In the wake of the Pittsburgh police shootings, there has been a lot of concerned commentary coming out to of the left denouncing the right-wing, anti-government, pro-gun culture that supposedly nurtured and bred the animal otherwise known as cop killer Richard Poplawski.
Liberals, who can usually barely be roused from the latest issue of Vanity Fair to formulate an opinion on cop killings, suddenly found a cause célèbre to back: cop killing can now be identified as a function of the conservative culture of hate.
In a snarky conversation comparing Dick Cheney’s oh-so-relevant hunting accident (it happened over 3 years ago) with the murder of the policemen in Pittsburgh, Markos “Daily Kos” Moulitsas quipped, “When we were out of power, we organized to win the next election. Conservatives, apparently prefer to talk ‘revolution’ and kill cops.”
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s liberal “humorist” Reg Henry spoke with disgust of the “mother’s milk” imbibed by the right: anti-government, pro-gun vitriol spewed by conservative talk show radio hosts. Henry then quickly distanced himself from directly blaming Limbaugh, by first cowardly refusing to name him (lest a Lexis Nexis search by Limbaugh’s producers drag Mr. Henry into the awkward position of having to defend his thin accusations and tortured logic on a national stage) and by secondly claiming that “[t]hese hate-mongers did not fire the fatal shots at the Pittsburgh police….But the killer took the general illogic to its logical conclusion.”
It should be noted here that Mr. Henry, in his righteous indignation, refused to give the killer “the perverse pleasure of naming him”, but didn’t he dignify the fallen officers by naming them, either. Instead, at the end of his column, Mr. Henry collectively calls Stephen Mayhle, Paul Sciullo II and Eric Kelly “needlessly dead heroes”, a moniker that rings hollow coming as it does after a thorough politicization of their deaths.
Over here on the border of cop killer central, we Philadelphia suburbanites mourned with our city as it lost six officers to deliberate murder in the line of duty in the last three years.
Officers Gary Skerski, Chuck Cassidy, Isabelle Nazario, Patrick McDonald John Pawlowski and Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski, were all killed by career criminals. Even Andre Butler, who killed Officer Nazario by ramming his stolen Escalade into her vehicle, had already amassed a significant criminal record at the tender age of 16. He was, in fact, a fugitive from the juvenile justice system at the time of his arrest.
Meanwhile over on the other side of the country, on March 21, 2009, four Oakland police officers were killed in two related incidents. Sergeants Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans, Daniel Sakai, and Officer John Hege were killed by Lovelle Mixon. In 2007, Mixon was released on parole after serving five years of a six-year sentence for assault with a firearm. Shortly thereafter, he was named as a suspect in a homicide, but there was insufficient evidence to hold him. Nevertheless, there were enough other charges to send him back to prison for an additional nine months. This pillar of society and suspected rapist of a 12-year old girl was so well respected in his Oakland community that he inspired rallies in his name. I seriously doubt that anyone attending any of those rallies was a Rush Limbaugh listener.
In fact, all of these cop killers have had significant and multiple run-ins with the criminal justice system, all had a history of violence, weapons violations, and drug use and by rights, every last one of them should have been in custody at the time they were on the streets murdering policemen.
Based on the laws we have on our books already, none of these perpetrators should have had access to a firearm much less been able to commit murder. Yet for liberals, the solution is always more laws. And now, thanks to Poplawski, we can add in a culture that breeds hate and violence.
Let’s talk about what kind of culture breeds a cop killer.
Could it be a culture of criminal justice that is more about catch and release than punishment or rehabilitation; a culture that offers rewards for crime that far outweigh the risks or the consequences?
Could it be a culture that holds up the admitted and unrepentant cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal as a “political prisoner”, a poster boy against the death penalty and a fitting commencement speaker to lecture our nation’s youth?
Could it be a culture of “stop snitching” perpetuated by the rap and hip-hop community and characterized by ostentatious displays of wealth? A culture that glorifies violence against cops and women in heavy rotation and multi-platinum albums and whose message is not only condoned but praised as “art”.
Could it be a culture that perpetuates victimhood and oppression as a way of life?
A culture whose spiritual leaders include race baiters like the Reverend Al Sharpton, the Reverend Jesses Jackson and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? And hasn’t that culture of victim and oppressor just been validated on a national scale by the election of the first true product of that culture, Barack Obama?
Is this the “conservative culture” that breeds cop killers, or is this a very sour “mother’s milk” of another, more liberal kind?
Every attack on a cop is an attack on us all, not just those that fit in with a specific political agendas.
Published in the Norristown Times Herald. April 16, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Left Not Right on Matters of Faith
"One of the great strengths of the United States is ... we have a very large Christian population -- we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." Barack Obama at a press conference in Turkey, April 6, 2009.
We are a nation adrift. As part of the left’s relentless campaign to remove all mention of our nation’s founding Judeo-Christian principals from public life, we are now, as Obama states correctly, a nation devoid of religion. We are instead a nation of citizens bound by a set of flimsy ideals and faux values.
Gone is the American dream, the model of the rugged individualist and the goal of success through hard work. They have been replaced by the ideals of collectivism, entitlement and victim worship. Honor, sacrifice, honesty, personal responsibility and a culture that believes in the sanctity of human life have been replaced with the false morality of diversity, tolerance, environmentalism and a culture of death.
As a lapsed Catholic, for some time I have felt a void in my life where a certain spirituality should be. And by spirituality, I don’t mean some goofy Oprah book on the subject; I mean a set of standards that answers to a higher moral authority.
Twenty-five years later, I find myself revisiting those old Catholic values and wishing the church’s moral authority were still intact and unblemished with the stain of the pedophile priest scandals. I see society crumbling due to a distinct lack of moral clarity and the pillars of our new values and new ideals are far too flimsy to prop it up.
It has gotten to the point that if you dare to live your life according to a code of traditional morality, the left will call you a hypocrite unless you are now and always have been perfect. The more publicly you espouse these values, the more zealously they will hunt you and the more celebrated will be your downfall. This is in hopes that the lesson sinks in to the unconverted: living a life according to a code of traditional morals is futile unless you can do it flawlessly.
And because we are human, that is an all but impossible task.
Charges of hypocrisy are an effective weapon indeed. Indeed, it is the only tool in the left’s arsenal.
Sarah Palin dared to live her life according to a Christian code, so when the left found out about her pregnant teenage daughter it was a perfect example of exposing the hypocrisy that everyone knows is lurking just beneath the surface of every Christian. We watched the left gleefully celebrated the downfall of this girl and ridiculed her for choosing life instead of abortion. It was in fact, such a delicious story of justice in the eyes of the morally bankrupt that it still lives more than six months after Sara Palin herself left the national spotlight.
Yet a far more egregious campaign scandal barely saw the light of day: John Edwards and Rielle Hunter had an affair during Edwards’ run for the presidency while Edwards himself was exploiting his wife’s battle with cancer to gain as much political mileage as possible. When Hunter became pregnant and the father of the child was rumored to be Edwards, the story gained little play in the media. Rielle was quietly paid off and sent out of the public spotlight, while Edwards performed the required Kabuki Theater of asking for the public’s forgiveness on the eve of what looked like his possible appointment as Barack Obama’s running mate. Rumors of a love child, however, were too much for even Barack Obama’s famously low character standards; Edwards instead dropped out of the public eye and was allowed to return to private life.
