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Advocacy and Punditry:
Highlights From my Editorial Files
"[A] voice of decency and
humaneness."
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- from a letter to the editor of the Harrisburg Patriot-News, responding to my previous letter
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Sometimes I write for money, sometimes I write for fun... and sometimes I write because if I didn't
speak out, I'd explode.
Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not an extremist. I'm a registered Independent;
I'm what used to be called a moderate until the center was emptied out by the flamethrowers on both sides
of the political divide.
So now I'm a political fact-checker, a voice of reason, a public conscience
for pundits who don't seem to have one; I'd call myself the "pundit police," but I'm told the phrase
has been taken. Apparently, someone out in talk radio land has chosen it to be the new "PC," as if anyone
who polices pundits and calls them to account must have an axe to grind.
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Part One: National Exposure
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Untitled Letter to the Editor
Newsweek, March 10, 2003
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Amid a sea of lowbrow "reality" shows, sarcastic judges, escapism and sex, Anna Quindlen writes,
"At least there's 'Law & Order,' our Lysistrata."
As a theatre historian, I'd like to point
out that actually Aristophanes' Lysistrata is a lowbrow, sarcastic, escapist farce about sex.
Originally acted by half-naked Athenians sporting enormous phalluses, Lysistrata begins with the women
of Athens agreeing to force their men to make peace by staging a sex strike; pauses in the middle so
the actors can brutally mock real-life politicians and celebrities; and ends with a peace conference
moderated by a naked woman dangled like bait before the sex-starved delegates.
Quindlen probably
meant to compare "Law & Order" to The Eumenides, in which the survival of Athens depends on the jury's
verdict, but the fact is, rude, crass and unhibited fluff like Lysistrata was an integral part of Athenian
culture at its peak. So Quindlen need not worry: if history treats America like Greece, we will be
remembered for our thinkers, not for Simon and Anna Nicole.
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Ann Landers (syndicated column)
February 14, 2002
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Dear Ann Landers: I thought your might like to know about the origins of Valentine's Day.
St. Valentine's Day began with a pagan fertility festival, Lupercal, held on Feb. 15. In the year 496,
Pope Gelasius created a feast day in memory of Saint Valentine, a martyred third-century priest, and
placed it on February 14, hoping early Christians would celebrate their romantic traditions a day early
and dedicate them to the saint instead of to the Roman love goddess Juno. The feast day stuck, but the
romantic holiday didn't.
The romantic holiday finally took hold in medieval England. Geoffrey
Chaucer, famous for writing "The Canterbury Tales," got together with his fellow poets and invented a
new holiday to lift the people's spirits. In a poem entitled "The Parliament of Fowls," Chaucer claimed
that all the birds in the world choose their mates on St. Valentine's Day. Shakespeare refers to Chaucer's
poem in his play "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and gives the name "Valentine" to characters in two other
romantic comedies.
It all started with the two greatest love poets in the English language.
Steve Anderson, Adjunct Professor, English, Gettysburg College
Dear Professor Anderson: Thank
you for a fascinating history lesson.
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Part Two: "Voice of Decency and Humaneness"
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Respect For the Dead
Harrisburg Patriot-News, March 24, 2004
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I realize that gay rights are a divisive issue. But I always assumed there were limits that anyone
with simple compassion could accept. When a law-abiding citizen dies, it's a time to mourn. Everyone
can agree on that much, I thought.
So I was appalled when I read that a so-called church from
Topeka, Kansas wants to build a monument in Palmyra to celebrate the persecution and death of a young
gay man driven to suicide in our midst.
I was speechless when I read that this same group has
picketed funerals, sent hate-filled tracts to grieving mothers, and even picketed a church because "they
bury fags here." Even for a hate group that sullies the name of God, picking a fight with a grieving
family over their loved one's casket is a shocking low.
Then I read that Republicans in the state
House of Representatives, led by Rep. Jerry Birmelin of Wayne, are targeting gay funerals, too. They're
trying to bar state employees from taking the bereavement leave they'd be allowed if their loved ones
happened to be of the opposite sex.
Whatever people may think of gays and the "homosexual agenda,"
surely we can agree that rejoicing in deaths, picketing funerals, and forbidding life-partners from taking
time off to attend them is just plain wrong. Even in war, you let your enemy bury their dead in peace.
