Died and Gone to Heaven

A lot has fallen into place in the stressful month (or three) since I've posted on this site. Mimi and I purchased our first house. Woot. I've been offered the opportunity to teach my first semester at Mizzou which is actually a bit rare. I won a student paper award through AEJMC in St. Louis (it comes complete with a plaque!) where I will be presenting in August. Mimi has found a new doctor. We've spotted a couple of ways we could quickly get involved in the community and get to know the people there.

That said, I'm not sure I can completely wrap my head around the stress I feel right now. I'm moving next weekend before returning to DC to finish out at my job. The AEJMC conference is the second week of August. Orientation for Mizzou is the third week of August. And I have a baby due in October. It's a bit overwhelming. We've got to fit house painting, Lamaze classes and CPR training in there.

I've been doing a lot of running. About 24 to 28 miles a week.

People have asked me a lot about what this transition is like.

Basically, I'm going to place I've never been. To program I've never visited. To live in a house I've never seen. In part to prepare home for a child I've never met.

It's kind of like the afterlife. Good friends have told me that Missouri has a great program--the program is truly the stuff of legends. People I trust have told me Columbia's a fun town with very nice people (emphasis on "very"--I'm not sure I'll know what to do after living in DC and Florida). Family has told me that have a child will be the greatest responsibility I'll ever had, make me busier than I've ever been and happier than I could ever imagine.

Am I moving or dying to go to Heaven?

Tales from DC: National Half Marathon

Me, the day after. Plenty of energy and stamina, but some joint soreness.

I've come a long way.

I'm too goal-oriented for my own good, and I don't often glance back to see where I started.

I've struggled to be athletic when I was younger. As a kid with childhood asthma, I was benched the entire year I was in little league soccer. It doesn't help that I also was born with a leg twisted funny so I tended to trip over myself when running. Of course the only way to fix problems like that is to, well, run anyway. But that's hard to do when you're sitting on the bench.

After soccer, bless my parents, they put in martial arts. Turns out the next best thing for leg twisted like mine was to do a lot of kicking. I did a lot of kicking. I kept the inhaler in the sensei's office desk and it took some time to ween myself off of it. I used to have to use it two or three times during a one-hour class. Gradually, I got to where I only needed it once. I remember the day when I took it out the last time--very out of breath and ready to use it. But I decided I didn't need it. I finished the class and felt mildly proud when I finished the class without needing to use it. I didn't tell my parents, or anyone really.

I joined track in high school because my friends were doing it and because there were pretty girls and because my friends made me realize I should be doing a sport where you got to hang out with pretty girls. At first I threw disc and shotput which made no sense because all the rest of the guys were linebackers and I, well, wasn't a linebacker. But then I got into doing 4x400 relays and fell in love with running.

I took a considerable break from it when Mimi and I moved to DC. Balancing fulltime work and fulltime graduate school is crazy by the way. But since I've restarted, it was with the goal of working up to a marathon at some point. Halfway there!

The National Half was a good race. I was warned to train hills, but I thought that was ridiculous (this is DC! What hills?!). Apparently there are quite a few. So some soreness in my ankles but no blisters and no other soreness.

Decision 2011

Whew boy...

So with a baby coming in October, I have a huge choice before me that will affect my life for at least the next three years. Which Ph.D? Thus far I've been accepted to three (with two others that I should hear from in the next week). And three I've gotten into are all excellent programs with good reputations. There are a lot of positive things about each one. What makes the decision so difficult is that there isn't an obvious "bad" choice.

All three programs are fullrides--they include all the bells and whistles of stipends, insurance, conference funding, etc. 

All three programs encourage continued growth in practical experience in the field, and the development of at least one foreign language.

University of Missouri-Columbia: Is consistently rated as one of the best journalism programs in the country (if not the best). Missouri was the first university in the United States (the world) to create a journalism program. Missouri also is the only option with an obvious mentor relationship (although I would likely work with them little beyond the dissertation phase of my study) and is the most accelerated communication program in the country--PhDs finish in 3 years as opposed to 4 plus.

However, there are few job opportunities outside of Missouri for working and there are limited options for study/research outside of the Missouri-Columbia environment. My wife and I have a few contacts in Missouri, but largely we'd be forming a network from scratch in Missouri.

University of Maryland-College Park: Would offer a broad range of options for study outside of Maryland as well as within. The consortium at Maryland includes Georgetown (my alma mater), Catholic University of America and George Washington University. It's proximity to Washington, D.C. also makes it a prime location for research in the city.

Since my wife and I have lived here three years, we also would have solid support network. On the downside here, Maryland also has no obvious mentor figure for my field of research and the cost of living in DC Metro area is significant to say the least.

