Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jill Johnston, Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupation Health, University of California, Irvine; University of Southern California

Southern California’s Salton Sea was once a resort playground, with sunny beaches, celebrities and people waterskiing on the vast inland lake in the 1950s and ’60s.

Today, those resorts are long gone, replaced by a drying and increasingly toxic landscape. As the lake shrinks, wind blowing across the exposed lake bed kicks up toxic dust left by years of agriculture chemicals and metals washing into the lake. That dust makes its way into the lungs of the children of the Imperial Valley.

New research from our team of epidemiologists at University of Southern California and University of California, Irvine, shows that blowing dust is impeding the lung growth of children in the region – especially those living closest to the Salton Sea. In fact, the effects on lung function close to the Salton Sea have been greater than what studies find in urban California communities near busy roadways.

As the lake’s water sources diminish with the region’s Colorado River water use agreements, and this region gains more industrial activity from proposed lithium extraction, air pollution is likely to only worsen.

The problem with the Salton Sea

The Salton Sea – California’s largest inland lake at over 340 square miles – has been shrinking for decades due to drought, agricultural water diversion and climate change. Its was created by a break in a canal carrying water from the Colorado River in the early 1900s. Irrigation runoff from farm fields kept it going. But over the past two decades, decreasing water flow has exposed 36,000 new acres of dry lake bed, which release large amounts of dust into the air.

The lake sits 235 feet below sea level in one of the hottest and driest parts of California, approximately 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles and at the northern border of the highly productive agricultural region known as the Imperial Valley.

Its water level has been maintained primarily by agriculture irrigation runoff, which carries with it fertilizers, pesticides, salt and toxic metals. Those chemicals, salts and metals have concentrated over time in the lake bed sediments, and they get stirred up into the air when the wind blows through.

As the largest consumer of Colorado River water, Imperial County’s irrigation district agreed in 2003 to forgo billions of gallons of water every year to support growing urban areas – a plan that went into full effect in 2018. That meant less runoff into the lake. By one estimate, the change was projected to increase windblown dust by 40 to 80 tons per day. Satellite images show rapid expansion of exposed lake bed as the water has receded.

The predominantly low-income Latino communities that live just south of the Salton Sea say they have long been overlooked in conversations about the lake’s fate. Yet, these communities are facing real health consequences tied directly to regional water policy choices and lack of action to manage this emerging environmental crisis.

Lung damage and slower lung growth

In 2017, we initiated the Assessing Imperial Valley Respiratory Health and the Environment, or AIRE, cohort study with over 700 elementary school-age children across five northern Imperial Valley cities.

The study was built on a partnership with Comité Cívico del Valle, a local nonprofit that has been active in addressing community health and environmental concerns in the Imperial Valley region.

Our study followed these children over several years, documenting respiratory health symptoms and lung function measurements, in addition to household, lifestyle and behavioral factors to account for individual differences.

Our initial findings aligned with what local residents have discussed for years:

• Among children living in the northern Imperial Valley, nearly 1 in 5 are reported as having asthma – far higher than the national rate.

• Higher rates of air pollution were linked to overall poorer reported respiratory health, such as wheezing and coughing, among all children. That indicates that while asthmatic children were more sensitive, nonasthmatic children experienced significant health impacts as well.

• Our work has also begun to show that higher levels of dust exposure, especially among those children living closer to the sea, are linked to poorer lung function, as well as reductions in children’s lung growth over time. Reduced lung function increases the risk for chronic respiratory disease, such as COPD, or more frequent respiratory infections, such as pneumonia, as adults.

These findings are concerning because lung damage, poor lung function and respiratory illness in early life may increase the risk of chronic health problems into adulthood.

Children’s lungs are still developing, and lung function continues to mature throughout adolescence, making children more susceptible than adults to the adverse impacts of air pollution.

Children also have higher respiratory rates than adults, as well as larger lung surface area relative to their body size, resulting in higher doses of pollution per breath. And since children often spend more time outdoors than many adults and tend to engage in more physical activity, that may increase their exposure to outdoor air pollution.

