At least they don't have socialized medicine!

As an ethical question, I was intrigued to read about this case in Peru about a young woman who is selling her virginity to pay her sick mother's medical bills. Her newspaper advertisement asked for the equivalent of about US$9500.

The advert has provoked a furor in the macho, heavily Catholic country. "This shows that there is a crisis of values in this country. She should get a job and not sell her body!" said one female parliamentarian who would do better to help address the country's economic crisis and cripplingly high unemployment.

Tellingly, the young woman told a Spanish paper, "I got thousands of emails, most using words I would not dare repeat. But nobody offered a solution for my family."

I wonder why...

I wonder why so much of the US right wing screams bloody murder about the United Nations' supposed invasion of American sovereignty, The UN is little more than a toothless tiger (except when Washington is able to bully it to the US administration's own ends). At the end of the day, the US follows the UN when it wants to and ignores it when it wants to. The UN can't do anything about it.

The World Trade Organization, on the other the hand, truly is an infringement of national sovereignty. If the US ignores WTO rulings, it is punished with trade sanctions. Yet the WTO barely gets mentioned by the right.

The WTO is even more secretive and unaccountable than the UN but has actual power.

I wonder why the right choose easy, powerless targets rather than real ones.

Or is it more about cheap, diversionary symbolism than substance?

...but I know it when I see it

So you thought the FCC's crackdown on the deliciously vague violation of 'indecency' on broadcast airwaves was over the top?

It could get worse.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, wants to criminalize so-called indecency.

Instead of being in violation of federal regulations and subject to a fine, Sensenbrenner would turn indecency (however that's defined... if it's defined) into a criminal offense and subject possibly to jail time.

The other change is that the target of big government's wrath would not be radio and TV stations but the actual people who perpetrated the 'indecency.' Thus, stations would no longer be liable for what their invited guests do or say.

Sensenbrenner encouraged cable operators to do more to promote ways that parents can block unsavory programming they do not want and said that "The first thing we need is education has got to get better."

He added, "You can't expect the government to replace parental responsibility," which is exactly what his proposal purports to do.

It is not yet clear if Sensenbrenner wants criminal penalties to include jail time; it's still vague at this point.

In fact, the 'decency' itself, as a legal concept, is very vague. Too vague. I'd love to see how the criminalization of 'broadcast indecency' would stand up in court.

Or perhaps it's being left vague for quite intentional reasons. It's worth noting that Sensenbrenner made these intimidating comments before the National Cable & Telecommunications Association annual convention.

The main problem with this atrocity is that it gives far too much authority to limit freedom of speech to those in power.

When I was in Guinea, a man was thrown in jail for naming his dog after the head of state. In Zimbabwe (and other countries), it's a crime to insult the president. Imagine how many anti-Clinton folks could've been imprisoned in the 90s for that. An opposition activist was thrown in jail in Zimbabwe late last year for calling the country's strongman Robert Mugabe 'thick headed' and another met the same fate for correctly referring to Mugabe as a 'dictator.'

How do you define obscenity? Or do you define it?

If you define it, then freedom of speech is dependent on whoever's in power (and is in a position to define the crime). Who's to say it won't be defined with a Mugabe-esque interpretation?

If you don't define it, then it's horrifically vague and subject to the whim of whoever's in power (and in a position to prosecute whoever they feel like)

Today, 'obscenity' could be "Bush is Hitler."

Tommorrow, 'obscenity' could just as easily become "illegal immigration is a bad idea."

It's truly a Pandora's Box.

Some will dismiss this is the typical whinings of liberals and ACLU-types. The fact of the matter is that the 'politically incorrect' have as much to worry about this bill as anyone else. What happens if liberals get in power and decide to say that 'political incorrectness' constitutes obscenity?

It is interesting that conservatives usually reject the concept that the airwaves are public property but accept this concept for the purpose of regulating something they don't like. They'd never try to get away with this for newspapers.

I think Howard Stern is a horse's rear end. My brother loves him. My solution and the solution of most 'freedom loving people' [(c) 2002 G.W.Bush] is to ignore something that we know we dislike. Sensenbrenner's solution is to impose his dislike on every American.

Do you want politicians to tell you what you can and can't watch?


Update: Even in the Guinea, the only West African state to not allow private TV or radio stations, they are going in the opposite direction as Sensenbrenner's criminalization efforts. The country's information minister is reportedly calling for the decriminalization of press 'offenses' for the print media.

