orientation point. And now, has it gotten better or worse?

9:26I mean, you know, that's an interesting question. I do think there's more of a realization of the significance of our belief systems. You know, we're in an age where in his day, you had people, you know, proclaiming that religion, poisons, everything and that God is a myth. And now you, you have at least people realizing that, at least intellectual saying, look, Christianity brought really important and good things to the world and we'll be in a lot worse shape without it. But at the same time, I do think he saw the fulfillment of where a lot of the ideas would go. So for example, it's one thing to kind of deal theoretically with the loss of meaning or the loss of a source of meaning. It's another thing than to confront, existentially, a culture that has lost meaning. And so I think that in many ways, he was prophetic. Here we are today dealing with many of the same issues, but just on a much more existential level. I will tell you this. I know

10:27at least within the church, Chuck Olson oftentimes would go around the last 20 years of his ministry in particular and say, hey, it's the culture. We need to watch what's happening in the culture. The culture is unhinged and these worldviews matter and so on and so on and so on. And he was making a case for thinking this way. I don't need to do as much case making that things matter. I mean, everybody who had a son come home and, you know, say, hey, my best friend used to be a boy now as a girl. You know, enough parents have dealt with that reality over the last decade that the culture is in our face in a way that probably wasn't necessarily as much the case when he was trying to make the case for the church caring about these things. So now I think there's maybe more of a felt need for the sort of thing we try to do at the Colson Center and breakpoint every day. Well, John, you're talking about ideas eventually becoming lived realities and that brings us to what I think is one of the most consequential cultural figures of the last half

11:31century, at least. We found out yesterday by social media post that Gloria Steinem died on Wednesday at age 92. She helped to shape second wave feminism as it is known and how many people today think about women, abortion and politics. So looking back over the life of Gloria Steinem, what do you see as her most consequential cultural legacy? Well, Gloria Steinem is an incredibly consequential figure for a couple of reasons. I think the most important and prominent part of her legacy is that she took a feminist movement that was grounded in ideals about equal value and human dignity and took it into a direction, particularly in understanding that women's rights required access to abortion. And of course, that's kind of a position that undermines the position. The original feminist, many of them were Christians. They realized that there were many ways in which women were

12:35being deprived of certain rights that belong to their humanity. They argued on the basis of an essential nature to humanity. And all the consequences of that included equal rights, including for people of all ages and stages of development and everything else, which is why the early feminist were almost universally pro-life. They also understood that abortion ended up being something that could victimize women, be used by men when they had that kind of power that they had. And Steinem was among the figures that took it in a different direction. Second wave feminism was a distinct hijacking of the original feminist vision. And with that came a vision of human dignity that was based on autonomy as opposed to some sort of essential humanity. And I think where that ended up leaving feminism was without its roots. And so therefore, second wave feminism looked very

13:36different than first wave feminism. And third wave feminism, which of course we're now living with, ended up being in fourth wave, depending on how many waves you chalk up to it, that ends up being men demanding access and saying that they have rights to access women's private spaces, women's opportunities, because there's nothing essential to womanhood to begin with. And so look, her life is a story of ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. Her life is a story of taking a movement that was tied to something true and then trying to retether it to something that was not true. And losing an understanding of the essential thing that gives men and women dignity as human beings, as image bearers, and then trying to preserve equal rights just didn't work out. The math did not work in the end. And that's why this is a movement that by and large has lost its way. And her legacy will have to own that because that really had a lot to do with the kind of feminism that she advocated for. Well, John, let's let's stay with that idea of

14:42autonomy. America's fertility rate is below 1.6 children per woman, even though Americans say they want more children than they're actually having. And the Institute for Family Studies is proposing a $15,000 account for every newborn that could eventually become a six figure incentive to start a family. Can money fix a fertility problem that may be rooted less in affordability than in a culture of autonomy, comfort, and self-fulfillment? Well, financial incentives have rescued fertility crises in the past. The policy in France, after the Second World War worked, it lifted fertility, you know, it incentivized work, it incentivized marriage. There was a lot of things about how it was structured and it actually delivered. When that tells you, you know, look, if it's a money problem, then it can be solved with money. If it's not at root, a money problem, it's not going to