Because the Palins dared to live according to a code of ethics dictated by traditional religion, they have been labeled hypocrites because of their very human failings. John Edwards and Rielle Hunter however, are not hypocrites because you can’t fall short of your standards if you have none.
This lack of moral clarity infecting our once great nation has thrown us back in time; instead of worshipping a good and just God, we worship the random whims of nature. Gaia is angry; we must ask for forgiveness for the sins of our modern conveniences and we offer penance with our sacrifices of carbon credits.
We look with contempt upon human beings, seeing them not as part of the Earth’s natural ecosystem, but as an intruder into an otherwise perfect world. Humans encroach on the habitat of animals, they create pollution, they invade open spaces, and they suck the Earth dry of resources.
There are no evil-doers, only misunderstood victims. Whether it be 19 radical Islamists bent on returning the Caliphate, or a random lone gunman opening fire on his colleagues, our obsessions with getting to “root causes” inevitably leads to an explanation of the victimization of the perpetrator and a ready availability of weaponry. It’s all just a big circle of violence of which we are all a part and because we have abandoned personal responsibility, the only solution is further curtailment of our freedoms.
You see, it is only ok for the left to tell you how to live your life. It’s ok for them to force their false values on you and make you comply through rule of law and confiscatory taxation. Its ok for them to indoctrinate your children in our public schools with their false religion and it’s your duty to pay for it with your taxes. It’s not only ok to experiment on human embryos but it would be immoral not to since the new gospel says that the potential in destroying an embryo is so much greater that the potential in a fully realized human being.
It’s ok for society to fall into moral decay because we’re none of us perfect and therefore we’re none of us qualified to judge what moral decay is anyway.
To say otherwise would be hypocrisy.
Published in the Norristown Times Herald, April 9, 2009
We are a nation adrift. As part of the left’s relentless campaign to remove all mention of our nation’s founding Judeo-Christian principals from public life, we are now, as Obama states correctly, a nation devoid of religion. We are instead a nation of citizens bound by a set of flimsy ideals and faux values.
Gone is the American dream, the model of the rugged individualist and the goal of success through hard work. They have been replaced by the ideals of collectivism, entitlement and victim worship. Honor, sacrifice, honesty, personal responsibility and a culture that believes in the sanctity of human life have been replaced with the false morality of diversity, tolerance, environmentalism and a culture of death.
As a lapsed Catholic, for some time I have felt a void in my life where a certain spirituality should be. And by spirituality, I don’t mean some goofy Oprah book on the subject; I mean a set of standards that answers to a higher moral authority.
Twenty-five years later, I find myself revisiting those old Catholic values and wishing the church’s moral authority were still intact and unblemished with the stain of the pedophile priest scandals. I see society crumbling due to a distinct lack of moral clarity and the pillars of our new values and new ideals are far too flimsy to prop it up.
It has gotten to the point that if you dare to live your life according to a code of traditional morality, the left will call you a hypocrite unless you are now and always have been perfect. The more publicly you espouse these values, the more zealously they will hunt you and the more celebrated will be your downfall. This is in hopes that the lesson sinks in to the unconverted: living a life according to a code of traditional morals is futile unless you can do it flawlessly.
And because we are human, that is an all but impossible task.
Charges of hypocrisy are an effective weapon indeed. Indeed, it is the only tool in the left’s arsenal.
Sarah Palin dared to live her life according to a Christian code, so when the left found out about her pregnant teenage daughter it was a perfect example of exposing the hypocrisy that everyone knows is lurking just beneath the surface of every Christian. We watched the left gleefully celebrated the downfall of this girl and ridiculed her for choosing life instead of abortion. It was in fact, such a delicious story of justice in the eyes of the morally bankrupt that it still lives more than six months after Sara Palin herself left the national spotlight.
Yet a far more egregious campaign scandal barely saw the light of day: John Edwards and Rielle Hunter had an affair during Edwards’ run for the presidency while Edwards himself was exploiting his wife’s battle with cancer to gain as much political mileage as possible. When Hunter became pregnant and the father of the child was rumored to be Edwards, the story gained little play in the media. Rielle was quietly paid off and sent out of the public spotlight, while Edwards performed the required Kabuki Theater of asking for the public’s forgiveness on the eve of what looked like his possible appointment as Barack Obama’s running mate. Rumors of a love child, however, were too much for even Barack Obama’s famously low character standards; Edwards instead dropped out of the public eye and was allowed to return to private life.
Because the Palins dared to live according to a code of ethics dictated by traditional religion, they have been labeled hypocrites because of their very human failings. John Edwards and Rielle Hunter however, are not hypocrites because you can’t fall short of your standards if you have none.
This lack of moral clarity infecting our once great nation has thrown us back in time; instead of worshipping a good and just God, we worship the random whims of nature. Gaia is angry; we must ask for forgiveness for the sins of our modern conveniences and we offer penance with our sacrifices of carbon credits.
We look with contempt upon human beings, seeing them not as part of the Earth’s natural ecosystem, but as an intruder into an otherwise perfect world. Humans encroach on the habitat of animals, they create pollution, they invade open spaces, and they suck the Earth dry of resources.
There are no evil-doers, only misunderstood victims. Whether it be 19 radical Islamists bent on returning the Caliphate, or a random lone gunman opening fire on his colleagues, our obsessions with getting to “root causes” inevitably leads to an explanation of the victimization of the perpetrator and a ready availability of weaponry. It’s all just a big circle of violence of which we are all a part and because we have abandoned personal responsibility, the only solution is further curtailment of our freedoms.
You see, it is only ok for the left to tell you how to live your life. It’s ok for them to force their false values on you and make you comply through rule of law and confiscatory taxation. Its ok for them to indoctrinate your children in our public schools with their false religion and it’s your duty to pay for it with your taxes. It’s not only ok to experiment on human embryos but it would be immoral not to since the new gospel says that the potential in destroying an embryo is so much greater that the potential in a fully realized human being.
It’s ok for society to fall into moral decay because we’re none of us perfect and therefore we’re none of us qualified to judge what moral decay is anyway.
To say otherwise would be hypocrisy.
Published in the Norristown Times Herald, April 9, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Darkness, like Ignorance, is Bliss
I sat in the dark this past Saturday night during Earth Hour, the only light in my house from the glowing ember of my patchouli-scented incense, while I contemplated our great mother Gaia. As I took a sip of my Vente Chai Tea Latte with extra froth, it occurred to me that perhaps I have been too hard on Barack Obama. Perhaps instead of embracing change, I have been resisting it. Perhaps I have not been as hopeful as I could be.
Then it came to me: It’s only the words that matter. Everything else is incidental.
I just didn’t get it before. But I do now.
I simply have been paying too much attention to what Obama is doing and not enough attention to what Obama is actually saying. For instance, I’ve been far too consumed with the colossal expansion of government, which I thought was Obama’s way of dismantling our current system of capitalism and replacing it with a European-style socialism or fascism. But I understand now that all of this spending is being done with reluctance, and that’s what really counts. Because if I really listened to Obama, I would have heard him say, “I don’t like the idea of spending more government money, nor am I interested in expanding government’s role.” Like a loving parent, you can see that this action hurts him more than it hurts us; he’s only doing this for our own good.
