Attention Pennsylvanians

I don’t know how many of you are reading, apart from my family members, but this is important.

Tomorrow is election day. You have the opportunity to do a great service to the country by removing Rick “man-on-dog” Santorum (TM Eden) from office.

It almost makes me wish I still had PA residency.

Please, please get out and vote!

Wednesday things

Looks like I’m going to be teaching a full course load this semester. My classes at one of the schools started this week. I stopped by the other school (the community college) to pick up some things yesterday, and the department chair asked me if I’d be interested in another class.

It was tentatively given to me, pending enrollment. As of 5 minutes ago, it looks like it’s almost full. This means I’ll be teaching a total of four classes. Yes, I’m aware that’s a full course load for full-time professors.

This means Tuesdays will be hell for me. Class at one school from 12:40-3:30. Class at the other school from 4:30-8:30. Oh, and I have to have office hours too, of course. Thursdays are not quite so bad, as my evening class only meets on Tuesdays.

My classes at the new school are slightly smaller, which I like. They are also heavily populated by girls. I understand the ratio is 7-1. Those poor girls. 😉 OH! And in one of my classes? Four of them (out of 17) are named Christina. FOUR. Like I don’t have a hard enough time remembering their names…

I’ve been spending a lot of time the past couple of days taking care of little random things like setting up Blackboard for my classes and getting my email to download on my computer.

I’m still working on my syllabus for the other class.

Other than that…I attended a Save the Internet rally this afternoon. More at WNYmedia.net.

Well, I’m officially in the ring now

At first, I was bothered by this comment over at WNYmedia.net.

But then, I realized that B. Merryfield just proved my point. The comment is a knee-jerk reaction that attempts to discredit my entire argument by accusing me of either lying or being lazy. The comment ignores the message that all of us, liberal or conservative, need to start holding the press to higher standards. We all need to open our eyes a little.

Checking facts is not my job. It IS however, the job of reporters writing for major newspapers.

B. Merryfield might be surprised to learn that I am a registered Democrat who voted for Senator Kerry. I didn’t mention this fact because it’s not important.

B. Merryfield says that I shouldn’t be “lobbing out disinformation and placing the responsibility for verification on the less-informed public.”

Who is this “public”? Am I not a part of the “public” simply because I have a blog and a degree in communication arts? Maybe the public should be informing itself. Maybe the public should be demanding higher standards from both its elected officials and members of the press.

Maybe the public should say “hey, we’re tired of this ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ rhetoric” and start demanding real discourse on both sides of the aisle. Maybe the public should want more than talking points and sound bites being lobbed back and forth like tennis balls.

Maybe we should, but by and large, we don’t.

That makes me sad.

I want the truth

I’m going to do something I don’t do all that often at erin-go-blog…I’m going to get serious.

In his book Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them, Al Franken disputes the notion that there is a liberal media bias. He does not, however, claim that there is no bias in the media. Franken says there are two biases the mainstream media is guilty of…sensationalism and laziness.

I have to agree.

I majored in communication arts. I worked as a journalist for several years. As an undergrad, I did a paper in which I essentially proved that it’s nearly impossible to eliminate all bias from your writing. No matter how hard you try, your personal biases will manage to work themselves in. With this in mind, I worked extra hard to write articles that were thoughtful and well-rounded. When an issue was in dispute, I made sure to get the story from both sides.

This should be a no-brainer, right? Maybe I’m being naive when I say that I believed other reporters, for the most part, did the same thing.

I’d like to turn your attention to an article in yesterday’s Buffalo News:

Pro-war veteran group endorses candidates

This article centers around the activities of the group Vets for Freedom. They are a non-partisan nonprofit organization committed to supporting the war effort. One of the founding members of this group is my boyfriend’s brother, David Bellavia. The article’s author, Jerry Zremski, also wrote an article which appeared in the news on June 25. (no longer available online)

Now, if I didn’t know one of the people involved, it’s unlikely that I would have even read these articles. But what struck me first when I read the first one was that the writing was incredibly weak. And in talking to David afterward, he confirmed that many of the things reported in the article were either untrue or half-truths.

