On a dark Midwest highway

I ride a long, dark line, in a deep, dark time.

For Christmas is a dark time, and the Indiana toll road is a dark place. At a time like this, in a place like this, a man is given to forking over cash to a fast food chain for the first time in nearly four years, and drinking foul-tasting lightly-coloured water masquerading as coffee.

And a bad brew on a dark road in a dark time can turn a man's mind to dark thoughts....

Dark thoughts, like about how the Pope can get into the news for declaring that terrorism is bad.

Dark thoughts, like about how holy crap can be not only atrocious, but also very creepy (via).

Dark thoughts, like about how crafty Mike Huckabee is to play innocent about his sectarian political ad, spinning it into a little War on Christmas riff (via). Said he to the flock at Cornerstone Church (that being the church of that great fat cat for Christ, John Hagee): "I got in a little trouble this last week because I actually had the audacity to say 'Merry Christmas.'" That's right—and you could be next—unless of course there's someone like Huckabee around to stand up for you.

Don't worry: he may have been in a church, but he said it wasn't a political appearance. And if you can't trust Huckabee to tell the difference, who can you trust?

Not that he's the only one to walk that fine line this season.

For it's a fine line, the line between church and state. But it's a bright one.

Not like the Indiana toll road. No, that's a long, dark line, snaking between Nowhere... and Hell.

(I mean, not literally Hell—just Gary.)

American Christendom: just misunderstood (by the BBC, at least)

My main source for news is the BBC. With respect to the vast majority of current events, it's much more thorough and reliable than anything on this "side of the pond". But one thing BBC reporters really, really don't understand is American Christianity in general, and its intersection with American politics in particular. Maybe this ought to be an object lesson in how stupid people can be about other sorts of people.

I mentioned an example of this before, but here's a more egregious example.

In this article, Justin Webb discusses some trends in American Christendom, trends so drastic as to elicit a remark of "Golly, this is a big change." (That sounds more striking coming out of the mouth of a Brit.)

First, a note about the headline: "Bible bashing dying out in Kansas". Maybe that makes sense in Britainese, but around here you thump bibles. What gets bashed are gays. Bible-thumping, gay-bashing: that's what Kansas is known for.

Moving on:

Hiding in plain sight in this state is a revolution in American Christendom, a change of heart that could see American Protestant churches looking increasingly like their European equivalents.

Well, European churches look empty. Church attendance in America is down, but not exactly—and not in Kansas—down to the single-digit percentage rates you see in some European countries.

OK, so that's not quite his point, but what he's really getting at is no less crazy. The big hook for the article is Fred Phelps, about which he remarks:

The point is that Pastor Phelps and his followers are not much liked by anyone inside or outside Kansas. The "burning at the stake" wing of America's Christian churches - the wing that stresses vengeance over love - is in trouble.

The implication here is that, once upon a time, Phelps was beloved of all American Christians, or at least representative of the spirit of American Christendom; but now the wider part of Christendom has moved on, as is shown by Phelps' recent loss of popularity.

So, part of this is familiar enough. Phelps is the good old standby for those who want to caricature the abysmal state of American Christendom: Look at this bitter and hateful old man without a hint of love or caring in his whole withered soul—wow, aren't American Christians fucked up!

The only problem with this trope is that—as anyone who knows anything knows well—for all his notoriety, Phelps' "church" has always been limited to a few dozen members members of his (extended) family (and not even all of his family). Phelps' current lack of popular support is not evidence of any trend whatsoever. He has always been on the very fringe of the fringiest fringe of American Christendom. (Some would be tempted to place him on the fringe of the Christian Right in particular, but this ignores the fact that some of his stances—for example, that American soldiers deserve to die for the sins of their country—are utter anathema to American conservatives, and anyone else with any sense.)

So much for where Webb thinks American Christendom has been. How about where it's going?

