Alternative Ways to Spend Iraq War Money

So, I’ve been toying with a few numbers lately.  I’ll probably organize these into a more prosaic sort of blog soon, but here are a few things to consider for now:

The Total Monetary Cost of the Iraq War:  539,000,000,000 (according to nationalpriorities.org

Cost of War Per Year:  539,000,000,000/5 years = 108,000,000,000 per yearEstimated Cost of Meeting the

UN 2015 Millennium Goals:  135-195 Billion Dollars Per Year

That money is around 55-80 percent of the TOTAL global estimated cost per year to meet the UN’s Millennium Goals by 2015. 

 

 

If the goals are met, here are the effects (from unmillenniumproject.org):

Goal 1	Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
	Target 1. Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day
	Target 2. Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
Goal 2	Achieve universal primary education
	Target 3. Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling
Goal 3	Promote gender equality and empower women
	Target 4. Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015
Goal 4	Reduce child mortality
	Target 5. Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate
Goal 5	Improve maternal health
	Target 6. Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio
Goal 6	Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
	Target 7. Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
	Target 8. Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
Goal 7	Ensure environmental sustainability
	Target 9. Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources
	Target 10. Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
	Target 11. Have achieved by 2020 a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers
Goal 8	Develop a global partnership for development
	Target 12. Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system (includes a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction (both nationally and internationally)
	Target 13. Address the special needs of the Least Developed Countries (includes tariff- and quota-free access for Least Developed Countries’ exports, enhanced program of debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries [HIPCs] and cancellation of official bilateral debt, and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction)
	Target 14. Address the special needs of landlocked developing countries and small island developing states (through the Program of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States and 22nd General Assembly provisions)
	Target 15. Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term Some of the indicators listed below are monitored separately for the least developed countries, Africa, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing states
	Target 16. In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth
	Target 17. In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
	Target 18. In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications technologies

 

That means that if we diverted the money that we are spending on the Iraq War to meeting these goals, we would meet more than HALF of the global cost for such unimaginable humanitarian goals as halving world hunger, providing education to every child around the globe, reduce infant mortality by 2/3, halve global poverty, halve the amount of people without access to clean drinking water, and so much more. 

Think of how amazing that is!

 

 

Also, there are 27,500,000 people living in Iraq.  If you think about it, that means that we are spending almost 4,000 per year, per Iraqi.  For that amount of money, you’d think we could PAY people not to fight.

 

The War in Iraq Op-Eds

The McCain camp, desperate to stir up some sort of press coverage amidst Obama’s highly advertised trip abroad, is railing against the NY Times’s recent rejection of McCain’s Op-Ed piece on Iraq.  So far, the coverage that I’ve seen on this controversy has been pretty hard on the NY Times.  CNN’s Lou Dobbs (I can barely stand the guy) threw around the conservative’s favorite derogatory label and denounced the Times, in his typical higher-than-thou attitude, for its biased “liberal” coverage.  As if the Times does not have pretty conservative writers such as William Kristol.  Or, David Brooks.  Kristol is a foreign policy adviser for McCain’s campaign, by the way.  

Reading both articles, I have to confess that I agree with the Times’s decision, although I’ll also admit that my seething dislike of McCain probably sours my neutrality on the topic.  McCain’s article offers no new insight into the candidate’s position on Iraq and spends a majority of its word-count criticizing Obama’s similar Op-Ed piece last week.  The Times, which has stated that they will be happy to post an Op-Ed piece by McCain (and has done so at least 6 times, from what I can find), asked McCain to focus more on outlining his own strategies and less on attacking Obama’s position.  The little bit of media I have seen on the issue has spun this as a debate on equal representation for both candidates.  However, when comparing both Op-Ed pieces side by side, the Times’s criticism of McCain seems sound: Obama and his plan is the topical subject of roughly 43 percent of the sentences in McCain’s article, much less than the 11 percent of the sentences in Obama’s article that discuss McCain. 

If McCain is going to claim victim status against the “liberal” media, then he needs to offer an opinion article with more substantive articulations of his policies.  Obama’s Op-Ed came before Obama’s speech on Iraq and offered a lot of new, insightful articulations of his policies towards Iraq and Afghanistan (McCain has even cited Obama’s article to demonstrate Obama’s views).  McCain’s article, however, only reiterates things that McCain has said before and does so with an extra dose of venom.  Obama, while throwing in a few soft punches at McCain, has no statements as unabashedly aggressive as, “Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say.”