15:43be solved with more money. And that's really what we're dealing with. Look, we're a culture that doesn't really like kids. We're a culture that, you know, thinks kids are more of a nuisance than a blessing. We're a culture that likes pets better than kids. We're a culture that's seeking digital replacements for everything, including our pets, which we already thought were better than kids. This is a rabbit hole that goes really, really deep in terms of the anti-natalism of Western culture, particularly the United States. And so, no, I don't think the financial solution's going to fix it. Now, I do think the IFS proposal is a good one, you know, I think it actually makes a lot of sense. I think it could solve a lot of other problems that we have, including maybe some of the affordability things, you know, that could really help young couples. And it would get rid of some of the barriers that are complicating matters. But you're dealing with at root a culture that does not think of children as a blessing and does not think of marriage as something that's good. By the way,

16:45what those two things have in common is that they think of human life as having a structure and a design to them. It's almost like there's a way that people should live and behave. And God created marriage as one of those solutions. He gave them a command to be fruitful, multiply. It's a package deal, kids, you know, marriage and babies. And we need both of those. Well, John, let's talk about marriage. And in particular, let's talk about how people get married and that is through a wedding. And I can personally attest to you that weddings are pretty expensive. And you're going to find this out for yourself relatively soon. And I will predict faster than you think. But I learned something new this week from the Wall Street Journal. Some brides have discovered that social media can help to pay the bill. Sponsoring companies are providing free gowns, invitations, bridal party clothing, even trips. And in return, brides are agreeing to promotional posts and other advertising on social

17:51media, as they call it in the business, deliverables. Now weddings have always involved commerce. Of course, that's what makes them expensive. It is quite an industry, though. But I do wonder, John, what changes when the couple is no longer simply the consumer or the customer, but the advertising platform instead. And maybe the more interesting question here is, is this sponsored wedding culture really the problem as laid out in this story, or might it be exposing an already performative wedding culture that sponsors have simply learned how to monetize? Oh, man, this is hitting too close to home too soon. I wonder, I would be very, very open to the prospect facing potentially three weddings that I would be financially responsible for. Maybe there's a sponsorship patch that I can wear as the father of the bride. There's big oval things that they put on the side of NASCAR, or something like that.

18:54Anyway, if world is open to be a sponsor of a... Hey, absolutely. Father of the bride speech brought to you by? Yeah, that's right. The ad of the bride kind of thing. Look, wedding culture certainly has been performative and has been for a long time. And that's okay, I guess. I mean, this is a party. Jesus went to one of these that we at least one that we know of. Like, it's okay. He actually brought the party to the wedding if you remember the parable. But it's one thing to kind of do that sort of stuff when you are tethered to reality. And you are remembering that what's happening here is the thing that opens holy scripture and closes holy scripture. The world begins with a wedding and it's going to end with a wedding. And marriage is something that you participate in before God. It's not a performance that you do. It is something in which you are committing to one another to build something else and something that the world

19:57needs and something then to which you are pledging yourselves publicly responsible. And I mean, it's big. It's as big as it gets. And in all of those arenas, it is an astounding thing what marriage is. And to treat it as something that is more like a social construct, something that we just you know, it gets hijacked by our social media age to become a performance. It's okay that the ceremony culturally adjusts to different settings. But all these things should be expressions of something that marriage itself is and that weddings themselves symbolize. And so I guess I'm a little less concerned about the performative wedding culture than I am a performative wedding culture happening at a time when we've forgotten what a wedding is. And that to me is far more important. And I think, by the way, that right now only the church has that kind of truth about what a wedding really is.

20:57I mean, in other words, if this is going to be reintroduced, the centrality of lifelong married love, man and woman created for one another, a wedding being a public commitment to be publicly accountable for something that is personal and private, these are just really, really big, eternal truths that are reflected in this ceremony. And the church really has an opportunity to show a better way. All right, that's John Stone Street. John is president of the Colson Center. And he's host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thank you, John. And again, congratulations on 35 years of breakpoint. Much, much needed work. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for that wonderful happy anniversary. And thank you both for this time. Thank you.

22:09Additional support comes from Boyce College, where truth comes first. Every class begins with scripture and prepares students to live with wisdom, conviction and Christ-like faithfulness. Boycecollege.com. From World Watch, a 10-minute current news program designed for daily school rhythms, a free 30-day trial is available at worldwatch.news slash podcast. And from Cedarville University, equipping students for professional excellence and gospel impact. Cedarville.edu slash world. Today is Friday, September 4th. Thank you for turning to World Radio to help start your day.