Well, apparently,

Opinion polls suggest that younger evangelical Christians are falling out of love with the "big causes" their churches have championed in recent years, in particular with opposing abortion and supporting the Iraq war.

And Webb visits another church to illustrate how American Christians are increasingly turning their attention away from issues like abortion, and towards such concerns as "human rights and the environment".

About which, here are some instructive comments from Slacktivist a few months back:

The deciding factor for most evangelical voters -- including, based on their own words, the green evangelicals Caron talked to -- is still abortion politics. My guess is that while the folks Caron talked to might prefer a candidate who was both anti-abortion and anti-greenhouse gas, but when that option doesn't present itself, they'll settle for a candidate who is the former but not the latter.

So, sure, the political views of the evangelical "base" of the Republican party are changing somewhat. But not in the way Webb would have it.

The BBC article paints a picture of the average American Christian transforming from a soulless hate machine on the model of Phelps, to a polar bear loving member of Amnesty International. But both halves of this story are completely off.

Now, this is kind of an important topic. American Christendom, and the way in which it interacts with American politics, is a terribly important issue for American politics, which is in turn a pretty important issue for the rest of the world. And, what's more, it's not like Webb and his colleagues are trying to puzzle out the mindset of ancient Sumerians here: once you figure out the 'truck' / 'lorry', 'elevator' / 'lift' thing, and the etiquette for serving peas and beer, inter-cultural communication ought to go pretty smoothly. So this seems like one hell of a blindspot, and there's no excuse for having it. (Incidentally, Webb has in the past remarked upon bias and even anti-Americanism in the BBC's coverage of America, and religion in America—so he is really without excuse here.)

They will know us by our tattoos

I really couldn't tell the story better than this, so, quoting in full:

The only Christmas story New Yorkers are talking about this week begins with three Jews celebrating Hanukkah at a Manhattan bar, then boarding a Brooklyn-bound subway while carrying a menorah and dreidels. A group of eight men and two women—apparently Christians—then yelled “Merry Christmas!” at them, to which 21-year-old Angelica Krischanvich, a Hunter College student who is not Jewish, replied “Happy Chanukah.” This infuriated the Christian revelers, two of whom stood up to display their Jesus tattoos and to say, charmingly, “You have no savior!” An argument ensued, and Krischanvich said one of the guys spit in her face. Her reply: “Jesus turned the other cheek.” Fighting words apparently, because one of the Christians then pulled a knife and waved it near the face of Maria Parsheva, a 23-year-old Baruch College student. “You dirty Jews, you killed Jesus on Chanukah, you should all die,” was the next remark as a full-bore fight broke out. Walter Adler, the 23-year-old boyfriend of Parsheva, then pulled the emergency brake on the train, and was punched repeatedly for that particular act. While everyone was waiting for police to show up, a Good Samaritan waded in and tried to break up the fight, but mostly just tried to buy some time for Adler. Pushing the men away from the women, he was dogpiled and beaten up. He never even got in a punch, partly because he only stands 5-foot-7 and weighs just 140 pounds. When the police finally boarded the train at DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn, they arrested 10 people for assault, menacing, and inciting riot, then asked the four injured people if they needed the hospital. Adler had a broken nose and needed four stitches in his lip, but the Good Samaritan didn’t go to the doctor because he was too busy working two waiter jobs and doesn’t have any health insurance. He’s 20-year-old Hassan Askari, a Muslim.

Would it be juvenile to make a joke about "Hoover" and "sucking" here?

The Hoover Institute at Stanford is giving Rumsfeld a job. Naturally this is pissing people off. For example, the BBC article mentions this petition is for people who think that Rumsfeld's appointment conflicts with Stanford's ethical standards.