And when he said that the omnibus spending bill didn’t have any earmarks in it, what he meant was, “Every omnibus spending bill after this one.” It was, after all, last year’s business, and Bush left such a mess it’s going to take at least a trillion or two or three or ten to clean it up.
I don’t know where I got that “massive power grab” stuff from.
And as for Tim Geithner, it doesn’t matter if the markets don’t have faith in him; Obama has faith in him, and that should be enough for us.
For a while I was upset about Obama’s announced intentions to close Guantanamo Bay. What, I wondered, would he do with all of those dangerous terrorists we’re keeping there? But then I heard that they aren’t terrorists at all; they’re not even “enemy combatants.” They are “detainees”, which is a whole different thing. These aren’t people who are being locked away for any specific reason, they are people the United States is holding back from doing whatever it is that they would otherwise be doing if they weren’t being detained. When I heard that, I thought the very least we can do is offer them some good ole American hospitality as an apology for “detaining” them for so long. Imagine my surprise when I found out that our president was a step ahead of me, promising these poor, freedom-starved folks some taxpayer funded welfare benefits just until they get back on their feet again.
You can just imagine how the rest of the world will look upon us after this meaningful gesture.
When Obama was elected on a promise of ending the war on terror quickly, I worried that if we pulled out too quickly that it would embolden our enemies to commit more acts of terrorism. After my epiphany during Earth Hour, I realized that there are no acts of terror; there are only man-caused disasters. With a little reasonable, intelligent diplomacy, man-caused disasters are much easier to control, predict and prevent than those random acts of terror committed by religious fanatics during the Bush administration.
Clearly there was too much “worry” in my life and not enough “hope”.
While I was sitting in the dark on Saturday night, cleansing my life from the toxic assets of modern civilization, I thought about the innovative new ways that the Obama administration is tackling foreign affairs. Most importantly, they made it a point to make sure that Gordon Brown and the U.K. don’t think that they are any more special than any of the other 190 countries in the world. Playing favorites is part of the reason the world hates us, after all. We all know that diplomacy didn’t work under Bush, but that was because of how we were doing it, not because of the countries in which we were attempting it. Obama’s YouTube message to Iran was hip and modern, kind of like Iran’s own personal Jay Leno appearance, if Iran has anything like the Tonight Show. By embracing technology on the foreign policy front, the possibilities for Obama are endless: I can’t wait until he starts texting Cesar Chavez (“OMG! Did U C Hannon dis Brown? ROTFLOL!”), twittering with BFF Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and sending friend requests to Kim Jong Il on Facebook.
If that’s not change, I don’t know what is.
Finally, I know that there are a lot of open-minded moderates out there whom I’ve offended with my over-the-top, out-of-touch conservatism; reasonable people whom, by their own admission, can always see all sides of the issue and whom, Lord knows, are much more qualified than I to state an opinion.
Allow me to apologize if I’ve harshed anyone’s mellow in the last couple of months.
By choosing to put my faith and trust in the government, I can devote some much needed time to updating my hairstyle and makeup, and also give the proper attention to picking out the exact right belted sweater, leggings and boots combo that will allow my gardening experience this year to not only be a fabulous foray into high fashion, but to be a far “greener” venture than it has been for the last fifteen years.
The new Lisa Mossie wants to be part of the hope, change and the government goody handout. I now hope to change and have changed to hope, and most importantly, am so much more hopeful about change. And I owe it all to Earth Hour.
You could almost say that instead of seeing the light, I was embraced by the darkness.
And darkness, like ignorance, is bliss.
Happy April Fool’s day.
Published in the Norristown Times Herald, April 2, 2009
Then it came to me: It’s only the words that matter. Everything else is incidental.
I just didn’t get it before. But I do now.
I simply have been paying too much attention to what Obama is doing and not enough attention to what Obama is actually saying. For instance, I’ve been far too consumed with the colossal expansion of government, which I thought was Obama’s way of dismantling our current system of capitalism and replacing it with a European-style socialism or fascism. But I understand now that all of this spending is being done with reluctance, and that’s what really counts. Because if I really listened to Obama, I would have heard him say, “I don’t like the idea of spending more government money, nor am I interested in expanding government’s role.” Like a loving parent, you can see that this action hurts him more than it hurts us; he’s only doing this for our own good.
And when he said that the omnibus spending bill didn’t have any earmarks in it, what he meant was, “Every omnibus spending bill after this one.” It was, after all, last year’s business, and Bush left such a mess it’s going to take at least a trillion or two or three or ten to clean it up.
I don’t know where I got that “massive power grab” stuff from.
And as for Tim Geithner, it doesn’t matter if the markets don’t have faith in him; Obama has faith in him, and that should be enough for us.
For a while I was upset about Obama’s announced intentions to close Guantanamo Bay. What, I wondered, would he do with all of those dangerous terrorists we’re keeping there? But then I heard that they aren’t terrorists at all; they’re not even “enemy combatants.” They are “detainees”, which is a whole different thing. These aren’t people who are being locked away for any specific reason, they are people the United States is holding back from doing whatever it is that they would otherwise be doing if they weren’t being detained. When I heard that, I thought the very least we can do is offer them some good ole American hospitality as an apology for “detaining” them for so long. Imagine my surprise when I found out that our president was a step ahead of me, promising these poor, freedom-starved folks some taxpayer funded welfare benefits just until they get back on their feet again.
You can just imagine how the rest of the world will look upon us after this meaningful gesture.
When Obama was elected on a promise of ending the war on terror quickly, I worried that if we pulled out too quickly that it would embolden our enemies to commit more acts of terrorism. After my epiphany during Earth Hour, I realized that there are no acts of terror; there are only man-caused disasters. With a little reasonable, intelligent diplomacy, man-caused disasters are much easier to control, predict and prevent than those random acts of terror committed by religious fanatics during the Bush administration.
Clearly there was too much “worry” in my life and not enough “hope”.
While I was sitting in the dark on Saturday night, cleansing my life from the toxic assets of modern civilization, I thought about the innovative new ways that the Obama administration is tackling foreign affairs. Most importantly, they made it a point to make sure that Gordon Brown and the U.K. don’t think that they are any more special than any of the other 190 countries in the world. Playing favorites is part of the reason the world hates us, after all. We all know that diplomacy didn’t work under Bush, but that was because of how we were doing it, not because of the countries in which we were attempting it. Obama’s YouTube message to Iran was hip and modern, kind of like Iran’s own personal Jay Leno appearance, if Iran has anything like the Tonight Show. By embracing technology on the foreign policy front, the possibilities for Obama are endless: I can’t wait until he starts texting Cesar Chavez (“OMG! Did U C Hannon dis Brown? ROTFLOL!”), twittering with BFF Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and sending friend requests to Kim Jong Il on Facebook.
If that’s not change, I don’t know what is.
Finally, I know that there are a lot of open-minded moderates out there whom I’ve offended with my over-the-top, out-of-touch conservatism; reasonable people whom, by their own admission, can always see all sides of the issue and whom, Lord knows, are much more qualified than I to state an opinion.
Allow me to apologize if I’ve harshed anyone’s mellow in the last couple of months.
By choosing to put my faith and trust in the government, I can devote some much needed time to updating my hairstyle and makeup, and also give the proper attention to picking out the exact right belted sweater, leggings and boots combo that will allow my gardening experience this year to not only be a fabulous foray into high fashion, but to be a far “greener” venture than it has been for the last fifteen years.