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Community Missed Chance to Show Unity
Published March 28, 2004, as a featured editorial
in the (Harrisburg, PA) Sunday Patriot-News
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So, the prophets of hate came to Harrisburg, and they came, in part, to picket my church.
Why
my church? I don't know. Fred Phelps claims that the churches his group was picketing are "sanctuaries
for gays," but I've never seen or heard anything remotely inflammatory coming down from the pulpit on
Sunday mornings.
After staging 20,000 protests over the years, maybe Phelps doesn't need a good
reason to pick one target over another. Or maybe it's because my church is the cathedral parish, so
in a way he could be seen as protesting the whole diocese, or even the whole Catholic Church, all at
once. I really don't know.
I didn't know what to do about it, either. The more I read, the more
hopeless it seemed. Arguing with them would only validate their argument. Counter-protesting would
only validate their protest. Ignoring them would leave theirs as the only voice to be heard. "First
they came for the homosexuals, and I did not speak out, because I was not a homosexual"--that's no way
to live.
In the end, I decided the thing to do was to make a point of attending the Mass they
were picketing. With luck, other parishioners would do the same, and we could pack the church to the
gunwales and counter the spewing of evil out in the street with an expression of good inside.
And
so, 15 minutes before Mass was due to start, my wife and I met three good friends on the Capitol steps
and walked the two blocks down State Street together, passing the protest on the way.
First
Observation. This was the group that had gotten a four-page cover article in the March 14 Sunday
Patriot-News? This ragged little bunch of maybe eight or 10 people standing there holding their signs?
It would've been laughable if not for the content of the signs themselves: "God Hates Fags," "God
Hates America," "Thank God for 9/11." Theirs was the idea of a protest, but not much more.
Second
Observation. These people weren't just hateful bigots; they were clueless idiots, too. The cathedral
is halfway through a two-month renovation project, so Mass is being held at a chapel a block away. So
Phelps' disciples came several hundred miles, got their permit to march, set up their signs... and picketed
an empty building.
It's like that old Internet joke come to life: "May the forces of evil become
confused on the way to your house."
Third Observation. There was, as predicted, a small counter-protest
in progress. The cathedral and the chapel are both on State Street, which is unusually wide. There's
a one-way street, diagonal parking, a center island with trees on it, more diagonal parking, and a one-way
street going the other way.
We were on one sidewalk, the people from Topeka were on the center
island, and the counterprotesters were on the far sidewalk. Net result: we could see that they were
there, but we really couldn't see them clearly enough to get an idea of their numbers, much less read
their signs. That was disappointing, but it was good to know they were there.
Fourth Observation.
There was a more noticeable presence of maybe eight or 10 people out in front of the chapel meeting
and greeting, encouraging people to come in, reassuring people as needed, and studiously keeping their
backs to the protest. That physical choice would have been more powerful had the protest not been a
city block away. Still, they, like the counter-protesters, were a comforting presence. They'd found
a productive response.
Fifth Observation. Although the Mass was just as it would have been
had there been no protest--there wasn't so much as a word about it in the sermon or even in the closing
announcements--I don't think it's my imagination that the responses from the congregation were all just
a little more emphatic, the signs of peace a little more warm and engaging.
And I know it's
not my imagination that the singing was unusually loud and clear and proud--which, for Catholics,
is a miracle in itself. Understand, this is the cathedral parish at Lent; that means two or three of
the hymns were in Latin, which even the choir usually mumbles. But not today.
Sixth Observation.
The one thing all day I was ashamed of? The op-ed page in The Patriot-News. A page of letters,
almost every one following the same line of thought: "I was offended by your coverage of the upcoming
protest. Why did you focus attention on these people, unless you're trying to suggest that all Bible-believing
Christians are like them?"
And I'm thinking, what a waste. It's patently ridiculous, for one
thing. Far from equating "all Bible-believing Christians" with Phelps' group, the article described
the group's endless series of protests against "Bible-believing Christians."
More tragically,
though, is this. We were handed a unique opportunity to come together as a community, to say, "We are
conservatives and liberals. We're Christians and Jews and Muslims and pagans and agnostics and atheists.
We agree on very little, but we do agree here, now, on this. These people are wrong. Their beliefs
are evil. We, all of us, together, reject this gospel of hate."
How hard would that have been?