Alas, I think that petition might be wrong-headed. The ethical appeal is too easy to brush off. But why not make the appeal on other grounds--say, prudential ones? Because while there might be arguments about whether or not Rumsfeld is unethical, it is pretty much unquestionable that he is really really dumb. And surely it is against institutional self-interest to hire someone who's such a demonstrated nincompoop, whose nincompoopery is a matter of high-profile public record. "The Hoover Institute?" people will say, their voices tinged with suspicion and dread. "Isn't that the place that hires people whose claims and predictions are pretty much always wrong, with tragic consequences for all concerned?"

The Institute director responds to critics:

"I appointed him because he has three decades of experience, of incredible public service, especially in recent years as it relates to this question of ideology and terror,"

But doesn't that just make it even worse? Rumsfeld spent three decades trying to figure out how the world works, and failed spectacularly. Three decades ought to be more than enough time to learn how not to be such an utter nincompoop, but it hasn't seemed to help him at all. All this means is that his nincompoopery is probably beyond repair. Now, a normal person, you could maybe hope to educate, apply some on-the-job training. But Rumsfeld? Who knows if there's any way of getting him to say a true thing!

A rant, following a recent visit to the BBC News site

Why the hell is this Madeleine McCann shit in the news?

Please understand, I mean to use the word 'shit' in reference to the story, not the person. I bear no ill will against the kid herself, but I'm a bit peeved by the story.

I just want to know: how the hell is this news? News agencies around the world have been running stories about the McCanns since May. This is worth 5 months of news? Really? And not just news, but big news. BBC has a special "features and analysis" sidebar on Madeleine, like they do for, say, Zimbabwe or N. Korea. There are maps of where Madeleine disappeared, like the maps showing attacks around Baghdad.

The McCanns got to go to the Vatican. While there they stayed in an ambassadorial suite. They were invited there by the fricken Pope. So, OK, the McCanns are Catholic, but is the Pope meeting with every Catholic in the world who has a missing kid?

I used to get a flyer in the mail every week or two about some missing kid or another. It turns out there are a lot of them. None of those kids got 5 months worth of international news coverage. Of course, a lot of them were not very photogenic, probably came from fairly poor families, and were also frequently black or hispanic.

(Hm, would I not be so pissed off if Madeleine were a poor black kid? I dunno.)

Live and let live, say anti-gay protesters

A BBC article about an anti-gay sex rally in Uganda:

Spokesman Pastor Martin Sempa said that Uganda was under "great external pressure to relax its laws" ahead of November's Commonwealth summit.

In Uganda, homosexuality carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Pastor Sempa told the BBC's Focus on Africa that homosexuals were using the summit to try and "shame, force, coerce, intimidate Uganda into changing our laws".

"We are telling them that Africans find homosexuality reprehensible. Leave us alone."

Well, it certainly is easy enough to see why someone might object to being shamed, forced, coerced, or intimidated into changing their ways. It certainly is easy enough to see why someone might just want to be left alone, to handle their own affairs as they see fit. Shame on Ugandan homosexuals for not understanding this! I suggest they come to their senses, and agree with Pastor Sempa that all should be left alone to live their own lives, and that no one should use shame, force, coercion or intimidation to try to change that.

News from a Christian perspective

Watchers of TBN get their news updates through Pat Robertson's CBN News, which claims to present the news from a "Christian perspective". How so? Well, there's a bit of a right-wing bias (though I think it actually tends to be less egregious than some of what you see on Fox), and maybe a bit more attention paid to terrorism and the "culture wars" (though not all that much more, since normal news broadcasts like that sort of stuff anyways). Alas, this does not have much to do with Christianity.

And every once in a while there'll be a segment talking about how so-and-so is Christian, or a spiel on what it means to be a Christian. Alas, this does not have much to do with news.

But what would it mean, after all, to present the news from a truly Christian perspective? My first instinct was to think that the very concept was incoherent, but then I reconsidered, and Dawn and I came up with a couple of features that would make for a truly Christian news broadcast: keep the news stories more or less the same, but end every story with a comment about how everyone involved in the story is a sinner, and then a shout out to the guy upstairs.