'Civility in political life' and its manifestations

At the now infamous 'Justice Sunday' [sic] sponsored by right wing religious groups, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said, "Emotions are running high on both sides, and it reveals once again our country's desperate need for more civility in political life."

Ironic since Frist's comments were at an event whose subtitle was the loaded 'Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith.'

As noble as Sen. Frist's words may have been, few others at the event seemed to be paying attention.

Charles W. Colson, head of Prison Fellowship Ministries, said that Democrats' actions in blocking a handful of the most extreme judicial nominations (versus the nearly 200 Bush judicial nominees approved) "are destroying the balance of power, which was a vital Christian contribution to the founding of our nation."

James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, said that the Supreme Court's majority "was unelected and unaccountable and arrogant and imperious and determined to redesign the culture according to their own biases and values, and they're out of control" and that most of the justice do not care "about the sanctity of life." He referred to Democrats' blocking of a less than a dozen judges as "judicial tyranny to people of faith."

Is this the moderation Frist was talking about?

Chinese government denounces revisionism

There's something more than a little ironic about the latest row between China and Japan. China is making a big deal about the fact that some Japanese school textbooks seem to downplay Japan's atrocities during World War II.

This is hardly surprising. I think most countries' textbooks tend to downplay the more unsavory parts of national history. I know American school textbooks make a big deal about 'Manifest destiny' but not quite as much about its consequence: the genocide of the Native Americans. When I was in Guinea, their civics texts hardly mentioned the horrific repression of the First Republic (1958-84) except in the most vague terms. I wonder how much detail British and French textbooks go into the atrocities committed during colonialism in Africa or the ruthless Dutch campaign in Indonesia.

Even though the Japanese prime minister took the unprecedented step of apologizing for Japan's wartime crimes, China wasn't satisified. China wasn't mentioned specifically in the apology.

Of course, the textbook issue is merely a ruse for the Chinese to pick a fight. It makes people forget that Japan is a fairly prosperous democracy and China is an authoritarian state.

While there's more than a grain of truth in the complaint that Japan has barely done anything to face up to its atrocious crimes during World War II and before, I wonder how people in Tibet feel about China's denunciations of Japanese imperialism.

And it's quite amusing to hear the Chinese autocracy, of all countries, complaining about censorship and glossing over history. I wonder how many Chinese textbooks mention the Tianamen Square uprising and massacre. I wonder how many mention tens of millions who starved during Mao's Great Leap Forward [sic].

Then again, the row with the Japanese is surely one of the few news stories NOT censored by the regime.

Bettman and Goodenow should resign

Bobo's blog made a long overdue suggestion to address the league-imposed lockout that cost the National Hockey League its season.

It is time for [NHL Commissioner Gary] Bettman and [NHL Players' Association chief Bob] Goodenow to meet continously until they have reached a decision or resign and make room for new negotiators.

I say skip the interim. They've already met many times. While substantive differences aren't nil, it seems clear to most observers that the personal animosity between Bettman and Goodenow is a major obstacle standing in the way of a settlement.

The NHL became the first league in North American sports' history to cancel its entire season due to a labor dispute. Bettman and Goodenow are co-captains of this Titanic. They should both resign now before the league disappears. Ice hockey is too great a sport. Its fans deserve better.

The league is already talking about using scabs (replacement players) for next season. I trust this is just a bargaining ploy by owners. Even the NHL product has declined in quality over the last ten years because of the teams' emphasis on slow, hyperdefensive play and the league's refusal to crack down on hooking, holding and interference. But a second-rate product would be even more resoundingly rejected by fans. This wouldn't halt the league's fading into oblivion. It would accelerate it.


Update: The Players' Association is seeking trade union status in Quebec and British Columbia, reports the Canada's CBC. In those provinces, if unionized workers go on strike, replacement workers can not be engaged. This would prevent the Vancouver Canucks and Montreal Canadiens from using scab players, as the league has hinted it might do next season if the league-imposed lockout is not resolved.

(Yet another) red card for ESPN

Last Saturday marked the first ever derby (intra-city match) in Major League Soccer history. The contest pitted Los Angeles Galaxy and Chivas USA, which is also based in the southern California city. Los Angeles outclassed its rival in a match that was more one-sided than the 3-1 scoreline indicated. But the atmosphere in the Home Depot Center was electric.

So thunderous was the crowd's roar that it was impossible to talk to the person standing next to you on the sidelines without yelling, reported LA's DailyBreeze.com

An atmosphere common in other parts of the world and some US national team matches, but a welcome addition to the domestic American soccer scene.

A red card goes to the ESPN2 network which televised the game... sort of.