Just for one short day? And wait until tomorrow to fight about whether we rejected them because they
hate gays, or because they say God is Hate, or because they hate America, or because they're rejoicing
in the deaths of thousands of Americans on September 11.
Would that have been so much to ask?
I guess it would. It's so much easier to roll this day right back into politics as usual, to say
that revealing the truly abhorent beliefs and tactics of this group is just one more attempt by the liberal
media to mock Christianity.
As if there's anything in what these people preach that's worthy of
that name.
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Grisly Alternative
Harrisburg Patriot-News, December 22, 2003
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Pharmaceuticals offer reduced rates abroad and inflated prices here, and Congress goes out of its
way to let them. We can bellyache about "fairness," Thomas Sowell writes (syndicated column, Dec. 1),
but change "would lead to a reduced supply of new drugs--and therefore more suffering and death."
But we already have unnecessary suffering and death. Countless Americans need drugs whose overinflated
prices are more than they can afford. Surely Americans, even in poverty, don't deserve to die untreated
just so drug companies can make their R&D budgets without raising prices abroad.
Apparently, Mr.
Sowell disagrees. His Dec. 8 column condemns "busybodies" who "prevent people on waiting lists for organ
transplants from paying someone to donate a kidney or a liver that can be the difference between life
and death." If you have the money, he implies, you should be able to jump to the head of the line.
Suffering and dying unmedicated of a curable disease is only for the poor.
That's grotesque.
Buying and selling human organs on the open market while the poor are left to languish, die, or sell
their bodies a piece at a time is not only an affront to liberal social justice and conservative respect
for life, it's a betrayal of inalienable rights.
"Fairness" may not come cheap, but it's a whole
lot better than Sowell's grisly alternative.
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Leave "Snottiness" Out
Harrisburg Patriot-News, April 16, 2003
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Thomas Sowell writes in his March 31 column: "Creating mindless followers" who dismiss inconvenient
facts and "attribute bad motives" to those who disagree with them is "dangerous." We need thinkers,
not name-calling sheep. Amen!
But then Mr. Sowell goes right back to condemning schoolchildren
who dared to disagree with him, accusing them of "spouting off" and "reacting with snotty remarks to
anyone who contradicts them." He holds them up for nationwide ridicule, calling them "politically correct,"
"sheeplike," "foolish," "silly." He lambastes their teacher and their school by name. And he attributes
the children's ideas to "artificial stupidity" and "classroom brainwashing." "Snotty remarks," indeed.
Sadly, he's not alone. Name-calling is everywhere. Rational debate is called "unpatriotic." Free
speech is "un-American." Protestors are "traitors." Diplomacy is "slapping the faces" of the soldiers
whose lives it might save. It's "disloyal" to questin the administration, even about eviscerating civil
rights, alienating allies, vacating treaties, embracing record deficits, slashing taxes for the rich,
and dismantling 10 years of ecological reforms. And those who badmouth the president are downright unspeakable--after
all, he's not that adulterous Democrat.
Don't get me wrong. I love my country. I'm convinced
we can make America "one nation, indivisible" again. But first we need to leave fear, name-calling,
and "snottiness" behind.
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Shame Over Greed
Harrisburg Patriot-News, November 8, 2002
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I was dubious when several recent letters called Thomas Sowell a lone voice of reason. He has proclaimed
that racism doesn't exist, that the civil rights movement was a sham, and that African-Americans should
be grateful that their ancestors were dragged away from their homes in chains.
But there is some
truth in Mr. Sowell's most recent column. He asks us to imagine that our grandchildren have just learned
that we once supported a government which "gave money to the homeless, provided places for them to sleep,
and so forth."
How will we explain wasting our hard-earned money on soup kitchens and homeless
shelters for "people who refused to work," who "dropped out of society" and chose "a more laid-back kind
of way," with "drugs, alcohol, stuff like that?" Won't we be ashamed?
He's right, I would be
ashamed. Ashamed of my grandchild's greed and self-absorption. Ashamed of my children for failing to
teach basic Christian charity. Ashamed of policies that have already kicked thousands of people incapable
of supporting themselves out of state hospitals and onto the streets. Ashamed of a history teacher who
would teach my grandchild that people freely chose to starve and freeze to death.
And ashmed of
myself for having stood idly by while certain columnists taught America that mercy is waste, that anyone
who falls through the cracks deserves what they get.