23:09Good morning. I'm Nick Einkert. And I'm Erna Brown. Coming next on the world and everything in it, we jump to 1976 to talk about the news in movies. Here's movie reviewer Max Bells with a look back at one of that year's major box office hits. 1976 was our nation's bicentennial and the year that the movie All the Presidents Men debuted. The film chronicles the investigative reporting of the Watergate burglary and cover-up. The two Washington Post reporters at the center of this story are Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, played respectively by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Early in the movie, Woodward is green behind the years and Bernstein is uninspired. Harry, I know somebody on the staff over the watergate. When we were up on the party, Steve, why don't you finish one story before trying to get on another? I finished it. The Virginia legislature story finished it. All right, give it to me.

24:11Who's this polishing? I'll work in the fall. Woodward attends a sleepy court hearing for the man arrested for the break-in. One burglar whispers to the judge that he worked for the CIA. This gets Woodward's attention, leaning forward in his seat to scribble some notes. I knew Howard. Right? It's a nice person. Please sacred it. He is secretive, but a decent man. In fact, the movie has a lot of scribbling amid the worr of rotary telephones. There are no guns or fistfights, but the movie is full of intrigue and danger. The story grows taught the deeper the reporters go, and it's a great movie about journalism. Hi, Donald's the great. That's right. I'm Carl Bernstein from the Washington Post. Hi. At first, most people are not willing to talk, but the reporters start on the fringes and eventually work their way to the most important people. One breakthrough comes when Woodward gets Kenneth Dalberg on the phone. As you know, sir, the check has your name on it.

25:15We were doing a story on this, and I was wondering if you would care to comment or explain. I turn all my money over to the committee. What committee's that, sir? The committee to relax? Yes, yes. Woodward then speaks to the chairman of the committee to re-elect the president, also known as Creep. John Mitchell was the head of the committee. He might know. Well, what would be the explanation possibly? I don't know. You're implying that I should know. If you print that, our relationship will be terminated. Sir, we don't have a relationship. Soon, Woodward finds an anonymous source on the inside track known as Deep Throat, played by Hal Holbrook and the shadows of a parking garage. Years later, a CIA operative named Mark Felt revealed himself as the secret source. No, I have to do this my way. You tell me what you know and I'll confirm. I'll keep you in the right direction if I can, but that's all. Just follow the money. Woodward and Bernstein come at their work differently. Woodward is affable, Bernstein is tense and

26:19desperate. We just come in for a couple of minutes. Oh, no, no, I really don't want to come in. Jason Robards gives a stellar performance as Washington Post editor Ben Bradley. Robards won an Academy Award for the role as did William Goldman for his screenplay adapted from the book. You guys are about to write a story that says the former attorney general, the highest ranking law enforcement officer in this country is a crook. Just be sure you're right. The use of the unnamed source bugs Bradley, but the two reporters win him over with their tireless work. They are chasing the truth down all while they gulp coffee and stub out cigarettes running around the newsroom. I can't do the reporting for my reporters, which means I have to trust them and I hate trusting anybody. Run that, baby. The movie is marked by shadowy paranoia, but lightened by the breezy youth of the reporters. This contrast gives the movie breath despite the stoffiness of the overhead lights and the concrete walls of DC.

27:21Veteran Gordon Willis lent his low-lit photography to the movie and David Shire composed the Pensive Score. The setting isn't inviting, but the cast of characters gives the movie warmth. But be warned, the film was rated PG at its release, but its course language would earn it an R rating today. Watergate led to President Nixon's resignation and prison time for some of his staff like Chuck Colson. The scandal also eroded trust and authority. By 1972, the American public didn't support the stalemate in Vietnam, and American culture had been through a social revolution. It was a tumultuous time when people were suspicious of the status quo. All the President's men is the final film and director Alan Pakula's so-called paranoia trilogy. Other movies from this time period like Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation explore this sense of unease and surveillance. At its heart, all the President's men is a thrilling story about chasing down the truth. It's worth checking out at your local library