For example:

Mitt Romney on Sunday called his victory in the Republican Iowa straw poll a "big start" toward winning his party's presidential nomination and said the no-show by his main national rivals only enhanced the win. Romney, of course, is a sinner, as are all his rivals, and everyone who participated in the poll. Praise be to God!

Or, turning our attention to the other nomination race:

With a television crew and photographers in tow, Barack Obama spent Wednesday morning mopping floors, cleaning cobwebs and preparing breakfast for an 86-year-old wheelchair-bound amputee. Such acts of kindness are, of course, entirely insufficient to make Obama worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven, for he is, fundamentally, a sinner. And that wheelchair-bound amputee is, without a doubt, also a sinner. Hallelujah!

And in international news:

Paul Rusesabagina, the man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, says unless the term of the UN tribunal on the genocide is extended it will be a failure. During the 1994 genocide, Rusesabagina sheltered some 1,200 refugees at a hotel in the capital, Kigali, where he was the manager. This act of heroism did not make him any less of a sinner. Also, everyone in the UN is a sinner. Of course the perpetrators of the genocide were all sinners. As for those who died in the genocide, some of them may now be with God, but if so, they get none of the credit, for they lived as sinners, and died as sinners. God is great, and hallowed be his name!

That would be a great news show.

Andrews' beef with Haneef

I just can't get over the recently imploded Australian case against Mohammed Haneef, who was alleged to have "recklessly supported" the failed car bomb attacks in the UK.

Two major errors in the case against Haneef are described here: first, it was claimed that a cell phone SIM card connected with Haneef had been found in the burning car sent into the airport in Glasgow, but in reality had been found in Liverpool; second, it was claimed that he had offered no explanation for why he'd purchased a one-way plane ticket to India, when in fact he had explained to police that he'd planned to fly out to see his wife and recently born child.

These are not, I think, plausibly attributed to innocent mistakes. Somewhere along the line from the police collecting the evidence to the lawyer prosecuting the case, someone lied, knowingly and willfully.

So, OK, this is nothing new. Police and prosecutors develop firm suspicions against someone, and maintain certainty of the person's guilt in spite of a lack of evidence, and go on to twist evidence to support their case--after all, if you're sure the suspect is guilty, you don't want minor points of evidence to get in the way. It happens. Distribute slaps on the wrist all around (that's all you can expect, because after all they just wanted to protect citizens from terrorists, and you can hardly blame them for being a little overenthusiastic about the job), and let's call it a day.

In addition to that, though, I'm mystified by the antics of Kevin Andrews, the immigration minister, who's generally making an ass of himself in various ways. Here's one example. After the charges were dropped, Haneef decided to go on and take off to India, which prompted this response:

Mr Andrews said on Sunday [the 29th] that he still harboured suspicions against the Indian doctor.

The fact that Dr Haneef decided to leave the country "actually heightens rather than lessens my suspicion", he said.

If we are to assume that Andrews was honestly speaking his mind here, then we must conclude that he was entertaining the following thought at the time: "Well, if this Haneef fellow is so innocent, then why in the world is he so committed to leaving the country to see his wife and recently born child? This is terribly suspicious."

But, what's more, in a press release from the 28th, the day before making the above statement, Andrews commented:

After taking advice, including from the Australian Federal Police, I have indicated that the Commonwealth has no objection to Dr Haneef departing Australia.

Indeed the effect of Dr Haneef's visa cancellation is that he should depart Australia.

Incidentally, that visa cancellation is something which Andrews personally stepped in to bring about. So, with this in mind, here's a fuller version of what Andrews was apparently thinking to himself when he made the statement on the 29th: "Well, if he's so innocent, then why in the world is he so committed to leaving the country--something which I personally made it legally necessary for him to do--in order to see his wife and recently born child? This is so terribly suspicious."

