Enjoy this day celebrating the ancient festival of the resurrection of the seasons, the rebirth of the year, the celebration of the new year, or its newer interpretation as specifically about a particular one of the born-to-a-virgin, talked-to-god(s), performed-miracles, and died-to-rise-again messiah-candidates. All the popular symbols (hatching eggs, bunnies, flowers,…
I was recently provided with a copy of Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sells Wars, Spend Election’s, and Destroy Democracy, by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. Written in 2005, this book is a great way to get an historical perspective on the state of journalism in America. “How bad have things gotten?” you might ask.
Our media system has become so dysfunctional that it repeatedly shows its willingness to stenographically report the Bush administration’s spin as truth “while rejecting expressions of reality as manifestations of partisanship that must be balanced with more spin.” (Page 4) The authors write that the media is a “lumbering and lazy media” that is ideally suited to the whims of “Karl Rove and the thousands of other paid liars.”
Our media system is so bad that American political discourse has become “meaningless.” There is no better way to exemplify the bankruptcy of the media system than the March 2003 press conference at which George Bush was not challenged by anyone in the Washington press corps with regard to the preemptive war he was about to launch. The members of the press “asked him not a single probing question about the flimsy case that had been made for war, nor its likely costs, nor about anything akin to an exit strategy.”
The authors argue that our elite reporters no longer show passion for truth, but rather passion only for access to those who wield power. Reporters for major media outlets have become …
My wife and I adopted our two wonderful daughters from China on two separate occasions, in 1999 and 2001. We very much appreciated the way that the Chinese orphanages took good care of our daughters. When we traveled to China to meet our daughters, we were treated well by the many Chinese people we met who ran China’s adoption program. Everything was straight-forward and as we expected. I also cannot say enough good things about Children’s Hope International, the American adoption agency we used.
Throughout the adoption process one bit of irony repeatedly occurred to my wife and I: We had to be highly scrutinized before being allowed to adopt. The Chinese government (and our own agency) wanted to make certain that we were going to be good parents. My wife and I sometimes commented to each other that absolutely anyone is qualified to have a biological child, whereas people trying to adopt were treated with suspicion. To be approved for adoption, we had to produce our arrest records, medical records, recommendation letters and a home study.
We periodically get newsletters from Children’s Hope. This month’s letter includes the current requirements for adopting a child from China. Interesting stuff. In fact, the requirements are much stricter than they were a few years ago:
Families are not eligible to adopt if any of the following …
My daughters and I have started to watch some of the episodes from the Star Trek Voyager series on DVD. We are not disappointed at all. All of us are finding that the series contains well-written, thought-provoking, stories. Here is a topic that might seem unrelated to Star Trek: According to…
The bill to set withdrawal timetables from Iraq has passed, on its way now to the President's desk--where it will be vetoed. Democrats will work on this issue from now on, presumably with an eye toward using it as a campaign issue to gain more seats and hopefully hand the White…