Looking ahead

For years, community members have raised concerns about the high rates of asthma and poor respiratory health among children and residents.

While questions remain about the longer-term impacts of worsening air quality related to the drying Salton Sea, our study adds scientific backing to residents’ experiences. This evidence matters as communities and organizations like Comité Cívico del Valle push for projects that can reduce the amount of Salton Sea dust that gets into the air, expand education on asthma management and increase access to health care services.

The kids in the AIRE study were just starting elementary school when they joined. Now in high school, this generation has grown up near the Salton Sea. Many have dealt with asthma and may face chronic health problems.

From everything we have seen in the results of our studies involving the children living in communities along the Salton Sea, we believe the protection of local air quality is critical for the health of children in the Imperial Valley, and their health should be in the forefront of planning for future water changes, extraction projects and other development near the Salton Sea.

Jill Johnston receives funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Shohreh Farzan receives funding from the National Institutes of Health.

– ref. Toxic dust from California’s shrinking Salton Sea is harming children’s lung growth – our study tracked the impact in 700 kids – https://theconversation.com/toxic-dust-from-californias-shrinking-salton-sea-is-harming-childrens-lung-growth-our-study-tracked-the-impact-in-700-kids-279211

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By George E. Mitchell, Professor of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, CUNY

Given that fewer Americans are donating and volunteering and that people in the U.S. appear to be losing trust in one another, it may seem like generosity has eroded in the United States.

The nation’s political, social and economic divides might only strengthen that impression. But my recent research suggests that this belief would be misguided.

I’m a professor who teaches and conducts research about nonprofits and philanthropy. To understand the diversity of American generosity, I teamed up with Paige Rice and Veronica Selzler, two philanthropy consultants who contributed to the Generosity Commission’s report on U.S. generosity called “How and Why We Give.”

The Generosity Commission is a nonpartisan group of leaders from across the charitable sector. Its 2023 report shared the results of a national survey of 2,569 U.S. adults.

Drawing on data from that study, we sought to understand how different kinds of people may be motivated to act generously for different reasons and, as a result, express their generosity differently.

The study defined generosity broadly in terms of efforts or gifts made to support people in need, charitable causes or philanthropic organizations through actions like giving and volunteering. Our study was published in March 2026 in Nonprofit Management & Leadership, a peer-reviewed academic journal.

The overall propensity to give was about 82% based on responses to this question in the Generosity Commission’s survey: “On average, how much money do you donate each year to people in need, charitable causes, or philanthropic organizations?”

The survey also asked Americans about how they express their generosity.

We found that Americans’ generosity varies according to their aspirations, motivations and demographic characteristics. In other words, different kinds of Americans are generous in different ways.

Using a statistical modeling technique called latent profile analysis, which can find hidden groups of people based on observed data, we identified five segments of American society. They come from the general population, not just existing donors or volunteers.

Change-minded hopefuls, about 42% of the total, are mostly women and people with low incomes. They genuinely want to help people but are held back mainly by not having enough money.

Flexible moderates, roughly 35% of the survey’s respondents, are a middle-of-the-road group without strong political or religious motivations. They are open to helping out in a wide variety of ways when given the opportunity.

Values-driven skeptics, around 11% of those surveyed, are mostly older, conservative, religious and male. They are willing to give money but are worried that charities might not make good use of it.

Status seekers, approximately 9% of the participants in the survey, are the most generous group. Affluent, educated and religious, they are highly active in giving and volunteering and are motivated by social recognition and personal benefits.

Frustrated activists, only about 4% of the total, are passionate, liberal and financially strapped. They are often women and people of color. They care deeply about causes and prefer to take direct action rather than giving money.

Why it matters

Each of these groups is relatively generous. For example, the percentage of people in each one donating to people in need, charitable causes or philanthropic organizations ranged from a low of 77% – the frustrated activists – to a high of 93% among the status seekers. This shows that Americans with different mindsets exhibit a willingness to help others, even if their aspirations, motivations and demographic characteristics differ.

For nonprofits looking to attract more donors and volunteers, it may help to understand that different groups of people may have different motivations and concerns. By appealing to each group’s distinct qualities, nonprofits may be able to garner more support for their causes.