Ouch!!  I love the passive-aggressive “perhaps,” by the way.  McCain should at least have the balls to make his statement out-right if he’s going to say something so accusatory.

The press, in all of their fervor about equal representation, has ignored what I believe to be one of McCain’s most grotesque statements yet: “I find it ironic that [Obama] is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.”

The worst mistake?  It doesn’t take a liberal to think of worse mistakes.  I’d start with Katrina.  To be fair, McCain has criticized Bush for his lack of response to Katrina and promised, ”I would have landed my plane at the nearest Air Force base and come over personally.”  Of course, words are easy.  Perhaps McCain, like Bush, decided to party instead.  “Let them eat cake!”

McCain and Bush when Katrina landed on August 29th, 2005. Notice the tarmac and the big, unused Air Force One slightly out of picture.

 

 

Standing Up!

This Friday night I stood up to someone.  I’m not usually the type to stand my ground, especially aggressively, but for some reason– call it alcohol, perhaps– I decided not to take any bullshit. 

The situation was fairly simple: three gay men at the abbey sat down in some of my friends’ seats while my friends were in the restroom.  My friend Charles approached them and told them that the seats were already taken but the three men, lighting up cigarettes and drinking wine, said that they would leave when my friends got there.  Well, once my friends arrived, the three men refused to budge and kept saying “in a little bit” or “it’s cool.”  After about 5 minutes, I gave them another warning.  They refused and one of the men tipped his cigarette ashes into what was left of my friend’s mostly empty mojito. 

I was angry and felt compelled to protect my friends from this sort of insult.  So, I put my finger on top of the mojito’s straw and siphoned out whatever I could into one of the three men’s wine glasses.  Needless to say, they were pissed but my desired effect was quick.  One of the men threw the tainted wine at me and then, satisfied, left with his friends.

I felt very proud of myself and wore the wine honorably.  I deserved to have it thrown at me, no doubt, but I didnt feel ashamed: I held my ground for my friends.  However rudely I might have acted, I feel that the three men deserved what they got.  I’m not sure where my assertiveness came from, but I’m somewhat happy to know that it is there inside of me, somewhere.

 

McGreedy and Social Security

I had to post a brief response to this article I read on yahoo about the amount of money each year that McCain receives from social security:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080717/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_social_security

 

Frankly, I find it disgusting that a man who earns more than 400k a year and is married to a woman worth 100 million dollars would decide to accept any money whatsoever from social security.  To make McCain’s greed even more gross, McCain hypocritically criticizes the current system because, as it is currently planned, it is running out of money.  Instead of serving as a role model for Americans and demonstrating what they can do to help fix problems in their country (as any good president should do),  McCain has resorted to petty speeches against a problem which he is unwilling to undertake any personal sacrifices to repair.  To be fair, any wealthy American who does not need this money should refuse to accept it so that tax payers are not feeding the bank accounts of wealthy citizens.  McCain, or anyone with a ridiculously large income, should not accept government benefits they clearly do not need. 

Then again, we are also talking about a candidate who brags about his ability to hike the grand canyon even while collecting a 60k per year 100 percent tax exempt pension from the military for his disability.  I respect his service to his country, and the physical sacrifices he has made, but if he is going to brag about being in tip-top health then he should probably not also claim disability.

It is also worthwhile to note that his medical records, released to the AP, listed only the following noteworthy problems (http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/e791.htm):

• McCain’s prostate is slightly enlarged, typical for a man in his 60s.
• He has seasonal hay fever, for which he uses a nasal spray.
• His only continual medications are daily aspirin therapy, commonly prescribed once men hit their 50s or 60s to prevent heart attacks, and the antioxidant vitamins C and E.
• A colonoscopy in 1995 found a few small, benign polyps, again typical for his age. A repeat exam in 1997 was normal.

That doesn’t sound like someone who is still suffering from a disability.

 

Why Act Ethically?

