What Is Washington Post's 'Odyssey' Culture-War Op-Ed About?

A column in the Washington Post's Opinions section, headlined "I'm glad the culture wars are back. 'The Odyssey' shows why," argues that a renewed round of public fighting over culture is worth welcoming, and cites the endurance of Homer's epic as its evidence, according to the piece.

What does the column's headline actually claim?

The title states two things directly: that the writer is "glad" fights over culture have resurfaced, and that "The Odyssey" — the roughly 2,700-year-old Greek epic — illustrates why those fights matter. The Post has run the piece under its Opinions vertical, meaning it reflects the author's argument rather than the paper's institutional position.

What is the 'Odyssey' connection the column is making?

The column's full text was not reviewed in producing this report, so the specific link the author draws between Homer's poem and today's disputes is not detailed here. What is confirmed is the framing itself: a classical text being invoked as a stand-in for a live argument about culture, a rhetorical move common in opinion writing that reaches for old stories to explain new fights.

Why does 'culture war' framing keep resurfacing this fall?

The Post column is not an isolated data point. Elsewhere this month, HTT News has tracked disputes that observers describe in similar terms. In Colorado, a proposed fur ban has split opinion between wildlife advocates and rural residents. In Europe, far-right parties have made air conditioning — of all things — into a flashpoint over climate policy and lifestyle. Neither dispute involves Homer or a Washington Post columnist, but both fit the same pattern the Post piece names directly: policy and taste questions getting recast as identity battles.

Does the column take a side, or just describe the fight?

Based on the headline alone, the author's stance is that the return of culture-war argument is a positive development — the word "glad" is doing that work. That is a normative claim, not a reporting claim, and it sits within the Post's opinion section rather than its news pages. Readers looking for the argument's full reasoning should consult the original column directly, since a headline is not a substitute for the piece's evidence or examples.

What to watch

• Whether other opinion writers or outlets respond directly to the Post column's argument in the coming days.
• Whether the same "culture war is back" framing gets applied to unrelated disputes, as it already has with fur bans and air conditioning.
• Whether the Post or the author clarifies which specific adaptation, staging, or retelling of "The Odyssey" is meant, since the epic has been reinterpreted many times across stage and film.
• Whether readers or media critics push back on using a 2,700-year-old poem as shorthand for a 2026 political argument.