The game was preceded by the NFL (gridiron football) draft. This is where franchises select the rights to various amateur players. The draft went significantly longer than expected. Eventually, ESPN2 did broadcast the MLS game on a tape delay. But they made a cardinal error.

During the draft, the ticker at the bottom of the screen kept fans updated with the score of the LA-Chivas match. So by the time the game started, fans already knew that LA scored the first three goals, Chivas scored one in the second half and had a man sent off. So much for the drama and suspense.

But most astonishing was ESPN's explanation.

"That's definitely an honest mistake," said Mac Nwulu, the associate manager for communications at the network. "It seems to have happened several times, even during the [2002] World Cup."

So they keep making the same mistakes over and over and that's supposed to make fans feel better?! Talk about inspiring confidence.

The "all sports network," whose programming is increasingly dominated by non-sport programming (drafts, poker, cheerleading, 'reality shows'), has been contemptuous of soccer at every turn. This is hardly the first time they've messed around with the sport.

And the worst part is that MLS buys time on ESPN to air the game of the week. So MLS pays money to be treated like garbage.

Most soccer fans, and surely the league itself, would wish MLS (and the European Champions League) away from the ESPN in a heartbeat if there were another competing channel as widely accessible.

I'm waiting for the day an MLS game gets pre-empted by their pompous 'who wants to be a SportsCenter anchor' nonsense.

Much like MTV, ESPN used to be good. But it's become so self-important and self-referential, it's lost the very irreverence that once made it good.

Hysteria about teen drinking doing more harm than good

The new Adirondack Almanack blog comments the Glens Falls' Post-Star's Crusade against teen drinking (led by its managing editor Ken Tingley). Several local kids in the last few years have died in drinking and driving accidents. It seems every week it runs a story of someone getting busted for serving alcohol to minors. A few months ago, pictures of an underage alcohol party were posted on the Internet and someone reported it to authorities. The parents of one of the partyers were in the picture and this provoked the paper's Crusade.

Kids are getting drunk and dying in resulting car accidents. So how can this Crusade possibly be a problem?

The denial of reality does nothing to address any problem. Tingley derides this as 'the culture of acceptance,' when in fact it's more an acknowledgement. You have to properly analyze a problem in order to have any hope of solving it.

Some will retort something along the lines of: 'the law hasn't stopped all murders/thefts/rape but should we legalize those too?'

Yet murder is not nearly as common as youth drinking. Furthermore, murder and theft and rape are illegal for everyone, not just kids.

Tingley wags his finger at parents to know what their kids are doing and that will solve all the problems. This is a good idea, one that few would argue with. Parents should know what their kids are doing generally but 100% awareness is impossible.

This might be easier for Tingley, whose children are younger. But the reality is that parents micromanage their kids' lives less when they're 17 than when they're 8. Even responsible parents. Especially responsible parents.

It's the natural order of things. Giving kids freedom means giving them a certain amount of freedom to screw up. The alternative is house arrest until they go off to college or move out.

The whole campaign against drinking and driving has been successful precisely because it avoids the head-in-the-sand approach. It's been successful precisely because it recognizes the reality that undesirable as it may be, people will get drunk and need to have a responsible plan B when they do. Tingley's ostrich approach will not save any lives. The opposite is more likely.

Tingley and his paper have made one legitimate point. As long as youth drinking is illegal, parents have the right to reasonably expect that other parents won't give their kids alcohol.

However, what's most demagogic about The Post-Star's 'Stone the heretics' campaign is its almost pathological inability/refusal to distinguish between three very different phenomenons: drinking to excess, teen drinking and drinking & driving.

It's also the most counterproductive aspect of their Crusade.

There is a wider drinking culture in this country. People, kids or adults, can't watch a sporting event without seeing beer advertisements with scantily clad women. Alcohol is marketed as cool. Every weekend, adults stumble around South Street (Glens Falls' bar district) in a state of total inebriation, arguing with lampposts, pedestrians dodging them. Being drunk is worse for kids, physiologically; but certainly it's bad for adults too. Such adult activity has not, to my knowledge, provoked a single self-righteous editorial.

Furthermore, binge drinking (by adults) is tacitly encouraged. Happy hour and drink specials at bars. $1 beer nights at the ballpark. Our local hockey team offers discounted beer for 5 minutes after every power play goal scored by the good guys. Root for the home team AND get drunk at the same time!

Do you think kids don't notice these things?