I am reading Peter Singer lately.  For those who are not familiar with him, I strongly suggest you check out an article he wrote for the NY Times about two years ago:  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/magazine/17charity.t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

 

In the book I am reading, How Are We to Live?, Singer argues why an individual should act ethically, even if unethical actions might go unpunished.  His book, from what I can gather from the first fifty or so pages, is an assault against current trends in western (US) ethics which praises self-interests over community interests.  Although I am not ready to evaluate his argument, which I will do in this blog hopefully in the next few days, from what I can gather his book raises a few important points:

1)  If we do not consider religion as a reason to act ethically (for example, arguing ethics to an atheist), and if we imagine an individual who can act unethically without any personal reprocussions (such as imprisonment, social exclusion, etc), then it is difficult to establish a sound logical argument for why a person should consider the well-being of others.  Principles like “do unto others” cannot apply here, since a person who is greedy might argue “but I benefit more from doing unto others what is best for me.”  What real argument can you propose to argue against a rugged individualist?

2)  His book suggests, from the back cover at least, to argue that ethical actions are a way to invest life with meaning and counter some of the meaningless created by modernism:  “Singer suggests that people who take an ethical approach to life often avoid the trap of meaninglessness, finding a deeper satisifaction in what they are doing than those people whose goals are narrower and more self-centered.  He spells out what he means by an ethical approach and shows that it can bring about significant and far-reaching changes to one’s own life.”  It seems like his argument might not so much as question individual self-interest as argue that self-interests are best satisfied through working towards fulfilling community interests.  If this is indeed his argument, I like that he argues in favor of community ethics without demonizing the self, which is a common problem with a lot of socialist or communist philosophies that I have read (although, granted, I have not read enough to consider myself an expert here).

 

I am reading this book in part because the article that I linked to at the start of my post has really made me question the ethics behind several of my own recent decisions.  For example, how can I justify living with any sort of luxury when the amount of money I am spending on unnecessary goods could help significantly improve the lives of people who cannot even afford basic necessities.   Like most philosophy, his writing will probably raise more questions than answers.  I wonder though if I will also be willing to accept the answers he does offer.  If his book presents a logical argument for asceticism, will I have the fortitude to act accordingly?

 

Fannie and Freddie Get Saved!

So, the Bush government decided yesterday to use tax payers’ money to rescue the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financial corporations.  I am impressed by how quickly the administration responded to their financial meltdown, but I wonder why the government has been so slow to save the individuals suffering from those corporations’ poor mortgage practices.  What of the individuals who have foreclosed houses?  Will we only save the foreclosed companies, so to speak?

There is a disturbing irony here: republicans will opt to socialize a buisness that is failing, and yet remain so adamant about privitizing any business that is earning a profit.  Who knew Bush was such a socialist?

 

Rebuttle to Anti-Gay Marriage Arguments

I posted this on a political message board that I occasionally frequent and thought I would repost it here.  This was a brief post I made arguing against what I believe to be the five most frequently used arguments against gay marriage.

 

 

 

Before I begin, please note some of my sarcasm. As I stress, this is a personal issue for me being discussed politically. I doubt many of you would like the deepest and most personal core of your family lives becoming issues of national debate and would feel quite frustrated and offended if your own personal lives were so invaded, often denounced.

I have to chime in at least once in every gay marriage thread. In the first few, I was very vocal. However, as I feel with almost every philosophy thread, after a few pages any comment you make really just becomes another voice in a hurricane: it is impossible to hear anything except the posts right next to you. Needless to say, I can’t read this whole thread.

I’m an out gay man, and I also study queer literature and queer theory (I have an MA in literature and will be starting a PhD this fall) and have read a lot on the topic. My views are biased, but they are also personal. For most other people here, I imagine their views are mostly political or spiritual and do not have a direct impact on their day to day life.

I will list a few short bullet point counter/preemptive-arguments, since I find that I tend to be less long winded that way:

1) On the definition of marriage: conservatives did not argue when the definition of the 2nd amendment was recently reinterpreted to change the meaning of “a well-regulated militia” into a more modern context. Furthermore, the definition of marriage in the west has changed dramatically since early civilization, and even in the last 100 years. Marriages used to be arranged by parents and approved by the monarchy and marriages used to be restricted to people of the same social class, race, religion, nationality, sex, and appropriate grammatical usage of who vs. whom (I am kidding on the last one). Since we do not require a dowry anymore, and since we also allow interracial marriages (they were illegal in some states in the US until 1967!), I am certain that we do not carve the definition of marriage in stone. I say if you want an unchanged, core-western values definition of marriage, you should be required to take the traditional definition of marriage, dowrys and everything.