The article came about because the organization contacted the News (and many other publications) when David and another of the Vets for Freedom members traveled to Iraq for ten days this summer to get up-close-and-personal accounts of what was actually going on over there. They contacted the media to see if anyone wanted the chance to run these accounts.

Apparently, someone smelled a story.

The “story”, as they saw it, was that Vets for Freedom was not a nonpartisan organization and in fact had ties to the Republican party.

Now, I’m not sure exactly why or how this idea came about…maybe it’s as simple as our collective culture not having the ability to separate support of a particular idea (the war in Iraq) from support of a political party.

I’m not going to remember every “fact” that supported these ties, but here are just a couple of them…

One was that David attended this year’s State of the Union address as a guest of “a Republican representative in Congress.” While this is indeed true, it is also true that David attended the SOTU as a guest of his representative in Congress, Tom Reynolds, who happens to be a Republican.

Another was that the PR representative who contacted the News on behalf of Vets for Freedom, Taylor Gross, was a “former white house spokesperson under President Bush.” Again, technically true…but there are a couple of facts missing from this story. One, Taylor Gross is with the Washington PR firm The Herald Group. There is no mention of a PR firm in either article. Simply reading what was written, one would assume that Vets for Freedom had hired Gross directly out of the White House as a full-time PR representative for their organization.

According to David, this PR firm was chosen because they’d also done work for a high-profile Democrat…John Kerry. If I were a reporter and not a blogger, I’d contact the firm to verify this fact. But I’m not. 😉

Finally, Mr. Zremski doesn’t seem to have tried very hard to speak to anyone at Vets for Freedom. In yesterday’s article, there’s a quote that makes it appear as if he talked to Wade Zirkle (the executive director), but in fact, the quote was pulled from the website. David personally tried to reach him a number of times and his calls were not returned.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t end with The Buffalo News. Here are the google results for Vets for Freedom. SourceWatch, PR Watch, Wikipedia…and on and on and on. The group recently took out an ad in support of Joe Lieberman:

Thank you, Senator Lieberman.

Iraq and Afghanistan are complicated wars. But you have not let politics influence your position. We are grateful for your integrity, leadership and unwavering commitment to America’s troops. We are veterans of these wars, and we salute you.

Now, whether or not you agree or disagree with their stance on the war or their support of Senator Lieberman, there’s nothing negative or smear-like about that ad, is there?

Then why is it being compared to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign against Kerry?

Have we become so polarized, so blinded by our own belief systems, that no one wants to see the actual truth anymore? Have we become so apathetic that we simply don’t care?

Issues are complex. There’s often more to the story than a 15-second soundbite, but we rarely get more than that. And when we do, it’s frequently from a liberal or conservative source attempting to call its troops to battle.

I think we’re better than this. I think we’re smarter than this.

I think we can handle the truth.

An open letter to the Catholic Church

Dear Catholic Church,

Please consider this my official resignation. I am done with you.

I’ve long disagreed with your views on a lot of issues, not the least of which are your silly rules regarding the priesthood (boys only, no marriage allowed). But this, this was absolutely the last straw.

No gay priests, you say? Good luck with that.

Signed,

erin-go-blog

Argh. I find this offensive on many levels…but I’ll stick with what I find most offensive based on what I thought was the Church’s position on homosexuality. Homosexuality, they say, is not a sin unless it is acted upon. Since ALL priests are supposed to be celibate, how is a homosexual priest a problem? If it is a problem (and clearly it is for them), they’re either negating that idea that it is the action, and not the tendency toward it that is the sin, or saying that it’s impossible for a homosexual person to remain celibate. I have a problem with both.

Or perhaps they’re still trying to crawl out from under that rubble of the sex abuse scandal, thus (again) equating homosexuality with pedophilia. And we all know what I think about that.