What other research is being done

Researchers with the Lilly School of Philanthropy at Indiana University and their partners are conducting numerous studies about American generosity.

For example, in a study published in 2019, those researchers found a sharp decrease in the percentage of Americans who gave to nonprofits following the Great Recession. And their ongoing research on global philanthropy tracks cross-border giving for 47 countries, including the U.S., to document global trends in generosity.

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

George E. Mitchell is a member of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action and the International Society for Third Sector Research. He serves on the editorial boards of Nonprofit Management & Leadership and the American Review of Public Administration.

– ref. Why Americans give: New research finds 5 distinct profiles for generosity – https://theconversation.com/why-americans-give-new-research-finds-5-distinct-profiles-for-generosity-279429

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Miriam Eve Mora, Managing Director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, University of Michigan

Toward the end of Netflix’s “Into the Manosphere,” documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux chats in Marbella, Spain, with British influencer Ed Matthews.

“The people who run the world, they don’t have our best intentions,” says Matthews, speaking in the language of the manosphere – where some influencers and viewers believe they have tapped into a deeper truth about reality and power. When Theroux asked who controlled all of that, Matthews shrugged and answered this complex question very simply: “The Jews.”

It’s part of a three-minute digression from the film’s focus on masculinity, with multiple influencers making antisemitic claims about global conspiracies.

The manosphere is a catchall term for websites, forums, blogs and influencers promoting a particular kind of hypermasculinity, from the belief that women and feminism are the cause of men’s problems to calls to legalize rape. Groups within it – including pickup artists, men’s rights groups and “involuntary celibate” or “incel” communities – portray themselves as victims of modernity. In their eyes, the global economy is to blame for their unsatisfactory job prospects, feminism is to blame for their failures with women, minority rights are forcing them to relinquish their privilege as straight men, and so on.

And those digital spaces are rife with antisemitism. Some prominent influencers openly deny the Holocaust, call for violence against Jews and spread global conspiracy theories.

As a historian of Jewish gender and antisemitism, I know the connections between misogyny and antisemitism have deep roots. For centuries, a frequent tactic of antisemitism has been to attack Jewish men, deriding their masculinity.

Centuries-old tropes

Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 20th century, empires and nations across Europe established laws and practices that held Jewish men apart, not allowing them access to full citizenship. In many areas, Jews were not allowed to vote, to own land, to hold public office, to hold rank in the military or to duel with their peers.

Antisemitic rhetoric often portrayed Jewish men as feminine or fragile, and inherently different. Those beliefs extended into the most severe antisemitic tropes and beliefs. For example, the blood libel, which falsely claims that Jews require the blood of gentile children to make their Passover matzo, was frequently linked to a lesser-known antisemitic claim: that Jewish men menstruated and therefore needed the blood of gentiles to replenish themselves. Other antisemitic beliefs claimed that Jews were too weak and cowardly to fight in the military, that they were dominated by Jewish women, or that circumcision made them more akin to women themselves.

The Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger would have fit in well on a manosphere podcast. He excoriated Jewish manhood along with his misogynistic views of women in his 1903 book “Sex and Character.” “Just as in reality there is no such thing as the ‘dignity of women,’ it is equally impossible to imagine a Jewish ‘gentleman,’” he wrote, allowing that even “the most superior woman is still infinitely inferior to the most inferior man.”

American soil

Immigrants to the United States, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, were shaped by these ideas and experiences.

The European Jews who settled in America in the 19th and 20th centuries largely made their way in commerce and trade and tended to settle in cities. At the time, however, the frontier – with its rugged cowboys, miners and railroad men – defined American manhood.

New Jewish arrivals, coming from European nations that had limited Jewish male participation in so many areas, had developed an alternative masculinity, focused on devotion to learning and on “eydlkayt” – a Yiddish word meaning gentleness and sensitivity. After arriving in the U.S., some Jews remained devoted to this form of manhood, but others fought to acculturate and access the more mainstream forms of masculinity they had been barred from in their or their parents’ countries of origin.