Now maybe this is in fact what he had in mind. It might just be the case that Australia has a psychotic immigration minister. Or maybe (keeping in mind that it's an election year) he's hoping that the racist asshole vote carries more weight in his constituency than the reasonable citizen vote. In any case, notwithstanding the fact that I know nothing else about the man, I'm going to go ahead and conclude that he's not a good person, and should lose his job as of yesterday.

Homeland has it all

So, the "Key Judgments" of the public domain version of the recent National Intelligence Estimate on terrorist threats to the US, which takes up all of two pages, uses the word "Homeland" 11 times--4 times in the first 3 sentences--capitalized. Is it just me, or is this not just fucking creepy?

(Via some Wired link I'm too lazy to look up again right now.)

IDNTIMWYTIM: "evangelical"

BBC reports: Evangelicals split on global warming.

This is true: evangelical Christians are indeed split on global warming.

And it's a worthy topic for a news story. Evangelicals owe most of their newsworthiness to the role many of them have played in the rise of the Christian Right; as such, it's quite common for people who are unfamiliar with the evangelical movement / community /subculture to see it as a monolithic group that is totally unified on matters of theology and politics -- which it is not.

So, good idea for a news story. But the execution is questionable.

To illustrate this split among evangelicals, the story focuses on two groups which take opposing views. Choosing a group of evangelicals who thinks that global warming is not important (because it's not happening) is relatively easy: they went to (the now late) Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. As for a group of evangelicals who thinks that global warming is both happening and worthy worrying about, they went to Eastern Mennonite University.

Only problem being, Eastern Mennonite University is almost certainly not evangelical. Mennonites in general are not at all connected to the strains of Christianity that fall under the evangelical banner, and (apart from the BBC story) I can't find any webpage that refers to Eastern Mennonite University as evangelical.

Part of the problem here might be the vagueness of the term "evangelical". But semantic vagueness is no excuse for plain old sloppiness.

Another part of the problem might be that evangelicalism is a phenomenon that is probably largely foreign to the UK, especially the segment of British culture that populates the offices of the BBC. But this is the BBC, and we expect better from the BBC.

Especially when it's not all that hard to find an example of a group of evangelicals who are concerned about the environment. (Say, the Evangelical Environmental Network.)

(For more on the meaning of "evangelical", and an IDNTIMWYTIM going in another direction, see here.)

The Decider becomes the Definer

Q: If we called a tail a "leg", how many legs would a horse have?
A: Four.

It's a tricky question, because it can sometimes be difficult to remember that things are what they are, regardless of what we call them.

And torture is torture regardless of what the American President wants to call it--a point missed by the recent anti-terror legislation:

As provided by the Constitution and by this section, the President has the authority for the United States to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and to promulgate higher standards and administrative regulations for violations of treaty obligations which are not grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

At times like this, when the American government has effectively legalized torture, it's important to find reason to laugh. I think the right note of absurdity can be found by comparing the legislation with Bush's attempt to rationalize it a couple of weeks ago:

This debate is occurring because of the Supreme Court's ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common Article III of the Geneva Convention. And that Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It's very vague. What does that mean, "outrages upon human dignity"? That's a statement that is wide open to interpretation.

Bush vigorously protests that he doesn't have the foggiest clue as to what the Conventions might mean--and then the Senate goes and gives him the job of interpreting the damn thing. It's like something straight out of an episode of Seinfeld.

But comedy tends to walk hand in hand with tragedy. Consider how Bush continued his rationalizing:

And what I'm proposing is that there be clarity in the law so that our professionals will have no doubt that that which they are doing is legal.

But this new law is only as clear as Bush's own understanding of what might count as "outrages upon human dignity"--a matter which he professes to find utterly opaque and obscure. Where does this leave America's torturers? Imagine the plight of those poor souls who would practice sadism on behalf of the American people: the President had promised them peace of mind, but, alas, those hopes have now been cruelly dashed.

Fight AIDS, not the heathens

From the BBC:

Call to boost churches' Aids role

The Christian aid agency Tearfund is calling for more recognition and more international funding for Africa's churches in the fight against HIV/Aids.