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Part Three: Political Fact-Checking
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Blaming Messenger on Abstinence Errors
Harrisburg Patriot-News, January 3, 2005
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Conservatives have been quick to attack the author of a recent Congressional report on inaccuracies
in abstinence textbooks.
Why attack the author? Because the report itself is unassailable and
the textbooks are indefensible.
The Waxman Report quotes verbatim from 11 of the top 13 abstinence
textbooks as they grotesquely inflate the CDC’s 3% condom failure rate into a whopping 31%, dismiss the
New England Journal of Medicine’s findings that condoms used properly are 100% effective at stopping
HIV, trumpet flat-out nonsense about spreading HIV through sweat and tears, and teach that abortion can
cause sterility, depression, and suicide, or even premature birth and mental defects in future children,
when obstetrics textbooks and the American Psychiatric Association have long since debunked those 30-year-old
claims.
It quotes the textbooks as they present hotly contested beliefs as immutable fact. Conception
"is when life begins"; " "at this instant a new human life is formed"; a 150-cell blastocyst is already
a "baby" which "snuggles" into the uterus.
And it quotes the textbooks as they perpetuate outdated
stereotypes. A husband provides "financial support"; a wife provides "domestic support." He gives her
"devotion"; she regards him with "admiration" and "wonder." And above all, one book teaches, a young
wife simply must learn to hold her tongue.
It’s obvious why the publishers have attacked Congressman
Waxman—they want to distract us from their books.
But why have conservative politicians, pundits,
think-tanks, and even the Education Coordinator at Harrisburg’s own Capital Area Pregnancy Centers (letters,
Dec. 15) been so quick to follow suit? Why haven’t they said instead, "Let’s write better books?"
Or do they think an honest abstinence textbook is a contradiction in terms?
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Benefits Aplenty From Space Program
Harrisburg Patriot-News,June 22, 2002
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Unimpressed by mere scientific exploration, John Hibbs asks, "What has [the space program] discovered
that eventually will reap benefits on Earth?" (Letters, June 14). So far, he suggests, the only tangible
payoff is in Space Center tourism.
On the contrary, the benefits of the space program are quite
real, and there's nothing "eventual" about them.
Every live news report from Afghanistan, every
aerial photograph of Iraq taken without endangering a spy-plane pilot, every bomb dropped with GPS precision,
every vehicle with anti-theft tracking, every clear international phone call, and every national weather
map or long-range forecast depends on a satellite built, designed, launched, or at least inspired by
NASA.
The space program also pays off in "spinoffs," technologies that would not exist without
NASA. Survival blankets and water heaters use aluminum insulation designed for satellites. Firefighters
wear fireproof materials developed for space capsules. Eyeglasses use flexible space-station metals
and lens coatings that originally protected fragile parts during blastoff. The composite materials in
bicycle helmets and tennis racquets evolved in aerospace fuselages. Neil Armstrong's boots inspired
today's shock-absorbent sneakers, and the precise, resilient quartz crystal developed for his capsule's
clock is found in millions of wrist-watches today.
And finally, the impractical, pie-in-the-sky
space program has also saved countless lives, because like so much of the technology we take for granted,
the smoke detectors in all our homes started in space--30 years ago, on Skylab.
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You Rewrote History on Macs and PCs
Harrisburg Patriot-News, January 31, 2004
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Your history of Macs and PCs (editorial, January 24) has the world "enslaved" by the "maddening"
PC. Then in 1984 the Apple Macintosh "ushered in color graphics, desktop publishing, music piracy and
eventually pornography." Microsoft took aim with Windows, and Apple fell mortally wounded. But today,
the iMac is back, and computers that appear in television and movies are "more often than not" iMacs.
But the Mac "ushered in color graphics?" Hardly. Atari and Commodore had been offering color computers
for years, and even PCs eventually went color, but first-generation Macs were just black on white.
Desktop publishing, maybe; Apples have always had their uses. But music piracy and pornography? No
Internet, slow modems, no CDs--many early Macs didn't even have disk drives. Pirates and pornographers
would have gotten more out of tape recorders and photocopiers than early Macs.
Now was the Mac
a first victim of Microsoft. Apple was battling IBM, and it fell on its own sword. IBM opened its hardware
design; anyone could make a PC, everyone did, and prices fell. Apple held onto its patents; no one else
could make a Mac, prices stayed high and software was limited. The same remains true of the iMac.