One of the earliest of American masculinity influencers was President Theodore Roosevelt, who touted his own transformation from a timid, effeminate man – local presses mocked him in his early career – to a rugged outdoorsman. “The great bulk of the Jewish population … are of weak physique,” he wrote in 1901. Though he blamed this on centuries of oppression, he saw it as a tangible difference discernible in the Jewish body and spirit. Roosevelt advocated a model of redemptive manhood through rugged outdoorsmanship and the strenuous life, and saw masculinity as a means to dominate and control races he deemed inferior.

Jews arguably enjoyed more rights in America than anywhere else in modern times, but they were still excluded from institutions of masculine camaraderie. Well into the 20th century, Jews were restricted from joining prestigious athletic clubs, fraternal societies, high military ranks and country clubs, though some responded by forming their own venues, like the City Athletic Club of New York. Most of these restrictions concluded with the end of Jewish quotas in U.S. higher education in the 1960s and 1970s.

Conspiracies today

Today’s manosphere not only builds on this legacy but also presents something new. Its embrace of antisemitic conspiracy theories allows men who see themselves as victims to explain multiple grievances at once without confronting their own shortcomings.

More than two decades ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified a conspiracy theory emerging on the American right: the belief that “cultural Marxists” were intent on destroying American culture. In particular, some proponents blamed Jews for planting progressive ideas and movements, including feminism and gender identity, as part of efforts to weaken white men’s dominance.

This is blatant in the manosphere rhetoric, when figures like Myron Gaines blame Jews for what they see as destructive forces to Western civilization, from feminism and communism to pornography.

Michael Broschowitz, a researcher at the Middlebury Institute’s Center for Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, explains the manosphere’s tilt into antisemitism as the result of three driving forces. First, antisemitism serves as a one-size-fits-all answer, claiming to explain lots of problems at once. Second, algorithms designed to maximize engagement amplify extreme content. Lastly, global online communities can quickly remix antisemitic ideas to fit different cultures.

All three of these explanations are important. But I would argue that there is a crucial piece missing: Masculinity and antisemitism have been traversing the centuries hand in hand. The conspiratorial thinking that blossoms in the manosphere blames Jewish men for weakening masculinity. Because in the manosphere, failures of manhood are never your own.

Miriam Eve Mora does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why the manosphere has an antisemitism problem – https://theconversation.com/why-the-manosphere-has-an-antisemitism-problem-279384

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kevin Cope, Professor of Law, University of Virginia

In an 8-1 decision authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court held on March 31, 2026, that a Colorado law prohibiting licensed counselors from performing “conversion therapy” on minors was likely unconstitutional as applied to talk therapy. Justice Elena Kagan filed a separate concurrence, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

I am a law professor and political scientist who teaches and writes on free expression and discrimination. I see this holding as a potentially important decision at the intersection of free speech and health care.

Colorado’s law defines conversion therapy broadly. It bans practices that attempt not only to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity” but also to reduce same-sex attraction. The law allows therapists to provide “acceptance, support, and understanding” of gay or transgender identity. However, they may not help a client suppress those identities. Penalties include fines, probation and loss of license.

Kaley Chiles challenged the law as a violation of her First Amendment free speech rights. As a therapist who only offers talk therapy, Chiles’s objection was limited to her talk therapy. She didn’t contest the ban on what she called “long-abandoned, aversive” conversion practices. And – notably, considering she is an evangelical Christian – Chiles said she never set out to convert her clients. She says she respects her clients’ “fundamental right of self-determination” and determines her therapy approach only after a client identifies his or her own objectives. But she argued that some of her clients wish to “reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions (or) change sexual behaviors,” and the law prevents her from expressing support for any of those goals.

Colorado’s failed ‘professional speech’ argument

Colorado faced a major obstacle in defending the Colorado conversion therapy law. The law was transparently driven by the government’s views about the well-documented inefficacy and harmful effects of conversion therapy. And outside of certain contexts, such as government grants, public employees, advertising and threats, courts have treated such viewpoint-based laws as constitutionally dead on arrival.