The new Lisa Mossie wants to be part of the hope, change and the government goody handout. I now hope to change and have changed to hope, and most importantly, am so much more hopeful about change. And I owe it all to Earth Hour.
You could almost say that instead of seeing the light, I was embraced by the darkness.
And darkness, like ignorance, is bliss.
Happy April Fool’s day.
Published in the Norristown Times Herald, April 2, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
And the Businessman Takes the Fall
Thieves. Murderers. Rapists. Drug dealers.
Businessmen.
Ladies and Gentlemen: the rogues gallery of America’s most despicable criminals.
At least the thief, killer, rapist or drug dealer has family, friends and neighbors who are unashamed to defend him as misunderstood; to cry to the cameras and explain, “He was a good boy, he just fell into a bad crowd.”
But so distasteful is the image of the American businessman that he stands alone as a symbol of greed and depravity. A straw man set up to take the fall for singlehandedly collapsing our financial system to satisfy his own selfish desires.
For some time now, private business has been much maligned in the media. After Enron, all private companies were characterized as greedy and unscrupulous. Entire industries have been demonized in this way, after which they are forever labeled as “big”: Big Oil, Big Pharma. Big Tobacco. Big Three Automakers.
The only big that is good is “Big Government”, because only they have the power to save us from Big Business.
After the news of the AIG bonuses hit, the outrage that had been smoldering unfocused for so many months burst into flames with the help of some accelerant from Washington and a bit of hot air from the bellows mainstream media.
Yes, AIG did things wrong. The list of AIG’s transgressions against basic business ethics has been well documented and publicized; it is not my intention to rehash their crimes here, but simply to acknowledge it as only one piece of what went wrong.
The federal government, which sets itself up as a necessary stop gap against Big Businesses’ worst excesses not only failed to regulate this mess effectively, but actually encouraged the economic downfall with the regulations they put in place.
What was surprising was that for an all-too-brief instant, the mainstream media actually took a break from their primary function as cheerleaders for the new Administration and actually started doing their jobs: It was in that fleeting moment that the press actually was interested in how that clause allowing AIG executives to keep their bonuses remained in the bailout package. Nancy Pelosi was quick to distance herself and her House from the provision. Chris Dodd denied writing it in; then admitted writing it in. But did Dodd write it in at the behest of “someone” in Treasury as he claimed? Or was it a demand of the new administration as he claimed later? Or was it the fault of some anonymous staffer as he claimed later still?
All this work was giving the mainstream media a collective headache. It was hard to keep Dodd’s stories straight. Add to that the continued bumbling of Timothy Geithner, and it was far easier to “report” on the history being made on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” than to actually track down the real story of government corruption and greed.
Barack Obama was the number one recipient of campaign donations from AIG last year with $104,332. Number two should come as no surprise: Chris Dodd received $103,900 in campaign funds. And bringing up a pathetic third was John McCain with $59,499.
If we go back to the origins of this meltdown, back to the mortgage mess originating at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we can look again with little surprise. The number one recipient of campaign funds from Fannie and Freddie from 1989 through 2008 was none other than Chris Dodd, who received a grand total of $165,400 during that time. The number two recipient is also unsurprising: Barack Obama. What is surprising is that Barack Obama managed to collect $126,349 from these organizations only since 2004.
Look back even further to Countrywide and take note that Chris Dodd was also privy to one of those very special mortgage rates available only to “Friends of Angelo”.
How are these people supposed to police Big Business when Big Business funds the means for keeping them in power?
Meanwhile, Congress trots the beleaguered executives in front of their committees for puffed up show trials where they can fan the populist rage even further on behalf of their victimized constituencies.
The flames of populism had been stoked to such heights that this past weekend, angry citizens climbed aboard busses with their torches and pitchforks to take a tour of AIG executive homes and protest in their front yards.
And congress, too, was busy this past weekend wherein they may or may not have actually violated the Constitution by passing a 90% punitive tax against bonus recipients who work for companies that accepted TARP funds.
Timothy Geithner, after much dilly dallying, finally announced a plan to rescue the banking system which depends on participation from the private sector. These investments have the potential to pay off big for investors and carry little downside risk; that risk is being taken on by the American public.
So which businessmen want to volunteer to make a lot of money by buying toxic assets, especially when they will be vilified for making that money and perhaps punitively taxed on it when all is said and done? Haven’t we successfully destroyed any semblance of trust between private business and the government?
The insanity deepens: The New York Times reported on Sunday that the Administration is considering placing limits on executive compensation for financial institutions that will not be limited to those companies that took federal bailout money.
Apparently, according to the NYT piece on Sunday, “Increasing oversight of executive pay has been under consideration for some time, but the decision was made in recent days as public fury over bonuses has spilled into the regulatory effort.”
Are we really talking about the government regulating the wages of private institutions here in America? Think about that. Really think about that, and not in the context of AIG, which is how they want you to think about it. Think about it in the context of your own paycheck.
Are the American people going to let the government get away with regulating their pay?
Sure they are. To a large extent, they already have. Congress has already demonized the American businessman to the extent that the American public will probably cheer this move as justice being served.
What the American public doesn’t yet realize is that they are the American businessman. He’s you. He’s every one of us. Anyone who has a job whose wages are not paid by American tax dollars benefits from the prosperity of the American businessman.
And the American government is doing the best they can to kill him.
Originally published in the Norristwon Times Herald March 26, 2009
Businessmen.
Ladies and Gentlemen: the rogues gallery of America’s most despicable criminals.
At least the thief, killer, rapist or drug dealer has family, friends and neighbors who are unashamed to defend him as misunderstood; to cry to the cameras and explain, “He was a good boy, he just fell into a bad crowd.”
But so distasteful is the image of the American businessman that he stands alone as a symbol of greed and depravity. A straw man set up to take the fall for singlehandedly collapsing our financial system to satisfy his own selfish desires.
For some time now, private business has been much maligned in the media. After Enron, all private companies were characterized as greedy and unscrupulous. Entire industries have been demonized in this way, after which they are forever labeled as “big”: Big Oil, Big Pharma. Big Tobacco. Big Three Automakers.
The only big that is good is “Big Government”, because only they have the power to save us from Big Business.
After the news of the AIG bonuses hit, the outrage that had been smoldering unfocused for so many months burst into flames with the help of some accelerant from Washington and a bit of hot air from the bellows mainstream media.
Yes, AIG did things wrong. The list of AIG’s transgressions against basic business ethics has been well documented and publicized; it is not my intention to rehash their crimes here, but simply to acknowledge it as only one piece of what went wrong.
The federal government, which sets itself up as a necessary stop gap against Big Businesses’ worst excesses not only failed to regulate this mess effectively, but actually encouraged the economic downfall with the regulations they put in place.
What was surprising was that for an all-too-brief instant, the mainstream media actually took a break from their primary function as cheerleaders for the new Administration and actually started doing their jobs: It was in that fleeting moment that the press actually was interested in how that clause allowing AIG executives to keep their bonuses remained in the bailout package. Nancy Pelosi was quick to distance herself and her House from the provision. Chris Dodd denied writing it in; then admitted writing it in. But did Dodd write it in at the behest of “someone” in Treasury as he claimed? Or was it a demand of the new administration as he claimed later? Or was it the fault of some anonymous staffer as he claimed later still?
