Interesting article from Salon.com. The bottom line is that you're not going to find a lot of the kind of meat you'd buy for your own consumption at a grocery store. Yes, there is a reason that you can get a huge bag of dog food for not a lot…
We like to think of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as days when young children give lots of hugs to their loving parents. We don’t like to consider that these days are also days when thousands of innocent children are beaten by their parents, their anguished cries often not heard outside of their dysfunctional homes. Saddest of all, these children are condemned to be beaten and screamed at by the people they trust most.
In 1988, I was waiting for an elevator at the State office building where I worked as an Assistant Attorney General. Many social workers had their offices in the same building, and several of those social workers were also waiting for an elevator.
All of a sudden, a middle-aged man started yelling at a three-year-old boy, who started crying. The boy weighed about 40 pounds. The man quickly got angrier and started smacking the boy violently with the palm of his hand-maybe it was his fist. Whump! Whump! Whump! The little boy was now breathless and whimpering. Like the other half-dozen people waiting for an elevator, however, I did nothing but stand there horrified. The man cocked his arm back to strike the boy yet again when one of the social workers jumped forward and yelled at the man: “Stop hitting that child!”
With that, the man looked confused, then angry, then more confused, then meek. The social worker further instructed him: “follow me.” The man followed the social worker, presumably to the social worker’s office. …
Michelle Obama, wife of Barack Obama, was recently interviewed by ABC News. She presented Iraq as a domestic issue: "All of our emotional and financial resources… as a country have been totally put into the war. We haven't talked about the domestic issue in about 10 years," she said. "There…
Pleassssse, somebody. Wake me up. I thought we were all done with Princess Diana. But we’re not, because this is the 10th year anniversary of her death. In other words, it’s a terrific opportunity to dust her off and to put her back up on the pedestal so that we can envy her, admire her for her so-called accomplishments and (most of all) become entranced with her image.
While waiting at a pharmacy, I leafed through the June 2007 edition of Good Housekeeping Magazine because Princess Diana’s photo is boldly featured on the front cover. As I picked it up, I thought “Not again . . .” This issue of Good Housekeeping also features a hagiography (what else was ever written about Princess Diana?) The reappearance of Diana aggravated me enough that I’m now sitting down to aggravate you with this rant.
The article describes Diana as “young, luminous and full of promise.” We are told that “she was worried about doing the right thing.” In fact, she was “saintly and endlessly giving.” I have heard it all before, though, and I’ve never been impressed with these sorts of accolades. After all, Diana lived a plush life of glitz. She mingled with her favorite musicians (such as Elton John) and she made unending appearances at fancy dinner parties where she wore her fancy gowns and smiled her fancy smile. She “passionately followed music theatre and ballet.”
That’s what this article tells me, anyway. It also tells me that she …
At the National Conference for Media Reform in January, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps challenged the thousands of people attending to enact a new “American Media Contract.” I think he did a good job of summing up the problems with big media. He proposed replacing the “bad old bargain that past…