Colorado’s best hope in defending the law, then, was to argue that it wasn’t principally a restriction on speech at all. Rather, the state framed the law as a restriction on professional conduct — an area where states have broad regulatory latitude. That framing would mean the law burdened Chiles’ speech only incidentally.

In NIFLA v. Becerra, decided in 2018, the court rejected the argument that professional speech was a less-protected category. But it acknowledged that laws “regulating conduct in ways that incidentally sweep in speech” – particularly where they “fall within the traditional purview of state regulation of professional conduct” – might survive under a lower standard of scrutiny.

Colorado attempted to demonstrate such a tradition here, citing medical licensing laws, informed-consent requirements and malpractice liability.

A divided 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had agreed with Colorado’s argument, as did Jackson in her dissent. But the Supreme Court majority rejected it. Gorsuch wrote that a government cannot evade First Amendment scrutiny by relabeling restricted speech as “conduct,” “treatment” or a “therapeutic modality.” Quoting the dissent of U.S. Circuit Judge Harris Hartz, he called Colorado’s argument a “labeling game.”

For Gorsuch, the key question is whether the law restricts speech in practice. And in Chiles’ case the answer was yes. Colorado was plainly restricting what she wished to tell her clients about their sex and gender issues.

Not just content but viewpoint discrimination

More than that, the majority noted, Colorado’s law doesn’t regulate therapists’ speech based on its content. The law discriminates based on viewpoint, permitting expressions of acceptance and support for a client’s self-identity while forbidding expressions that attempt to change it.

Under 1995’s Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, viewpoint discrimination is an “egregious form” of content regulation. Governments must “nearly always abstain” from it. The court remanded the Colorado case back to the 10th Circuit to resolve the case under this standard.

Jackson’s dissent: Medical treatment, not speech

Jackson’s solo dissent emphasizes that states have long enjoyed broad power to regulate how licensed medical professionals treat patients. To Jackson, the First Amendment should not interfere simply because a treatment is applied through words rather than instruments.

The court’s 2018 NIFLA decision, she argues, distinguished between speech restricted “as speech” and speech restricted “incidentally” as part of a medical treatment the state is otherwise entitled to regulate. According to Jackson, the majority arbitrarily collapses that distinction simply because the treatment is delivered orally. A talk therapy session and a drug infusion are both medical treatments, she argues, and the analysis should not turn on whether the provider uses a syringe or a sentence.

Jackson’s dissent also raises difficult line-drawing problems, such as the validity of less controversial potential prohibitions, such as those on encouraging a patient to smoke or to take their own life.

Implications are broader, narrower than most believe

First, only talk therapy is implicated.

The holding is narrow in this sense. It leaves room for policymakers still hoping to limit the practice of conversion therapy. Because Chiles challenged the statute only as applied to her, the majority’s analysis does not invalidate conversion therapy bans wholesale – neither Colorado’s nor those of more than 20 other states – but applies only to the extent they ban conversion talk therapy.

State legislatures can define conversion therapy a bit more narrowly, for example, by prohibiting the physical and more coercive techniques that initially gave rise to these bans. States can then leave the regulation of talk therapy to other legal and professional mechanisms, such as malpractice or enforcement of professional ethics.

Second, the standard of scrutiny that the lower court must now apply is not strict scrutiny; it is more demanding. Strict scrutiny is a legal test that validates a law if it is “narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest.” Contrary to what some legal commentators have implied, Gorsuch never directs the lower court to use strict scrutiny.

The opinion emphasizes that the law doesn’t just discriminate against certain types of content – a trigger for strict scrutiny; it discriminates based on viewpoint. The strict scrutiny standard is demanding, but laws sometimes survive it. Viewpoint discrimination, on the other hand, is subject to a near-absolute prohibition: Governments must “nearly always abstain” from it. This language is stronger and more categorical than that for strict scrutiny. The implication is that the law should certainly be invalidated as applied to talk therapy.

Not a clear win for conservatives

Finally, the holding is a double-edged sword for conservatives with traditional views of gender identity. And for those discouraged by the outcome, seeing it only as a victory for religious conservatives, the holding’s logic offers a silver lining.