We notice iMacs because PCs melt into the background, too common to register. Speechwriters on The
West Wing, storm-chasers in Twister, instant-messaging at the start of The Matrix, heroes and villains
clack away, and not an Apple logo to be seen.
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The Cash Is Stacked
Harrisburg Patriot-News, date unknown
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Recently, our local public radio station, WITF, canceled "The Chords Are Stacked," the best folk
music program on the air. Why? Because, says station manager Mitzi Trostle, "there are serious long-term
effects of straying from the core format on which listeners depend": classical music and news.
Personally,
although I like "Law & Order," I don't "depend" on A&E to run it all the time. Why should listeners
"depend" on WITF to run classical music all the time? Why shouldn't Harrisburg's home of "Car Talk,"
"A Prairie Home Companion," and "This American Life" devote two hours a week to a musical heritage older
and richer than the works of dead, white men, especially when the same show spotlights upcoming events
in the community?
I agree with your columnist Pat Carroll: the most "serious long-term effect"
will be the decline of traditional music in Pennsylvania.
Still, I could accept WITF's decision--if
they'd been honest about it. But WITF replaced "Chords" not with a classical show or a news show but
with two more hours of "Echoes," a New Age program.
WITF replaced "Chords," a show so beloved
that it ran uninterrupted during pledge drives and still pulled its own weight in memberships, with the
unspeakably dreary "Echoes" because "Echoes" is syndicated and brings in money from snoozing people all
over the country, whereas Dr. John Patterson of "Chords" refuses to go national and give up focusing
on central Pennsylvania.
Some community spirit, WITF.
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Part Four: Sometimes They Write Back
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From Unsoothing Event (Featured Column)
by Dale Davenport, Editorial Page Editor
Harrisburg Patriot-News, January 23, 2005
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In my haste last week to describe a test for readers to gauge their own ethics and those of others--a
"smell" test--I missed the point of my own discussion of the decline of ethical behavior in modern life.
Reader Steve Anderson recognized it immediately.
"I assume you didn't actually mean to say that
ethics 'really is about how we appear to others, regardless of whether it's legal,'" he wrote.
"By
that definition, ethics would allow us to do anything we like, whether it's moral or not, ethical or
not, legal or not, as long as we don't get caught. That way lies amoral madness--and the belief that
Abu Ghreib only became immoral when somebody picked up a camera."
"Acting ethically is also about
doing the right thing in private, when no one's watching, even when it's not a matter of law."
And,
he went on, "as Martin Luther King Day should remind us, acting ethically sometimes requires that we
ignore how others will view us, their questions and accusations and snide remarks, sometimes even the
law itself, in the name of a peaceful, passionate, committed pursuit of justice."
For Anderson,
ethics for journalists involves trust--the trust that the public must have for "the reporter on the scene
to tell us the truth. Acting ethically 'really is about' honoring that trust."
Rarely have I
been corrected so eloquently--and so respectfully. I think it's how politics once was conducted, or
at least how we think it should be.
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One-Time Voice
by Rene Soucy
Harrisburg Patriot-News, November 15, 2002
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Too bad Mr. Steven G. Anderson's letter ("Shame over greed," Nov. 8) is a one-time voice of decency
and humaneness while the Thomas Sowells indoctrinate us day-in day-out to embrace right-wing mean-mindedness
and greed.
The Patriot-News should either drop negative, one-sided political columns, or give
equal space to courageous people-oriented columnists.
Equal space would entail giving the columnists
day-in day-out access to your readers, as the Thomas Sowells now have.
One-time shotgun rebuttals
in the letters to the editor column are not an effective democratic counter to the conditioning effect
that repeated one-sided columns eventually have on their readers.
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From a Personal Email
From E. J. Dionne, syndicated columnist
Replying to my comment
on his column
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What a magnificent and thoughtful (and very generous) letter. I am very grateful. Your point...
is a powerful one.
Mr. Dionne goes on to respond to my letter substantively, at length.
It
may bear mentioning, by the way, that in addition to published editorials and letters-to-the-editor,
I have, over the years, sent one letter each to E. J. Dionne, Dale Davenport, George Will, and Rush Limbaugh,
among others. I offered the same kind of calm, rational, quiet disagreement in each of these letters.
Mr. Davenport and Mr. Dionne are the only ones who ever wrote back.
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