Based on the 5 minutes I just spent looking up info on Tearfund on the web, it sounds like they generally do excellent work. But this "call" of theirs is problematic.

First, the obvious. When it comes to the problem of AIDS in Africa, a great many churches have a lot of explaining to do. Or, rather: they have a lot of repenting to do. There is at least a nod to this:

The Tearfund report does say that some attitudes - including opposition to condom use, condemning people who become infected as sinful and the failure to talk openly about sex, need to be addressed.

Well, that sounds decidedly weak. On the other hand, I know that religious folk (well, lots of other religious folk) tend to be soft-spoken, so maybe I should hold out hope here that "address" is actually polite-church-code for "smack those fools upside the head until they recognize that they are contributing more to the problem than to the solution."

Leaving that aside, I think there's something very wrong with calling for more funding for churches in particular.

In fact, personally I would prefer organizations responsible for dealing with such pressing problems as the AIDS epidemic to have no religious affiliation at all. My general feeling is that such problems are ones that do not recognize parochial boundaries, and so they are best addressed by organizations that do not recognize such boundaries either. Nonreligious organizations are more likely to fit that bill than their religious counterparts.

But maybe I'm worrying too much about that. I think it would also make a lot of sense to have no preference either way. But I'm pretty sure that that's as far as one ought to go in that direction: no preference. Tearfund, though, does go further, and ends up advocating support for churches, as opposed to organizations not affiliated with churches.

Naturally, they don't explicitly say any such thing. But if more money is going to go to churches fighting AIDS, then less is going to go to non-churchy organizations fighting AIDS. Unless, of course, funding for the fight against AIDS increases overall--but if that's the goal, then why not just call for overall funding to increase, rather than funding for churches in particular?

Maybe I'm not being completely fair here, because I haven't seen the full report summarized in the BBC article. But I'm having trouble seeing any way around these implications. So, I'm left wondering: How does Tearfund rationalize privileging churches over other organizations in this way?

Distressing media morning

I got up early this morning, and spent my time reading the news on the BBC, and watching the wannabe news on Good Morning America.

BBC Mideast round-up

One of the more infuriating stories from the Mideast:

Israel says the decision by a summit of world powers not to call for a halt to its Lebanon offensive has given it the green light to continue.

"We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world... to continue the operation," Justice Minister Haim Ramon said.

Great. The USA prevents the summit from resulting in a clear call for a cease-fire, and this gets read as "permission" to do this:

He said that in order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops moved in.

Marvelous. And here is the brilliant defense of this plan.

He added that Israel had given the civilians of southern Lebanon ample time to quit the area and therefore anyone still remaining there could be considered a Hezbollah supporter.

"All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah," Mr Ramon said.

With some nice Bush-esque rhetoric thrown in just to make it extra-palatable:

"everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror".

And Al-Qaeda is happily playing along.

From the infuriating to the merely nauseating:

L&J on GMA

After getting through the latest on the BBC, I watched in exasperation as LaHaye and Jenkins, the authors of the Left Behind series, were interviewed on Good Morning America. The interviewer genially asked them about the Rapture, and their views on current events in the Mideast and Hurricane Katrina. They explained how this was all predicted in the Bible, and how Jesus is probably coming back Real Soon Now. And at the end of the interview they were thanked for their "insight".

Someone watching this interview who didn't know any better would naturally assume that the views of LaHaye and Jenkins must be pretty central, mainstream, orthodox, uncontroversial stuff in Christianity. After all, GMA is hardly a forum for controversial opinions and debate. If it's on GMA, it must be pretty humdrum.

With media exposure like this, you'd never guess that the theology of the Left Behind series presents a profound distortion of Christianity. (Slacktivist is currently in the process of the doing the admirable public service of exposing the first Left Behind book, page by dull-yet-agonizing page.)