Kagan’s concurrence makes explicit that a “mirror image” law – one barring talk therapy that affirms gender identity – would raise the same constitutional problems.

The majority makes a similar point. As late as the 1970s, the American Psychiatric Association still classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Under Colorado’s position, a law from that era prohibiting counselors from affirming gay clients’ identities would have been constitutionally sound.

Today, more than 20 states have moved to restrict gender-affirming care, and the federal government is pressuring state medical boards to adopt skeptical positions on gender transition. It’s not implausible that a legislature would attempt to ban gender-affirming, talk-based therapies. If and when conservative policymakers attempt that move, Chiles will be a formidable obstacle.

Read more of our stories about Colorado.

Kevin Cope does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Supreme Court ruling on Colorado conversion therapy case is not a clear win for conservatives – https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-ruling-on-colorado-conversion-therapy-case-is-not-a-clear-win-for-conservatives-279820

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By John Haddad, Professor of American Studies, Penn State

A theme park has to have an identity. If you want to know the two things that Hersheypark does especially well, just approach the entrance.

There you will meet a friendly candy mascot – perhaps a Hershey bar, Reese’s Cup or Jolly Rancher. Soon thereafter, you will encounter Candymonium, one of the park’s newest colossal roller coasters. These marvels of engineering elevate riders as high as 210 feet (64 meters), send them through dizzying loops and corkscrews and propel them at speeds as high as 76 mph (122 kilometers per hour).

If you were to reduce the park’s formula for success to basic math, it would look like this: candy theme + thrill rides = fun.

It wasn’t always like this. Hersheypark became a theme park in 1973. If you had visited that year, no 7-foot Hershey bar would have greeted you. Instead, you would have experienced England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, petted farm animals and watched a blacksmith bend metal into a horseshoe inside a barn.

And the only major roller coaster back then, the wooden Comet, had made its debut way back in 1946 and was hardly a marvel of modern engineering.

As a professor of American studies at Penn State Harrisburg who recently wrote a book on Hersheypark, I was surprised to learn in my research that the park has undergone a complete transformation since the 1970s.

An amusement park in decline

Hershey Park dates back to the early 1900s, when company founder Milton Hershey built it as a recreational venue for his chocolate factory workers and their families. The name was changed to Hersheypark, one word, in 1973.

Over the years, it evolved into a major amusement park that thrived in the 1940s and 1950s. On summer days, residents of Hershey and nearby towns would flock to the park to enjoy a day of picnics, carnival rides, band concerts, swimming and dancing. Looking back with nostalgia, many later referred to those decades as the golden era.

It was in the 1960s that the park first encountered problems. The rides had become old and outdated, and there were acts of vandalism. Many families stopped coming. One Hershey executive called it “an iron park with a bunch of clanging rides.”

In 1971, Hershey Estates, which owned the park, faced a momentous decision: renovate the park or close it forever. It chose the former.

Disney raises the bar

Renovating required more than minor touch-ups. That was because the amusement park industry was evolving, thanks to Walt Disney. Actually, “evolving” does not capture the speed and magnitude of the change.

In 1955, Disneyland exploded on the scene as the nation’s first theme park. Theme parks differ from the old amusement parks in several ways. Enclosed behind a barrier, a theme park is immaculately clean and features fancy landscaping and roving mascots who pose for photos and spread positive vibes. The price of admission grants visitors access to all rides and attractions, which are, of course, themed.

Disneyland’s massive popularity sparked a theme park-building craze across the country in the 1960s that put pressure on traditional amusement parks, like Hershey Park, which suddenly seemed old-fashioned and behind the times.

In 1971, Hershey Estates hired the top firm in theme park design, Randall Duell and Associates, to convert Hershey Park into a Disneyland of the Northeast. They enclosed the park in fencing, charged a single price for admission and themed the whole place.

But what theme would work best? The answer seems like a no-brainer: Hershey’s famous candy brands, of course. But the brands were the property of Hershey Foods, which was separate from Hershey Estates. Hershey Foods, viewing Hersheypark as new and untested, did not want to risk visitors associating its brands with what could be a failing theme park.