Not that I think this will work, anyway…because it just means that seminaries will maintain a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Because really, how would you prove it? Will they keep people out on suspicion of homosexuality? I can’t wait to see them crying about the vocations crisis they have if this happens.

Hooray for Brian and Rachel

My friend Brian (who is my friend Rachel’s husband) made his voice heard at the ECC South Budget Hearing.

Also, Rachel wrote an op-ed piece that was published in the Buffalo News.

Yay for them.

Is there hope for the libraries in Erie County? Let’s hope so…

I *heart* Anna Quindlen

Click here to read her Newsweek column “Life Begins at Conversation,” where she tackles the abortion debate intelligently and tactfully.

People will keep on reducing this discussion as best they can: God and freedom, rights and wrongs. But this will never be an easy issue to parse. It can’t be; instead of fitting neatly into black-and-white boxes, it takes place in that messy gray zone of hard choices informed by individual circumstances and conscience.

Yet another blogging adventure

I’ve joined with my good friends Eden and Jam to form [Your Agenda Here], a place for us to help each other and the rest of the blogosphere stay informed and involved about issues that are important to us. Please stop by and feel free to add your own $.02. Thank you. 🙂

Apparently, I’m an anomaly

So my paper publishes this column by George Weigel that regularly gets me all riled up. I happened to be correcting the page with this column today. Here are some of my favorite bits:

Judging from the post-election reaction of his more fervent journalistic and academic supporters, the Kerry candidacy was attractive because it represented the Europeanization, which is to say “secularization,” of American public life. A Kerry presidency would keep the great unwashed hordes of evangelicals at bay; a Kerry presidency would put assertive Catholic bishops in their place, leaving the field to the more “understanding” staffers at the bishops’ conference and their episcopal allies; a Kerry presidency would regulate biotechnology in utilitarian terms (what works, we’ll do); a Kerry presidency would support the federal courts’ efforts to legislate social policy, thus nailing down “choice” as the supreme value involved in the “social issues;” a Kerry presidency would insist that the right to life of the unborn and the traditional understanding of marriage are matters of “doctrine” that “cannot be imposed on a pluralistic society;” above all, a Kerry presidency would secure a virtually unlimited abortion license, the key to sustaining the “gains” (as these folks understand them) of the sexual revolution and the women’s movement.

First of all, ‘secularization’ of American public life? This is a bad thing? America is not Catholic. America is not Christian. I don’t understand. As I’ve said before, one of the things I liked about Kerry was his determination to keep private faith out of public office. Some people don’t seem to notice that we do, in fact, HAVE a pluralistic society. I personally believe that it IS wrong for a government to impose its morals/values onto the society at large, onto people who don’t agree or believe as they do.

Religious faith, in a European-style Kerry presidency, would be thoroughly privatized: a matter of what Americans do with their solitude, to paraphrase William James. Publicly assertive Catholics, and the even more rambunctious evangelicals, would be dealt a crushing blow.

A crushing blow? Again, I don’t get it. If someone running for president was dead-set on taking away the freedom to worship as one chooses, I would understand. If someone were telling “publicly assertive Catholics” and evangelicals that they would have to shut up and *abandon* their faith instead of simply saying that we (as a country) should acknowledge that not everyone here shares the same faith, well…that would be a different story.

What Kerry’s secularist supporters can’t seem to understand is that the evangelicals, the John Paul II Catholics, and the observant Jews don’t need explaining; what needs explaining is the Harvard faculty club, Michael Moore, and most of the op-ed regulars at the New York Times–people who’ve persuaded themselves that a profound belief in the God of the Bible, expressed in a commitment to live by the Ten Commandments, is the fast track to fascism. They’re the anomaly, not the believers.

First of all, how does 48 percent of the country become defined as “the anomaly”? Second of all, does anyone actually believe this? The problem is not, as Weigel says, “a profound belief in the God of the Bible.” The problem is the possibility of the government forcing that belief (or at least the outward manifestations of that belief, ie gay marriage) onto the American public.

I’m not even gonna touch the abortion/stem cell research stuff.

My head hurts.