Maybe you don't really care about the health of the Christian religion, but you should still care about these guys anyways. Millions of Christians think that they've got things spot on, and these people have the ability to vote, which they tend to exercise poorly.

Boo hoo hoo. Wah wah wah.

Thus spake Wal-Mart and Target in response to this news.

Chicago's city council has approved a measure that would force major American retailers to pay an increased minimum wage to their employees.

The council backed a starting salary of $9.25 an hour, well above the existing $5.15 minimum despite opposition from retailing giant, Wal-Mart.

Well, OK, to be fair, the response was more like this:

Wal-Mart and chain store Target both said they may no longer build their stores in the city of Chicago.

In other words: "Boo hoo hoo. Wah wah wah. I'm going home and taking my marbles with me and never coming back ever. Wah."

Unique, frozen, and...

So Bush trots out his presidential veto as a gaggle of snowflake babies looks on.

Of course Bush's stated rationale for using the veto is pathetically stupid. That goes without saying.

But I thought I knew what it meant to call a person a "snowflake". It has at least one well-established slang meaning with which I am familiar, according to which it is typically used by a black man to refer to a passing white woman, intimating a charming cocktail of racism and sexual predation.

But the Christian Right is shockingly ignorant of black urban slang. Now, apparently, "snowflake" also refers to adopted babies originating as unwanted frozen embryos that would otherwise have been destined for destruction. (Such embryos are still destined for destruction, but at least they won't be doomed to use in stem cell research--evidently a distinction that concerns the baby Jesus deeply.)

Why "snowflake"?

Perhaps because each snowflake baby is unique--though that hardly distinguishes them from babies of other sorts.

Perhaps because snowflake babies started out as frozen--that seems fair enough.

On the other hand, perhaps this use of the term also has a racial connotation, as a visual survey of the snowflake babies in question suggests.

BBC versus ...

...American network news

I just watched BBC World News on PBS, and they spent 10 full minutes (plus an update mid-broadcast) on the absurd mess developing in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon. Correspondents checked in from multiple locations in each area, letting us see slices of the stress and suffering being inflicted all-round.

Before that, I caught a segment on the same business on one of the local network news stations. I wish I'd timed it. It was definitely over in under than two minutes. I think more time was spent on some story about baseball coaches.

Dear BBC: you are far from perfect, but still you set an embarrassing standard.

...the White House

On Afghanistan, the White House says: "the United States is working to build a safe, stable society that meets the needs of its people and eliminates an environment that breeds terrorism."

The BBC says:

A quarter of the children born in this country still die before reaching the age of five.

If they live longer than that, they can expect, on the whole, to find little healthcare, no safe water, no sewage system, no jobs, no security and no future.

The roads that the American ambassador boasts about all too soon enter Taleban strongholds.

In provinces like Helmand and Zabul, those fabled schools have been taken over by mullahs who have learned to hate the West and its values and who firmly believe that their classrooms are no place for girls.

Outside l'Atmosphere ["Kabul's premier French restaurant"], I chatted to one of the guards, a friendly old chap whose name I will withhold.

He was cradling his AK-47 and smiled at me, with his set of yellow and broken teeth. I had got to know him a little, stopping at the guard hut for a chat when I had time.

"I earn $47 a month," he said, "and I work every hour I can for my three sons and my wife."

He gestured towards the entrance to l'Atmosphere: "Do you really think that if the Taleban came, I would stay and fight?"

Not for $47, I said. "No," he said, "I would take off my uniform and join them."

Patriot man hates irony man

I had some overnight news program on in the background, and because nothing more important is going on in the world, there was a segment about some dork's list of the top ten songs to play during 4th of July celebrations. Springsteen's Born in the USA was number four on the list.

A different news show actually played that song during a montage of 4th of July firework displays. I kinda think Springsteen enunciates pretty well, but apparently no one in the news office was able to make out such lyrics as "sent me off to Vietnam, to go and kill the yellow man".