2) On the “preservation” of marriage: if you are worried about the preservation of marriage, “why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” If you want to use law to preserve marriage, argue first for the illegalization of divorce. The lack of support for such a measure will cut through a lot of the “sanctimony” of marriage rhetoric, I imagine. Almost all objects to gay marriage stem from a discomfort of gay issues and are usually covered up with an appeal to tautologically accepted values, usually “family” values. The “family” has always been a nice rhetorical shelter to hide intolerance since the cold war. The truth is, not many families are like Ozzie and Harriet (yes, I’m only 23 but I know some classic tv sitcoms like that). If you want to preserve families, look at the things that make them suffer. If the energy that went out against gay marriage was redirected towards poverty, you’d do a lot more good to save families and marriages. Most marriages end because of money issues, or so I’ve heard.

3) On Polygamy, Bestiality, Necrophilia, Etc.: As much as many conservatives (especially Christian FUNDAMENTALISTS) want religion and politics to blur together until we are the Christian equivalent of the Shia government (with George Bush as the Ayatollah, I presume), that has not happened yet. If anything, I am for gay marriage to prevent us from enacting Christian laws as harsh as those enacted by the Iranian government on its people and entirely dissolving the separation of church and state. Yes, this is a slippery slope argument (one that I do not actually believe). However, if anyone gets to use the slippery slope argument for “Polygamy, Bestiality, Necrophilia, Etc.”, then I reserve my right to label any oppositional views as western equivalents to islamo-fascists. Stop calling me the precursor to bestality, and I will stop calling you the precursor to Christian-Shiaism. Deal? I know how much you all hate Iran afterall.

4) On Religion: I very well might get married in a tolerant church someday. If my religion is to be restricted and not recognized by the state, then I demand that a similar restriction be placed on every other religion. I will not debate religious views of homosexuality, since no religion is not currently perceived as the source of our law and there are too many religious views for me to address them all. If any religious marriage is to be recognized by our laws, then so should mine. If you use the slippery slope argument (Polygamy, Bestiality, Necrophilia being the most common), or any of the other arguments I previously mentioned, please see the corresponding number.

5a) On Non-Procreation/Marriage for Children: Many gay couples have children. If you argue that gay people should not be married because marriage is intended to produce and raise children, then make gay adoption illegal (and I am sure some of you feel it should be). You will still be stuck with gay families that have kids from other marriages. If you take my preserve marriage argument and illegalize divorce, this will only be a problem in the case of a few widows. Those poor widows aside (law always leaves some people out, and besides, when a widow has already suffered so much, who cares if they suffer a little more by losing the recognition of their family?), society will have a substantial number of unadopted children if gay families are unallowed to adopt. Furthermore, if abortion is illegalized, this number will sky-rocket. Where will all of these kids go?  The dumpster?  Foster care?  I know how much you conservatives hate opening your pockets for social programs.  

5b) On Non-Procreation/Marriage for Children: The typical, “many people cannot produce kids, elderly marriages should be made illegal, as well as marriages between sterile people, etc.” objection. Also, we should set a financial requirement for marriage if this is the logic for our marriage, since poor people really cannot afford kids. Of course, since a larger percentage of the poor are people of color, this might also satisfy a few other discriminatory agendas.

My whole argument from points 1-5 is basically that if certain values are going to be espoused in opposition to gay marriage, those values should be taken to their logical and necessary conclusions. The problem is that most gay marriage objections really are just covers for people being deep down uncomfortable with gay people in general. None of that, “I have a gay friend or gay brother/sister, but…” story. If you truely have someone close to you who is gay or lesbian, and you really care about them, you will care about them enough to reevaluate your views so that they can live a happy, undiscriminated life. If you do not reevaluate your views, then you simply do not care about them all enough to use them as a rhetorical shield in an argument.