The focus of most anti-drinking-and-driving education is on kids. When an adult dies in a drunk driving accident, the newspaper never calls for alcohol to be banned for adults. It never calls for a 'burn the witches' campaign against bar owners. It's written off as the bad judgement of one person, something for which everyone else shouldn't have to pay for.

Tingley views the issue in stark terms. His most recent column framed the issue like this: Some believe teen drinking is a rite of passage that can never be stopped. Others say there must be a better way.

There is a better way. But it won't be found with his simplistic dichotomy of 'if not Puritanism, then hedonism'

We don't just give teens car keys the day they turn 16, along with unlimited freedom to drive. There's a supervised transition period. There's a recognition that driving responsibly isn't something your instantly endowed with the minute the clock strikes midnight on a certain day. It's something you have to learn, over time.

In fact, that's the whole basis of parenting. You help them tie their shoelaces until they can do it themselves. You help them ride their bike, catch a fly ball, even bathe them, until they're old enough to do it without you.

Yet we do the exact opposite with alcohol.

Young people are not allowed to legally drinking alcohol for 20 years and 365 days. But the day of that 21st birthday, we suddenly expect them to go from nothing to immediately be able drink responsibly. It's a ludicrous expectation and one that's often betrayed as such by tragic circumstances. We're shocked (SHOCKED!) when college students die of alcohol poisoning.

It's like giving a 14 year old a credit card with a $10,000 limit, sending him on his own and expecting him to use the card responsibly. Except the potential consequence of such folly isn't indebtedness but death.

The drinking culture in southern Europe is much different than here. Kids drink alcohol (primarily wine) at family dinners. As a result, kids there learn how to drink responsibly because it's done in a controlled environment. Kids associate alcohol with social situations like dinner and family gatherings. They are taught to enjoy the taste. Because it's legal, it lacks the forbidden fruit syndrome. Because it's legal, there's less pressure to drink in large quantities (because you never know when you'll be able to drink again). Because there's less binge drinking, there's less death.

For Tingley, it's either reckless permissiveness or total abstinence (until that 366th day after their 20th birthday when anything goes).

Ken Tingley would publicly savage me, and demand I be blacklisted, if he found this essay. He would accuse me of hating kids, of tolerating the intolerable, of killing our children. That's how he treated young Patrick Russell who dared suggest that Tingley's and The Post-Star's hysteria might be making the problem worse, not better.

In another column, Tingley patted himself on the back for the "discussion" (ie: witch hunt) he started: The discussion has moved to a new level and many of the adults are at odds about how to address the problem in their own homes... The discussion is continuing — sometimes heated — but that may be the best sign of all.

This was after his smear of Russell.

I am loathe to use a highly charged term like 'McCarthyistic' but The Post-Star is treading recklessly close.

The laws should to be changed to allow for youth drinking. This should be controlled. A kid should be to drink alcohol legally provided it's with parental supervision (his own). But contrary to Ken Tingley's self-congratulatory assertions. the hysteria whipped up by The Post-Star is not favorable to civilized, reasonable debate. And the ostrich approach advocated by him and his paper is not favorable to kids' well-being either.



Update: The Post-Star ran another editorial on teen drinking/excessive drinking/drinking and driving (which they continue to obstintately refuse to differentiate between).

And no one takes pleasure in seeing anyone arrested and having their names splashed across the pages of their local newspaper, it pontificated. Start publishing in the paper the names of kids and parents who've been charged, and you've got an unprecedented level of social pressure that can't be ignored. And once the public tide turns against the acceptability of the behavior -- as it did with smoking and DWI -- more people will feel empowered to speak out and take action.

They have a funny way of showing lack of pleasure. They're almost breaking their arms patting themselves on the back over the 'discussion' (hysteria) they started.

I'm not sure which is more disgusting: their self-righteousness or the counterproductivity of their self-righteousness.

The editorial even throws in some other boogeymen:

Alcohol is dangerous to our children. It's harmful to them physically. It exposes them to unanticipated situations in which they could be sexually abused or commit crimes or be injured or killed in car accidents. It has the potential to create long-term drug and alcohol problems.

True. But isn't it equally true of adults, for whom getting drunk is legal? Especially due to the refusal of society (led by Tingley's and The Post-Star's ostrich approach) to help kids learn how to drink responsibly.


It's a matter of time before some kid dies because he drank to death the woods or get drunk in the woods and got behind the wheel, instead of drinking at home where parents could make sure they didn't drink too much or take away the keys. The next time that happens, I hope Tingley and his cohorts will be proud of themselves. At least the parents won't have sanctioned it!