Designers opted instead for a historical theme.

A quaint makeover

If you were to visit Hersheypark in the 1970s, you would be taken back in time to experience Tudor England, the German Rhineland from the 18th century, the agrarian culture of the Pennsylvania Dutch, small-town America of yesteryear and the coal mining districts of Pennsylvania’s past.

The strategy was twofold. The local population could relish seeing their own history recreated, from the early migrations from Europe to the present day. At the same time, tourists from New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore could enjoy escaping their hectic urban lifestyles by traveling back to what was portrayed as simpler times.

In 1974, the park added mascots. It took a page out of Disney’s playbook and introduced the Furry Tales, a trio of woodland animals: Dutch the bear, Chip the chipmunk and Violet the skunk. The Furry Tales were Hersheypark’s answer to Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck.

The person hired to fabricate these cute animal costumes was Bill Scollon. One day, Scollon asked Bruce McKinney, a Hershey executive, if he had considered candy-themed characters. After McKinney explained the unfortunate roadblock with Hershey Foods, Scollon had a hunch. When he acted on it, he would change Hersheypark forever.

Chocolatizing the park

Scollon suspected that Hershey Foods had failed to recognize the magic of product characters because they could not see and touch one. So he constructed a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup suit, which he showed to McKinney. Impressed, McKinney escorted Scollon, in costume, to places where Hershey Foods executives would be. They too were delighted, and their resistance promptly melted away.

Once product characters strolled into the park in 1974, the floodgates opened. “We started to chocolatize Hersheypark,” McKinney recalled. “We Hersheyized everything.”

Hersheypark now had chocolate theming, but not thrill rides. Randall Duell’s firm discouraged parks from investing in costly roller coasters that appealed to teenagers but not other age demographics. Hersheypark reversed course in 1976, and this time McKinney was the catalyst.

That year, he was flipping through an industry trade journal when he happened upon a photograph of the Revolution, the first looping roller coaster of the modern era, under construction in West Germany. Later that year, the Revolution attracted huge crowds when it opened in Magic Mountain, a California theme park.

“I harbored all of these feelings,” McKinney recalled, “of what it would be like to have that thing in Hershey.”

The price tag was steep: US$3 million, which was a staggering amount at the time. But McKinney secured his prize. Hersheypark commissioned the company responsible for the Revolution to design a similar looping coaster for Hershey. In 1977, visitors streamed into Hersheypark all summer to experience the sensational sooperdooperLooper – and many then purchased an “I survived” T-shirt.

This spectacular success kindled a desire in Hersheypark officials to invest heavily in thrill rides. Today, the skyline in Hershey is dominated by roller coasters

What happened to those 1970s attractions? The Furry Tales coexisted with candy characters for about a decade before quietly vanishing in the 1980s. As for the history-themed areas, the thrill rides effectively pushed them to the background. Though some have been torn down and replaced by new and more exciting attractions, others have survived. That is because Hersheypark makes a conscious effort to preserve its colorful past. So if you look carefully as you stroll about the park, you will still witness remnants of this bygone era.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

John Haddad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The costume maker who convinced Hersheypark to embrace candy mascots and ‘chocolatize’ their old-timey theme park – https://theconversation.com/the-costume-maker-who-convinced-hersheypark-to-embrace-candy-mascots-and-chocolatize-their-old-timey-theme-park-269780

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ben Pettis, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Communication Studies, University of Richmond

“Chuck Norris doesn’t do push-ups. He simply pushes the world down.”

“Chuck Norris counted to infinity – twice.”

“Chuck Norris once strangled someone – with a cordless phone”

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Chuck Norris, the 1980s action star, became a tongue-in-cheek model of toughness and masculinity in viral internet memes known as “Chuck Norris Facts.”

Although these memes waned in popularity, they never fully fizzled out. One Facebook group has over 400,000 members, many of whom regularly contribute new jokes about the “Walker, Texas Ranger” star.

But when news of Norris’ death broke on March 19, 2026, those memes returned, and memories resurfaced of their glory days.