 

Coffee Talk

Diesel Cafe, Boston

I suppose that my favorite memories of this summer will be the 5-10 times that I spent talking to my mom at a local coffee shop.  I have always thought that the traditional bookish, “sit and stay awhile” coffee shop atmosphere that most corporate and non-corporate stores strive for offers an unusually calming yet focused environment for conversation.  I am sure science or anthropology could argue some measurable physiological reason for this, perhaps the smell of coffee, which researchers recently discovered can both energize and relax the brain;  I do not know.  For me, I think the appeal of a coffee shop is much more simple: when I am at a coffee shop I am able to give someone, or something (such as a book), my full and almost completely undistracted attention.  Our culture, which thrives on commercial distractions every seven or so minutes, offers few other spaces where we can devote ourselves so throughly and continually to another human being.  Such a simple, but irreplaceably humane gesture.

My mother doesn’t understand how I can focus at a coffee shop, but this is because she is not a regular.  For me, the distractions at a coffee shop have been ingrained into my experience of relaxation.  When I hear the slightly newage, yet politically neutral acoustic of a starbucks soundtrack, or the background sussurus of after-work gossip, or even the cashier-counter orders of needlessly brisk customers, I experience a subtle, but immediate tranquility that would make Pavlov proud.  The coffee shops’ foresty earthtones are forever entwined with my memories of college (where I discovered my love of coffee lounging), finding independence, and self-discovery.  These feelings seem to me most similar to nostalgia, except I feel a fondness for memories and times that I have not really lost (I am still a college student, for example).  Perhaps I can best describe this all as a nostalgia for the present, yet even this still feels like too vague and romantic of a description.  Labels, afterall, are necessarily restricting. 

I wish I could teach this perception to my mother, and I keep goading her into coffee shops hoping that this aesthetic will stick.  I know we will miss each other when I am in Boston, and I wonder if after I leave espresso might sometime prompt in her the same twinge of personal memories that it does for me.  Maybe her feelings will be more accurately described as nostalgic.  Perhaps then, so will mine.

 

Earning It: the Rhetoric of Unfair Wealth Distribution and “Hand-Outs”

Last week, I went to my uncle’s house for a pre-Fourth of July family gathering.  Although the majority of my extended family, long conditioned into Suburban Victorianesque civility, prefers to avoid political discussions, these sort of stepford-like manners tend to goad me into interjecting my liberal views.  At these family meetings, I usually feel like some sort of Democratic Robert Thorn (from the movie Soylent Green, a role played by Charleton Heston– which I find to be ironic, since I always felt the movie pushed for a very liberal ethics) crying out with necessary convication against what I perceive to be harmful, but somehow unrecognized social truths.  I feel that my refusual to raise controversial subjects, instead of being polite, rudely encourages certain members in my family to continue holding unethical perspectives.  I am a liberal Evangelical of sorts, preaching from my ethical imperative to convert others.  This is somewhat hypocritical because I despise the Evangelical “convert everyone” approach to religion, but I excuse my ethical objection to intolerance when it comes to conservative politics. 

Thankfully, my family is mostly liberal and usually votes democratic.  The exception to this is my uncle, whose house we met at this last week.  I never remember how my family debates begin, but I remember that about halfway into the hummus platter the topic of charitable donations for Hurricane Katrina victims stormed up.  My uncle and a conservative friend of the family both argued that it was irresponsible for people to own homes they cannot properly insure and that the government should not have to step in and give ”hand outs” to displaced families.  Both of them added something about having “earned” their living, worked hard for their large houses, and responsibly secured their property.  Why, they asked, should the government encourage irresponsible property decisions?  Why should they hand out their “hard earned” money to help people who lived beyond their means?

Although I am tempted to raise a lot of objections– the same ones that I raised over appetizers– about the underlining social assumptions of their argument, what interests me most in hind-sight is the assumption that large amounts of money can be justly “earned.”  As I am sure readers have noticed, I have been persistently putting scare quotes around “earned” to highlight this word for what it is: a rewards-based justification for privilege.  The rhetorical assumption behind “earning” money is that whatever an individual gains from their work is an appropriate and logical cause and effect result of their labor: if I work a certain amount of hours at my job, I am entitled to a certain amount of pay.

While I do not believe that there is a problem for people being rewarded with money for their labor (I believe that capitalism is necessary and logical, although I deeply wish for the possibility of socialism), there is a disturbing rheotic behind my uncle’s use of earning to justify his inclination against donating money to people suffering in the US or abroad.  I do not like the greedily truistic logic presented by assuming that no matter how grossly a person is paid, they are “earning” their money.  Inversely, do Katrina victims “earn” their suffering, at least until they “earn” their way out of it?