All this work was giving the mainstream media a collective headache. It was hard to keep Dodd’s stories straight. Add to that the continued bumbling of Timothy Geithner, and it was far easier to “report” on the history being made on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” than to actually track down the real story of government corruption and greed.
Barack Obama was the number one recipient of campaign donations from AIG last year with $104,332. Number two should come as no surprise: Chris Dodd received $103,900 in campaign funds. And bringing up a pathetic third was John McCain with $59,499.
If we go back to the origins of this meltdown, back to the mortgage mess originating at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we can look again with little surprise. The number one recipient of campaign funds from Fannie and Freddie from 1989 through 2008 was none other than Chris Dodd, who received a grand total of $165,400 during that time. The number two recipient is also unsurprising: Barack Obama. What is surprising is that Barack Obama managed to collect $126,349 from these organizations only since 2004.
Look back even further to Countrywide and take note that Chris Dodd was also privy to one of those very special mortgage rates available only to “Friends of Angelo”.
How are these people supposed to police Big Business when Big Business funds the means for keeping them in power?
Meanwhile, Congress trots the beleaguered executives in front of their committees for puffed up show trials where they can fan the populist rage even further on behalf of their victimized constituencies.
The flames of populism had been stoked to such heights that this past weekend, angry citizens climbed aboard busses with their torches and pitchforks to take a tour of AIG executive homes and protest in their front yards.
And congress, too, was busy this past weekend wherein they may or may not have actually violated the Constitution by passing a 90% punitive tax against bonus recipients who work for companies that accepted TARP funds.
Timothy Geithner, after much dilly dallying, finally announced a plan to rescue the banking system which depends on participation from the private sector. These investments have the potential to pay off big for investors and carry little downside risk; that risk is being taken on by the American public.
So which businessmen want to volunteer to make a lot of money by buying toxic assets, especially when they will be vilified for making that money and perhaps punitively taxed on it when all is said and done? Haven’t we successfully destroyed any semblance of trust between private business and the government?
The insanity deepens: The New York Times reported on Sunday that the Administration is considering placing limits on executive compensation for financial institutions that will not be limited to those companies that took federal bailout money.
Apparently, according to the NYT piece on Sunday, “Increasing oversight of executive pay has been under consideration for some time, but the decision was made in recent days as public fury over bonuses has spilled into the regulatory effort.”
Are we really talking about the government regulating the wages of private institutions here in America? Think about that. Really think about that, and not in the context of AIG, which is how they want you to think about it. Think about it in the context of your own paycheck.
Are the American people going to let the government get away with regulating their pay?
Sure they are. To a large extent, they already have. Congress has already demonized the American businessman to the extent that the American public will probably cheer this move as justice being served.
What the American public doesn’t yet realize is that they are the American businessman. He’s you. He’s every one of us. Anyone who has a job whose wages are not paid by American tax dollars benefits from the prosperity of the American businessman.
And the American government is doing the best they can to kill him.
Originally published in the Norristwon Times Herald March 26, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Anti-Bush Stem Cell backlash unfair
Have you heard?
The president lifted the ban on federal funding for stem cell research.
Oh, no, it was not President Obama who did this, it was President Bush and the year was 2001.
And the ban was originally imposed by President Clinton.
All true. But you wouldn’t know it by being a casual observer of the news. You have to dig a little deeper and think a little harder to really understand the stem cell debate as it is today.
In 2001, George W. Bush lifted the ban on federal funding for stem cell research.
Bush, a famously pro-life president, strove to create a policy that balanced the sanctity of human life with the need to advance the cause of medical science. Not wanting to encourage the further destruction of human life, but recognizing that embryonic stem cell research had been started with private funds, Bush limited federal funding of stem cell research to existing lines: those embryos that had already been compromised as of August 2001. Unfortunately, as is usually the case with any compromise on an issue about which people feel passionately, Bush’s compromise on stem cell research angered both sides.
The pro-lifers did not want embryonic stem cell research continued under any circumstances; the pro-choice segment called it an outright “ban” on stem cell research.
And, as always in the battle for rhetorical dominance in the era of the liberal media, the left won.
Therefore, a rather large segment of the public knows nothing about embryonic stem cell research other than the fact that George W. Bush “banned” it, and that last week Barack Obama signed an executive order that represents a “180-degree reversal of the Bush policy.”
This is great news only if you didn’t understand the Bush policy in the first place, and therefore what a 180-degree reversal of it entails.
There are three types of stem cell research being carried out today: embryonic, induced pluripotent, and adult stem cell research.
Only one type, embryonic, dismantles and subsequently destroys human embryos to utilize stem cells. Induced pluripotent and adult stem cell research can utilize stem cells without harming the donor. All of these types of research have been going on for many years; all have benefited from government funding, although embryonic research was subject to the funding restrictions mentioned above.
All three types of research have been carried out in the United States with private funding sources. And all three types of research have been carried out without any such funding restrictions placed on them in other parts of the world.
The result is that in spite of the very limited restrictions placed on embryonic stem cell research, it has yielded nothing. No cures, no therapies, no treatments. Only tumors.
Adult and induced pluripotent stem cell research and the breakthrough using pluripotent cells, however, have yielded many treatments for diseases such as diabetes, Crohn’s disease, heart disease, lupus, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, lymphomas, leukemias, and produced treatments for immune deficiencies, spinal cord injuries, and corneal reconstruction.
As part of that 180-degree sweeping reversal of policy, Obama has promised to de-fund this type of research — the research that is actually producing results.
Obama is the most pro-abortion president this nation has every seen. His endorsement of the “Freedom of Choice” act essentially grants abortion on demand, at any point in the pregnancy, for any reason. It eliminates the parental consent laws we currently have on the books now. As an Illinois State senator, Obama voted numerous times against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, a law that protects the lives of babies born alive after a failed abortion. So it comes as no surprise that a man with beliefs such as Obama’s would endorse the unrestricted destruction of human embryos all under the cover of advancing science.
If advancing science were really his intention, Obama would not be de-funding the science that is actually producing viable cures and treatments. It’s important to keep in mind that President Obama did not limit those federal funds to “left over” embryos that are “going to be destroyed anyway” as the argument has gone for the past eight years. As if the suppliers of this “genetic material” (conservatives call them “parents”) have never had the choice to donate their unused embryos to privately funded research labs prior to Obama’s new policy.
Indeed, Obama has placed absolutely no limits on the use of taxpayer dollars. Instead, in what has become a pattern early in his administration, Obama has once again left the heavy lifting of sorting out the complicated details to his minions, in this case it’s up to the scientists at NIH to decide what research can and cannot be funded.
Which means that right now, there are no limits to what your tax dollars can pay for, even cloning or creating embryos specifically to be destroyed for research. Which also means that we are relying on the scientists themselves to determine the ethical boundaries of embryonic stem cell research.
For an example of how successful reproductive science has policed itself in the past, see: Suleman, Nadya, aka “Octomom.”
Dr. James Thomson, the scientist who discovered embryonic stem cells, recently said “if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”
Judging by the amount of comfort this administration has with destroying human life, it’s clear they haven’t thought it about it nearly enough.
Originally published in the Times Herald March 19, 2009
The president lifted the ban on federal funding for stem cell research.
Oh, no, it was not President Obama who did this, it was President Bush and the year was 2001.
And the ban was originally imposed by President Clinton.
