Paging Bill O'Reilly...

It seems that "The War On Christmas" had gone on sabbatical this year, so someone went out to recall it. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports: "Ho-ho-no: McDermott votes against Christmas," calling out the Representative for voting against House Resolution 847, noting the fact that he voted for House Resolutions 635 and 747 which acknowledge the onset of Ramadan and Diwali, respectively, and make bland expressions of "respect" to Muslims, Indian Americans and the Indian Diaspora. H RES 635 does seem to have something of a point, being mainly an exhortation to Americans to remember that not all Muslims are anti-American.

Although the article is written as if the three resolutions were the same, differing only in the religion named in each one, the details offered show some clear differences. But the long and short of it is that H RES 847 seems to have been designed mainly to pander to Evangelicals who may have felt slighted by the other two resolutions, and determined to answer one slight with one of their own. Tom Tancredo seems to think that the "liberal elite" is going to take exception to the resolution (but he also sees the line between church and state as "non-existent") - I'm curious to see if he's right, or if the only teapot tempest that this is going to generate will be from Evangelopatriot commentators who will see McDermott's refusal to pander to someone else's constituency as heralding the annual onslaught of the forces of Evil.

The Security Show

You know, I could pontificate on aviation "security theater," or, I could let someone much better at it do it for me.

"DHS is another example of that old political standby: Don't just stand there; do something that will keep people from noticing that you're just standing there." Bruce Reed ("The Has Been - My Kingdom for a Department" Slate Magazine, 13 July, 2005)

But I suppose that part of the issue is that there's really nothing wrong with just standing there, if someone else is effectively handling the problem elsewhere. But we, as the general public, want to SEE action being taken. So the guy on the scene, even if there's nothing he can do, has to go through the motions of trying to make a difference. We see this public performance, and decide that things are being handled. So... where's the incentive to have someone working their tail off to do the heavy lifting, if no one is going to know, or care? Hence the public perception of something being done becomes more useful than something actually being done - so nothing is actually done.

Confused yet?

Gotcha

Mark Morford, a columnist for SFGate (which I think is part of the San Francisco Chronicle), penned an interesting column about the way the media reports religion.

"And finally, I think of the eternal chicken-and-egg debate, modified thusly: Which came first, the radical fundamentalists who can't walk and chew warm theology at the same time, or the overeager commercial media, ever in need of tales of shock and titillation and blood to get you to pay attention?"
Mark Morford. "Let us kill all the teddy bears"

During his piece, he takes aim at Pope Benedict XVI, on the strength of a piece from ABC News, in which it is purported that a "Papal Letter Blames Atheism for World's Worst Woes." I popped over the Vatican's website, and read Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, and realized that this time out, the overeager commercial media got the last laugh. While you can understand how the Associated Press writer came to her conclusions, it's pretty clear that this particular tale of shock has been modified a wee bit, to make it a little more, well, shocking.

The interpretation of papal language isn't exactly my chosen career, so I'm not going to attempt to give you a full picture of Benedict's statements here. But the alleged papal "blame game" goes a little something like this: People see the injustice in the world, cannot understand how a just and loving God allows such things, and turn to atheism. Believing that there is no God to create justice, such people have no hope for the future. If they are in positions of power, and attempt to enforce a just society on people, you can wind up with horrendous atrocities. In other words, lack of faith in God can lead well-meaning people to do nasty things while trying to bring about a just end, not realizing that only God can manage the goal they're striving for. Hardly a scathing criticism, especially when one considers the fact that Benedict feels that this has come about because Christianity itself "has been individualized and primarily oriented towards the salvation of the believer's own soul [...]" Perhaps more importantly, this criticism of atheism is only a very small part of a rather long encyclical - you've got to do a LOT of reading about other topics before you get there.

Lesson for today - if one is going to slam the media for constantly looking to shock and titillate, it's not a good idea to uncritically take their shocking and titillating stories at face value...

You Forgot One

There is a stereotype that the "mainstream media" is selective in which candidates they talk about - and this perception is strongest among the supporters of the second-tier candidates. Ron Paul supporters, for instance, made a lot of the fact that the "MSM" seemed to avoid talking about their candidate in the early stages of the election. In this Associated Press story about todays' NPR radio-only debate in Iowa, the AP completely glosses over the fact that former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, as a candidate for the democratic presidential nomination, was at the debate. The article doesn't include a simple list of the participants - if you didn't know who was there, you'd need to pick their names out the overall text of the article, and Gravel's name doesn't appear anywhere in it. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, even though he wasn't at the debate, gets a mention in the story, explaining his absence.

As for the debate itself, I listened to it, and felt that there should have been more effort made to have each candidate speak to every question. The hosts did seem to direct more of the questions to the presumed front-runners.

Blame It On The Rain

Today, we were served with a reminder that it only rarely ever really rains in Seattle. Typically, what the locals normally describe as rain is, to an out-of-towner, simply a lingering drizzle. Which is why people in Seattle are dying for bit of sunshine in place that gets less annual rainfall than, say, New York City.

But today, it rained. For real. And half the Puget Sound region is flooded out. Entire apartment complexes in low-lying areas are dealing with feet of standing water. And because of the haphazard (at best) planning that went into the region's explosive growth, two or three flooded intersections can result in detours 10 miles, and a couple hours, long.

I always find it odd how little water it really takes to bring this place to a standstill. Despite the fact that we allegedly live in a temperate rain forest, this area is very water intolerant, and when more than an inch or two falls in a short span of time, everything goes crazy. And there seems to be little, if any, real official response to the changing conditions. Despite the fact that roads were closed all over the place, you couldn't find a police officer, or anyone else who could tell you what was going on, or which roads were still open. Traffic reports on the radio weren't much help, either. This general lack of preparation seems to be common in these sorts of situations, and consistently makes matters worse, as you wind up with people wandering around, not knowing where they should be attempting to go. This situation needs to change, so that people can make better judgments as to what they should be doing, and avoid making themselves into part of the problem.