Earning, as it is used in commerce, slips too easily from a neutral labor-money exchange and becomes an ethical argument.  Does someone who earns thousands of dollars an hour for relatively routine, if not boring and stressful, legal work really earn, or deserve, their extraordinary income?  A supply and demand analysis of economics might argue that they do.  However, when considering that a coal miner, however platitudinal of an example, earns significantly less than a lawyer for much more physically demanding and dangerous work, does it seem fair that a lawyer earns substantially more money from the comfortable confines of a large, air-conditioned private office?  I am sure that the lawyer feels just as entitled to his money as any low-income wage worker: he worked for it, afterall.  However, just because someone works for money, and “earns” it, does not mean that they deserve a standard of living which is significantly higher than someone else who works an equal amount of time in a more dangerous, if not also more physically taxing, career.  Sure, the lawyer’s job might be more mentally taxing, but who would trade an ergonomic chair and air-conditioning, despite the headaches and years of college, for severe long-term exposure risks and muscle-numbing labor?  However, I must mention that the under-the-table demand for Vicodin and Morphine has demonstrated that muscle-numbness is an expensive luxury among the upper-classes.  Despite this, I think the assumed responses for my hypotheticals still stand. 

While I do not believe that all career fields should have equal pay, or even that coal miners should earn more than lawyers (market supply and demand should have some, although not too much, say for income), the wide-spread use of “earnings” supports too individualistic of a view about money.  My uncle did not want to divide his money amongst the needy because he “earned” his money while people who gain money as a result of suffering supposedly did not.  As such, any money which is given altruistically, just to help someone else, becomes a “hand-out.”  “Earning” money erases the concept of a social contract between the “haves” and “have-nots” from our collective conscience and urges us to keep what we deserve; anyone who needs money does not deserve it, is “leeching” off of society, and is too lazy to “earn” it on his or her own. 

This rhetoric of earning as deserving manifests itself throughout society; some examples of this might include: excuses for unnecessary consumption spending (“well, I earned this expensive car/ I deserve it because I’ve been working hard”), arguments against taxation (“why does the government deserve my hard earned money”), and arguments against welfare (the equation between earning and underserving/lazy, the “welfare state” and “welfare queen” concepts).  Our social morality has shifted away from most traditional and cultural imperatives for charity stressed by nearly every major religion.  Instead, when I talk to my uncle about donating to people suffering in Darfur or Louisiana, I find that I have to provide the burden of proof, as if helping another person is not a self-evident imperative.  We have lost any trace of our pre-historic communal nature; instead, we live in an era of social Darwinism where individual comforts are synonymous with success and individuals are measured by the size of their house instead of (forgive the cliche!) the size of their heart.

 

This Just In, Over and Over Again…

I’m a bit of a news junkie, especially now that I have started blogging.  I love watching and listening to a variety of news mediums, liberal and conservative, because the diversity of opinions and the wide variety of random stories excites me.  I love guessing, depending on the political lean of the anchor, which stories will be covered and in what depth. 

The other night, while watching CNN, they announced the release of the 5 US hostages in Columbia.  I, for one, didn’t even know we had hostages over there but was glad to hear that they were safe and a bit worried that I didn’t know they were ever in trouble. 

Today, CNN is still discussing the story– and so is everyone else!  As a result, I’ve been very bored with the news lately.  I don’t feel that there is any journalism going on right now, just tons and tons of repetitive accounts and interviews about the same story.  This type of coverage must be easy for journalists: just find anyone connected to the story, get a few neat angles, and repeat the story over and over again from slightly different angles for a few days.  No more sleuthing!  No more story-chasing.  I love journalism that sifts through the dirt and discovers interesting, unheard of topics.  The campaign right now thrills me, for example, because even though it is easy there is so much fodder out there for organizations to choose from!  I love the thought process, the curious implications when an anchor or host discusses one quote instead of another quote, or interviews one person connected to a story instead of another person being interviewed by another channel (would they have preferred the other person?  Who got the better story?).

Today, I am bored with the news.  I’m tired of hearing about the same story again and again.  I’m starting to hate big, breaking news– or at least the types that don’t raise any interesting questions (the Rev. Wright story, even though it was carried on WAAAY too long, at least raised some interesting discussions about race, for example).