28:26or streaming. 50 years won't feel so long ago. I'm Max Bells. Good morning. This is The World and Everything In It from listeners supported World Radio. I'm Marna Brown and I'm Nick Eiger. Next up how whimsical words have made the track from fairy tales and children's books into our everyday vocabulary. Here now is World Contributor George Grant with today's wordplay. For centuries now, the English language has been constructed out of the linguistic grab bag of custom and tradition, happenstance and coincidence, utility and expediency, accident

29:27and blunder. With more than a little amusement and whimsy thrown in for good measure. From time to time, these lyrical guests and creative flights of fancy, pinned by poets, cartoonists and humorists, have weedled their way into the treasure trove of our language. You probably know, for instance, that on a monopias are words that mimic the sounds of the things they mean like oink and meow, tiktok and ding dong or boom, bang, smack, smash, drip, donk, splash and slush. Dr. Seuss was a veritable, unamunopea factory, Grinch, walkit, difendufur, murky mushy, sneech, lorax, baffa and to say nothing about Zizzar Zezar Zez in fiff or fiff or fiff. Likewise, Lewis Carroll was

30:30incredibly prolific, burble, bender snatch, frummius, mimsy, slithy and chabber walk. Rolled gall gave us scrum-diddly amsius, horn swaggler, snaz-wingers and wang-doodles. Shell Silverstein gave us slush-dyslash, blutes and wadiffs. Huns Christian Anderson gave us dinglehopper and Helen Herman famously gave us super-cala-fragilistic expi-alidocious. Now, most of these nonsense words may be recognizable from our reading of fairy tales, children's books, nursery rhymes, poetry or not more likely from watching cartoons and movies, but they're not exactly part of our common parlance, but some whimsical words have made their way into our everyday vocabularies and conversations. Dr. Seuss gave us the all-too-common

31:36term nerd. Cartoonist H.T. Webster gave us milk toast and Lewis Seikar gave us splush. Lewis Carroll was responsible for the fine descriptive words snark, portmanteau, galumph and chordel, and Edward Lear gave us runcible. The Gilbert and Sullivan musical The Mika-Doo coined the word Poo-Bah, but it was the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, the Flintstones, that popularized grand Poo-Bah. Check Young's comic strip Blondie created the Dagwood, an impossibly huge sandwich, and E.C. Seekers Thimble Theater, the predecessor of his Popeye cartoon, bequeathed to us the word Goon. In one scene from Winnie the Poo, A.A.M.M. combines elements of Anumonapia, Portmanteau, and Spoonerism to

32:40create a delightful linguistic mashup. Help, help, cried Piglet! A Heffa Lump, a horrible Heffa Lump, and he's scampered off his heart as he could. Still crying out, help, help! A Herobo Huffle Lump, Ha, ha, a Hellable Horror Lump, whole, whole, a Huffleable Heller Rump, and he didn't stop crying and scampering until he got to Christopher Robbins House. As Lewis Carroll snarked in Alice in Wonderland, look after the senses and the sounds will look after themselves. I'm George Grant. Time now to name the crew who helped out with this week's programs, Mary Reichard, David Bonson, Jenny Ruff, Cal Thomas, Hunter Baker, Carlos Piaz, Jenny Lin Schmitt, Mary Muncie, Maria Bayer,

33:43Lauren Smith, Lauren Cantorbury, Daniel Sur, Will Hogan Dyke, John Stone Street, Max Bells, and George Grant. Thanks also to our breaking news crew, Kent Covington, Mark Mellinger, Steve Closterman, Travis Kircher, Daniel Divine, and Christina Groove. And thanks to the technical production team Benj Eiker, Carl Petz, and Josh Gagne. Harrison Waters is Washington producer Kristen Flavin is Features Editor. Emma Eiker is Assistant Producer, Lindsay Masters Producer, I'm Executive Producer Nick Eiker. And I'm Ernab Brown. The world and everything in it comes to you from World Radio. World's mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires. The Bible says, hear my cry, oh God, listen to my prayer. From the end of the earth, I call to you when my heart is faint. Leave me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have

34:44been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy. Let me dwell in your tent forever. Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings, versus one through four of Psalm 61. There is joy and peace in our Father's house. So make sure you find a Bible believing church this weekend, and Lord willing, we'll meet you right back here on Monday. Go now in grace and peace.