All true. But you wouldn’t know it by being a casual observer of the news. You have to dig a little deeper and think a little harder to really understand the stem cell debate as it is today.
In 2001, George W. Bush lifted the ban on federal funding for stem cell research.
Bush, a famously pro-life president, strove to create a policy that balanced the sanctity of human life with the need to advance the cause of medical science. Not wanting to encourage the further destruction of human life, but recognizing that embryonic stem cell research had been started with private funds, Bush limited federal funding of stem cell research to existing lines: those embryos that had already been compromised as of August 2001. Unfortunately, as is usually the case with any compromise on an issue about which people feel passionately, Bush’s compromise on stem cell research angered both sides.
The pro-lifers did not want embryonic stem cell research continued under any circumstances; the pro-choice segment called it an outright “ban” on stem cell research.
And, as always in the battle for rhetorical dominance in the era of the liberal media, the left won.
Therefore, a rather large segment of the public knows nothing about embryonic stem cell research other than the fact that George W. Bush “banned” it, and that last week Barack Obama signed an executive order that represents a “180-degree reversal of the Bush policy.”
This is great news only if you didn’t understand the Bush policy in the first place, and therefore what a 180-degree reversal of it entails.
There are three types of stem cell research being carried out today: embryonic, induced pluripotent, and adult stem cell research.
Only one type, embryonic, dismantles and subsequently destroys human embryos to utilize stem cells. Induced pluripotent and adult stem cell research can utilize stem cells without harming the donor. All of these types of research have been going on for many years; all have benefited from government funding, although embryonic research was subject to the funding restrictions mentioned above.
All three types of research have been carried out in the United States with private funding sources. And all three types of research have been carried out without any such funding restrictions placed on them in other parts of the world.
The result is that in spite of the very limited restrictions placed on embryonic stem cell research, it has yielded nothing. No cures, no therapies, no treatments. Only tumors.
Adult and induced pluripotent stem cell research and the breakthrough using pluripotent cells, however, have yielded many treatments for diseases such as diabetes, Crohn’s disease, heart disease, lupus, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, lymphomas, leukemias, and produced treatments for immune deficiencies, spinal cord injuries, and corneal reconstruction.
As part of that 180-degree sweeping reversal of policy, Obama has promised to de-fund this type of research — the research that is actually producing results.
Obama is the most pro-abortion president this nation has every seen. His endorsement of the “Freedom of Choice” act essentially grants abortion on demand, at any point in the pregnancy, for any reason. It eliminates the parental consent laws we currently have on the books now. As an Illinois State senator, Obama voted numerous times against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, a law that protects the lives of babies born alive after a failed abortion. So it comes as no surprise that a man with beliefs such as Obama’s would endorse the unrestricted destruction of human embryos all under the cover of advancing science.
If advancing science were really his intention, Obama would not be de-funding the science that is actually producing viable cures and treatments. It’s important to keep in mind that President Obama did not limit those federal funds to “left over” embryos that are “going to be destroyed anyway” as the argument has gone for the past eight years. As if the suppliers of this “genetic material” (conservatives call them “parents”) have never had the choice to donate their unused embryos to privately funded research labs prior to Obama’s new policy.
Indeed, Obama has placed absolutely no limits on the use of taxpayer dollars. Instead, in what has become a pattern early in his administration, Obama has once again left the heavy lifting of sorting out the complicated details to his minions, in this case it’s up to the scientists at NIH to decide what research can and cannot be funded.
Which means that right now, there are no limits to what your tax dollars can pay for, even cloning or creating embryos specifically to be destroyed for research. Which also means that we are relying on the scientists themselves to determine the ethical boundaries of embryonic stem cell research.
For an example of how successful reproductive science has policed itself in the past, see: Suleman, Nadya, aka “Octomom.”
Dr. James Thomson, the scientist who discovered embryonic stem cells, recently said “if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”
Judging by the amount of comfort this administration has with destroying human life, it’s clear they haven’t thought it about it nearly enough.
Originally published in the Times Herald March 19, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
No breathing room for this president
Am I going to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt?
The answer is no. Unequivocally and unapologetically, no.
I don’t have any doubts at all about Obama’s agenda.
I never have.
And I oppose it all, down to the tiniest earmark.
This is not some sort of a “payback” for liberals’ shameful and immature foot-stamping and breath-holding of George W. Bush.
George W. Bush’s tenure is over and what’s done is done. Those who would presume to lay the blame of the economy solely at his feet do so only by mistakenly believing that history began in January of the year 2000.
Those of us that have been paying attention know the seeds for this economic downturn were sown during the Carter Administration with the Community Reinvestment Act and government tinkering with the housing market.
Those seeds were left to grow during both Republican and Democratic administrations with little cause for alarm from the government appointed watchdogs that should have seen it coming. There is plenty of blame to go around: Democrats for their misguided social engineering policies and Republicans for not having the guts to take a stronger stand against them.
The bottom fell out of the market in October of last year. Under normal circumstances, the American economy would be starting to show indications of an impending recovery by now.
But we’re not. All we keep seeing is the market continuing to spiral down.
Why?
Because Barack Obama is remaking America.
And he’s starting with the economy, which means all bets are off. The normal machinations of the economy are not simply being tweaked or tinkered with; they are being replaced entirely by the slow, clunky ill-fitting gears of socialism.
It won’t work.
You see, in spite of liberals’ insistence that conservatives have nothing to offer but the same old ideas of lower taxes and smaller government, it is those ideas that have actually worked in the past.
Socialism never has and never will. But it’s all good because the solution to society’s ills under socialism is more government. And more government. And more government. Until he gets it right, we are all subjects in Barack Obama’s great social engineering experiment.
This is Obama’s economy now. He sold himself as the fixer of all things wrong with the country, and so far, his fixes are being met with something less than enthusiasm on Wall Street.
Indeed, Obama’s admonition to ignore the gyrations of the market and his comparison of them to political opinion polls is yet another glaring example of that lack of experience that conservatives were worried about. If only the markets ignored him half as much as he says he ignores them.
But how do we read Obama’s dismissal of the plummeting stock market? As an inappropriate and scary level of naiveté for a national leader? As an arrogant condescension by one who is untouched by such events? Or as a remark made by someone who smugly believes that the economic crisis affords him an opportunity to remake America from a nation of rugged individualists into a country of bleating sheep reliant upon the almighty government for every facet of their very existence?
I know that last one’s a stretch. After all, what would be the attraction of having the helpless multitudes dependent upon your great benevolence for their very existence? Where your only pleasure in life is bestowing gifts from your generous bounty onto a barely worthy public? Who would strive for that except someone who had an extremely over-developed God complex?
Ahem.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be taking Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, at his word when he said to never let a serious crisis go to waste. “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”
But after all, we are being told that everything is in crisis.
Yes, yes, yes: the economy is in crisis.
But let’s be clear: there is no “crisis” in health care. There is no long line of people in this country dying for lack of medical care. There is, however, a problem with the uninsured, who use emergency rooms for primary care and then don’t pay their bills. This results in higher insurance rates and a lower quality of emergency care for the rest of us.
The health care segment was one of the only thriving segments left of the economy. But Obama’s intentions to dismantle our private health care system and replace it with socialized medicine are tanking that sector as well.
As for those long lines of people dying while waiting for care, you’ll just have to wait until Obama wipes out private health care and puts us all in the ever-loving arms of a government-run, single-payer system.