In fact, they almost overshadowed remembrances of the movie star’s life.

What does it mean that many memories of Norris are more connected to a meme than his actual life and career? What gets left behind when a person becomes a digital object that we send over the internet? And what can memes tell us about how everyday people relate to celebrities – and to one another?

In the case of Norris, the actor and martial artist’s death forced some people to reconcile the memes with the man.

Macho man

Memes aren’t just memes. They might seem like trivial jokes, but my research has shown that they can shape how people understand and debate bigger cultural questions.

For example, Chuck Norris memes gave people a way to critique over-the-top ideas of masculinity and the pressure to live up to them. Whether it was memes crowing about his ability to slam a revolving door or kill two stones with one bird, only Norris, who stood at the apex of manliness, could pull off such impossible feats.

Other times, Norris’ “memeified” macho persona was deployed to advance misogyny: “Chuck Norris told a woman to CALM DOWN, and she did.” (As internet scholar Whitney Phillips explains, memes and humor have always been close relatives of the more toxic parts of online culture.)

Of course, Norris is hardly the only celebrity to have become memeified, and other celebrity memes routinely tap into the cultural zeitgeist.

When pop star Miley Cyrus released the music video for her song “Wrecking Ball” in 2013, it was quickly parodied and become the subject of countless memes. Many parodied her overt sexuality by swapping her out for someone decidedly less sexy on the wrecking ball. Or they spoofed her performance by playing the song over videos of other forms of destruction.

The man, the myth, the legend

Missing from all the meme nostalgia: Who was the real Chuck Norris?

After Norris’ death, social media users pointed to his past homophobic comments, in which he condemned the Boy Scouts of America’s – now Scouting America – inclusion of gay youth and leaders. There were his right-wing politics, including his friendships with Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and his 2017 endorsement of Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore – who, as the state’s chief judge, had ordered Alabama probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples even after same-sex marriage had been legalized nationwide.

If those views and actions conflict with your own values, can you still laugh at Chuck Norris memes?

I certainly think so. Memes are special because there isn’t ever one fixed definition of what they mean, and the humor of a Chuck Norris meme can land even if you know nothing about his real life and career.

At the same time, in life and in death, the meme of Norris will always be connected to the person. The past few weeks have certainly brought these two versions of Norris into contact with one another. It’s up to everyone else to decide which version they remember most.

Democratizing stardom

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of memes is that stardom can happen from the ground up. Regular people decide what a meme is. Fame is no longer largely determined by film studios and mainstream media outlets.

The “Numa Numa Guy” – Gary Brolsma – became a meme after his 2003 video went viral. The “Success Kid” – Sammy Griner – turned into a meme thanks to a photo of him as a toddler clenching his fist in a display of satisfaction.

Why did these people become memes, but countless other YouTubers or kids making funny poses failed to launch? That’s just the unpredictability of the internet and the messiness of online culture.

Memes of existing celebrities also reflect this broader shift in control. No matter how much a studio tries to manage a star’s image, a meme can be created that takes on a life of its own.

Take, for example, Keanu Reeves, who was memeified after a photo of the actor sullenly eating a sandwich went viral. The meme began as a paparazzi photo but took off when everyday people photoshopped Reeves into ridiculous scenarios.

But whether they’re everyday people or famous celebrities, there’s a darker side to reducing people to pixelated, repurposed images: Over time, it can be incredibly difficult to separate the real person from the meme.

Laina Morris, for instance, has tried to move on from the image of her grinning, bug-eyed face that became a popular meme portraying her as an overly protective and clingy girlfriend.

People magazine profiled Morris for an article headlined “Overly Attached Girlfriend Gets Honest About Becoming a Meme,” which explored what it’s like to be constantly recognized as “that girl from that meme.”

Yet the fact that the publication still used “Overly Attached Girlfriend” in its headline shows just how difficult – or even impossible – it is to sever oneself from internet fame.

Chuck Norris, perhaps more than anyone, knew that all too well.

Ben Pettis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The two lives of Chuck Norris – https://theconversation.com/the-two-lives-of-chuck-norris-279430