There is no crisis in energy; however, Obama’s policy of cap and trade will create one.
Cap and trade is nothing more than another tax that will drive the price of traditional energy sources through the roof.
And when the public can no longer afford to pay for their energy needs? That’s right: enter a new government program to solve the problems created by the “free market.”
The so-called crisis in education is by far the most obviously manufactured.
Education has been almost exclusively under the control of the government for the last 50 years and beyond, but it’s not working.
OK, let’s see who’s been paying attention: Boys and girls, what’s the solution to a government-created problem in education? That’s right: More government.
Obama’s policies are hostile to businesses, both small and large.
They reward irresponsibility and punish the producers. They seek not to raise the standard of living for the downtrodden, but to lower the standard of living of the producing, non-political classes, thus achieving a perceived “fairness.”
This is Obama’s big-time radicalism, and it’s happening here and now.
And no, I’m not about to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not for one minute.
Originally published in the Times Herald March 12, 2009
The answer is no. Unequivocally and unapologetically, no.
I don’t have any doubts at all about Obama’s agenda.
I never have.
And I oppose it all, down to the tiniest earmark.
This is not some sort of a “payback” for liberals’ shameful and immature foot-stamping and breath-holding of George W. Bush.
George W. Bush’s tenure is over and what’s done is done. Those who would presume to lay the blame of the economy solely at his feet do so only by mistakenly believing that history began in January of the year 2000.
Those of us that have been paying attention know the seeds for this economic downturn were sown during the Carter Administration with the Community Reinvestment Act and government tinkering with the housing market.
Those seeds were left to grow during both Republican and Democratic administrations with little cause for alarm from the government appointed watchdogs that should have seen it coming. There is plenty of blame to go around: Democrats for their misguided social engineering policies and Republicans for not having the guts to take a stronger stand against them.
The bottom fell out of the market in October of last year. Under normal circumstances, the American economy would be starting to show indications of an impending recovery by now.
But we’re not. All we keep seeing is the market continuing to spiral down.
Why?
Because Barack Obama is remaking America.
And he’s starting with the economy, which means all bets are off. The normal machinations of the economy are not simply being tweaked or tinkered with; they are being replaced entirely by the slow, clunky ill-fitting gears of socialism.
It won’t work.
You see, in spite of liberals’ insistence that conservatives have nothing to offer but the same old ideas of lower taxes and smaller government, it is those ideas that have actually worked in the past.
Socialism never has and never will. But it’s all good because the solution to society’s ills under socialism is more government. And more government. And more government. Until he gets it right, we are all subjects in Barack Obama’s great social engineering experiment.
This is Obama’s economy now. He sold himself as the fixer of all things wrong with the country, and so far, his fixes are being met with something less than enthusiasm on Wall Street.
Indeed, Obama’s admonition to ignore the gyrations of the market and his comparison of them to political opinion polls is yet another glaring example of that lack of experience that conservatives were worried about. If only the markets ignored him half as much as he says he ignores them.
But how do we read Obama’s dismissal of the plummeting stock market? As an inappropriate and scary level of naiveté for a national leader? As an arrogant condescension by one who is untouched by such events? Or as a remark made by someone who smugly believes that the economic crisis affords him an opportunity to remake America from a nation of rugged individualists into a country of bleating sheep reliant upon the almighty government for every facet of their very existence?
I know that last one’s a stretch. After all, what would be the attraction of having the helpless multitudes dependent upon your great benevolence for their very existence? Where your only pleasure in life is bestowing gifts from your generous bounty onto a barely worthy public? Who would strive for that except someone who had an extremely over-developed God complex?
Ahem.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be taking Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, at his word when he said to never let a serious crisis go to waste. “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”
But after all, we are being told that everything is in crisis.
Yes, yes, yes: the economy is in crisis.
But let’s be clear: there is no “crisis” in health care. There is no long line of people in this country dying for lack of medical care. There is, however, a problem with the uninsured, who use emergency rooms for primary care and then don’t pay their bills. This results in higher insurance rates and a lower quality of emergency care for the rest of us.
The health care segment was one of the only thriving segments left of the economy. But Obama’s intentions to dismantle our private health care system and replace it with socialized medicine are tanking that sector as well.
As for those long lines of people dying while waiting for care, you’ll just have to wait until Obama wipes out private health care and puts us all in the ever-loving arms of a government-run, single-payer system.
There is no crisis in energy; however, Obama’s policy of cap and trade will create one.
Cap and trade is nothing more than another tax that will drive the price of traditional energy sources through the roof.
And when the public can no longer afford to pay for their energy needs? That’s right: enter a new government program to solve the problems created by the “free market.”
The so-called crisis in education is by far the most obviously manufactured.
Education has been almost exclusively under the control of the government for the last 50 years and beyond, but it’s not working.
OK, let’s see who’s been paying attention: Boys and girls, what’s the solution to a government-created problem in education? That’s right: More government.
Obama’s policies are hostile to businesses, both small and large.
They reward irresponsibility and punish the producers. They seek not to raise the standard of living for the downtrodden, but to lower the standard of living of the producing, non-political classes, thus achieving a perceived “fairness.”
This is Obama’s big-time radicalism, and it’s happening here and now.
And no, I’m not about to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not for one minute.
Originally published in the Times Herald March 12, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The Octo-mom, a media creation
For a while there, I thought the Octomom was getting her own segment on the Today Show.
It seemed like every morning I was watching yet another installment of a never-ending interview of Nadya Suleman regurgitating every intimate detail of her life to Ann Curry on the assumption the public found her and her offspring fascinating. It was all Octomom, all the time.
Then something happened that the media did not anticipate: rather than rapt fascination with this story, the public was revolted. They viewed Suleman like they viewed a train wreck, a plane crash or a school shooting: a horrible tragedy from which they simply cannot turn away.
Because the media are in the business of capturing and holding audiences, the Octomom story has since taken on a decidedly different tone. While the media and Suleman still enjoy that symbiotic relationship of exploiter and willing exploitee, the way the Octomom story is being presented to the public represents a departure from the media’s voyeuristic business as usual. In order to keep from alienating their audiences, the media are now presenting the Octomom story with implicit distaste and disapproval.
For an idea how deep this disgust with Suleman has gone, Billy Bush, the Ken-doll host of “Access Hollywood”, soberly announced last week that covering the Octomom story was a little too tabloid-esque for the tastes of “Access Hollywood’s” discerning viewers, therefore they wouldn’t be covering it anymore. Octomom, said Bush, was just “gross”.
The fact that “Access Hollywood” then covered the story of their non-coverage of Octomom does not minimize their judgment call in this matter; “Access Hollywood” is a show that glories in documenting excess. To actually say out loud that Octomom is too “gross” for “Access Hollywood” is quite a leap indeed.
So has it finally happened? Has the tolerant, non-judgmental American society of the past thirty years finally stumbled upon a story so depraved that even our journalists are appalled?
After many years of compelling evidence to the contrary, it seems the American public does indeed still have sensibilities that can be offended.
On the other hand, it seems to me it’s a little late in the game for society to be pulling the rug out from under Nadya Suleman. How can we be offended by Suleman after standing idly by while the State slowly starved Terri Shiavo to death on a national stage? After watching O.J. hunt for Nicole’s real killer on the back nine of every southern California golf course for the last fifteen years? After watching the political circus that is Rod Blagojevich get rewarded for his abuse of office and the English language wit a six-figure book deal?
Hasn’t Nadya Suleman had every reason to expect that her octuplets would be embraced by an adoring public and corporate sponsorships? Didn’t she have every reason to expect that by enduring this high risk and ill-advised pregnancy for a few short months, that with the right publicist, she could have all of her needs and wants met for life? Isn’t that what has always happened in the past?
Haven’t feminists beaten us on the head for years with the notion that the single mother is the most noble of all citizens: a victim of pure circumstance rather than poor choices? Nadya is a single mother of fourteen; that should make her pretty much the closest thing to a saint that N.O.W. has ever had.
Yet America has turned against her. Why? Why has such an unprecedented level of hostility been directed at Suleman where none has existed before in past highly publicized multiple births?
As she aired her dirty laundry for the world, it became increasingly clear the vapid and self-absorbed Suleman couldn’t be expected to make even the most basic common sense decisions. Yet irresponsibility has been a vice we have been quick to forgive, especially most recently.
People who recognized the flaws in Suleman’s thought processes pointed quickly to the fertility doctors who should have refused to impregnate her.
But there are no laws limiting the amount of children a person can have, and I seriously doubt anyone wants to adopt a Chinese policy on offspring limitations to address one instance.
Nadya Suleman’s fourteen children illustrate just one tiny area of the complicated ethical ramifications of the advances in reproductive science. In spite of the terrific advantages gained in this area, I’m afraid society isn’t quite up to addressing the moral issues surrounding it.
So what’s left? Take the kids away? Why? What is her crime?
I daresay more irresponsible and idiotic people than Suleman have had children.
When an affront to our innate decency like Nadya Suleman shows up, we’re angry, but we’re not sure why.
We are surprised that many people do not have an ingrained set of guiding principles; yet Suleman is hardly the first to clearly demonstrate a glaring deficiency in this area.
We look to authority to control the offender, but authority is ill equipped to deal with the likes of Suleman in any effective way.
For years we have watched society deteriorate, but instead of denouncing that deterioration or calling those responsible into account, we shrug and say, “who am I to judge?” For these days, there is nothing worse than being labeled judgmental.
So we have said nothing as our culture was coarsened.
We have contented ourselves with focusing on shades of gray rather than the right or wrong. We have made excuses with explanations or “root causes” rather than punishing the offensive behavior.
We have prized celebrity and decadence while we have denigrated religion and traditional values.
And just because we make an occasional mistake, we are afraid to stand up for what is right.
Does the backlash against Suleman signal a turnaround in our culture, or have we already entered the era of Octomom?
Was Nadya Suleman an anomaly, or is she merely the first in a long line to come?
It seemed like every morning I was watching yet another installment of a never-ending interview of Nadya Suleman regurgitating every intimate detail of her life to Ann Curry on the assumption the public found her and her offspring fascinating. It was all Octomom, all the time.
Then something happened that the media did not anticipate: rather than rapt fascination with this story, the public was revolted. They viewed Suleman like they viewed a train wreck, a plane crash or a school shooting: a horrible tragedy from which they simply cannot turn away.
Because the media are in the business of capturing and holding audiences, the Octomom story has since taken on a decidedly different tone. While the media and Suleman still enjoy that symbiotic relationship of exploiter and willing exploitee, the way the Octomom story is being presented to the public represents a departure from the media’s voyeuristic business as usual. In order to keep from alienating their audiences, the media are now presenting the Octomom story with implicit distaste and disapproval.
For an idea how deep this disgust with Suleman has gone, Billy Bush, the Ken-doll host of “Access Hollywood”, soberly announced last week that covering the Octomom story was a little too tabloid-esque for the tastes of “Access Hollywood’s” discerning viewers, therefore they wouldn’t be covering it anymore. Octomom, said Bush, was just “gross”.
The fact that “Access Hollywood” then covered the story of their non-coverage of Octomom does not minimize their judgment call in this matter; “Access Hollywood” is a show that glories in documenting excess. To actually say out loud that Octomom is too “gross” for “Access Hollywood” is quite a leap indeed.
So has it finally happened? Has the tolerant, non-judgmental American society of the past thirty years finally stumbled upon a story so depraved that even our journalists are appalled?
After many years of compelling evidence to the contrary, it seems the American public does indeed still have sensibilities that can be offended.
On the other hand, it seems to me it’s a little late in the game for society to be pulling the rug out from under Nadya Suleman. How can we be offended by Suleman after standing idly by while the State slowly starved Terri Shiavo to death on a national stage? After watching O.J. hunt for Nicole’s real killer on the back nine of every southern California golf course for the last fifteen years? After watching the political circus that is Rod Blagojevich get rewarded for his abuse of office and the English language wit a six-figure book deal?
Hasn’t Nadya Suleman had every reason to expect that her octuplets would be embraced by an adoring public and corporate sponsorships? Didn’t she have every reason to expect that by enduring this high risk and ill-advised pregnancy for a few short months, that with the right publicist, she could have all of her needs and wants met for life? Isn’t that what has always happened in the past?
Haven’t feminists beaten us on the head for years with the notion that the single mother is the most noble of all citizens: a victim of pure circumstance rather than poor choices? Nadya is a single mother of fourteen; that should make her pretty much the closest thing to a saint that N.O.W. has ever had.
Yet America has turned against her. Why? Why has such an unprecedented level of hostility been directed at Suleman where none has existed before in past highly publicized multiple births?
As she aired her dirty laundry for the world, it became increasingly clear the vapid and self-absorbed Suleman couldn’t be expected to make even the most basic common sense decisions. Yet irresponsibility has been a vice we have been quick to forgive, especially most recently.
People who recognized the flaws in Suleman’s thought processes pointed quickly to the fertility doctors who should have refused to impregnate her.
But there are no laws limiting the amount of children a person can have, and I seriously doubt anyone wants to adopt a Chinese policy on offspring limitations to address one instance.
Nadya Suleman’s fourteen children illustrate just one tiny area of the complicated ethical ramifications of the advances in reproductive science. In spite of the terrific advantages gained in this area, I’m afraid society isn’t quite up to addressing the moral issues surrounding it.
So what’s left? Take the kids away? Why? What is her crime?
I daresay more irresponsible and idiotic people than Suleman have had children.
When an affront to our innate decency like Nadya Suleman shows up, we’re angry, but we’re not sure why.
We are surprised that many people do not have an ingrained set of guiding principles; yet Suleman is hardly the first to clearly demonstrate a glaring deficiency in this area.
We look to authority to control the offender, but authority is ill equipped to deal with the likes of Suleman in any effective way.
For years we have watched society deteriorate, but instead of denouncing that deterioration or calling those responsible into account, we shrug and say, “who am I to judge?” For these days, there is nothing worse than being labeled judgmental.
So we have said nothing as our culture was coarsened.
We have contented ourselves with focusing on shades of gray rather than the right or wrong. We have made excuses with explanations or “root causes” rather than punishing the offensive behavior.
We have prized celebrity and decadence while we have denigrated religion and traditional values.
And just because we make an occasional mistake, we are afraid to stand up for what is right.
Does the backlash against Suleman signal a turnaround in our culture, or have we already entered the era of Octomom?
Was Nadya Suleman an anomaly, or is she merely the first in a long line to come?
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