University of Texas-Austin: Would offer me more chances to teach. I'd be teaching perhaps throughout my entire career at Texas which would bring more income as well get me used to large, lecture hall teaching of which I have little experience. Since my wife is from Texas, this also allows for a solid support network for us.

On the downside, there are limited options for study at universities outside of Texas and there is no obvious mentor figure there that I could study under.

This is a tough one.

Communion Confession

Context: I take other people's religions seriously. I am religious, I work with the religious and did my recent master's thesis on Islam. So then I am placed at my grandfather's (very Catholic) funeral. While I am baptized Catholic, I'm not confirmed and thus am ineligible for communion according to the Catechism. Thus the situation unfolded...

The French spoken at the service is not Parisian (my grandfather being an Acadian), but I can still catch a bit of it. My grandfather by the way was a Jedi Master-level Knight of Columbus. They had uniforms, swords out--everything. During the service it comes time for communion, and while not Catholic, I am aware of the Catholic tradition of the "blessing." With the "blessing," a non-Catholic can approach the priest during communion and receive his, well, blessing without taking the bread or wine. To note that you would like the blessing, you simply cross your arms. I explain this to my wife and sister.

So communion begins and I approach the priest with my arms crossed. The priest offers me the communion bread. I pat my hands against my shoulders to emphasize ("Blessing!").

The priest seems to consider that maybe I don't understand French, so in broken English: "Take...my body..."

Mia and Me: Why My Dog Drove Me Crazy And Why I Miss Her

Mia at our apartment in Chinatown. Washington, D.C.

Mia and I didn't get off to a great start.

I grew up in a house with over-affectionate, lick-lick-lick German Shepherds and Golden Retrievers. When I was dating a very hot Baylor girl (who is now my wife), she expressed that she wanted me to meet her dog. Sure. I would have followed her anywhere.

Mia came into her parent's house in Texas as a part of a pack of animals that included Oliver "who has a weird eye condition" and Suzy "who's totally blind, by the way." They ran for an overflowing dish of food. Mia, a Cocker Spaniel, managed to nudge her way in between the two other huge dogs to eat. My girlfriend (Mimi) invited Mia over and Mia was very excited to see her. Mia took one sniff of me, stared for a moment and then ran back to her dish. I felt slightly snubbed. No licks?

"She likes you," Mimi said.
"I couldn't tell."
"Oh, she scared to death of guys. At least she came up to you."

Almost six years after our initial meeting, I held Mia in my arms at Friendship Animal Hospital as our vet euthanized her. And I held her long after her heart had stopped and the vet had left. I cradled her head which was covered in the tumor that would have strangled her painfully within weeks, if we didn't put her down gently.

Now our house is emptier in her absence. The garbage stays in the can. The tennis balls are packed up in a small bag. No one barks when I go to take a shower. There are no new mystery stains on our couch.

What Comprises Blasphemy in Islam?

I think it's difficult for Western audiences to comprehend what constitutes blasphemy in Islam. I say that fully aware that I am not completely sure. At the conference I was at on Islam and the Media, I saw several discussions of Islam in the media which caused a massive reaction. Everyone remembers the Danish cartoons, but a recent one that got less coverage (because there were no death threats), was the outrage against the Playstation 3 Game "Little Big Planet."

The controversy about the game is over the game's soundtrack. A Grammy-award winning Islamic musician included Quranic verses in one of the songs. There was such outrage in Britain that they had to recall the game, take the song out and re-release it.

Millions of copies of Little Big Planet have been withdrawn from warehouses after lines from the Koran were found to be included in the accompanying music.

The game, which was due out on Friday, will now be re-programmed without the offending song – a track by Mali-born singer Toumani Diabate that contains two lines from the Islamic holy book.

So what constitutes blasphemy in Islam and why aren't we sensitive to it? What is it about Western society that makes us numb?

"The Arab"

The Coverage and Representations of The Arab in Western Media

This is a street ethnography performed in late 2009 in partnership with Amy Johnson of Georgetown University's Islamic Studies Department.

Part One

Part Two

GopherLink! This is a firestorm waiting to happen: former lesbian mom with artificially inseminated child refuses to give child to former partner after going straight.

The Real Reason Newspapers Are Dying?

Ah. See! Columbia has fixed the problem of newspapers. We develop journalists who also (kinda) rap. We just need to have this guy rap the top stories of the day--a sort of revisited age of News Ballads.

What Happened to "How I Met Your Mother?"

How I Met Your Mother is dragging. I know, I know. I love How I Met Your Mother, but we're beginning to feel the strain of the "who is the mother?" story line. Part of the problem is that the key plot line of the show (Ted finding Mrs. Right) has dragged on now into the fifth season. This is probably the result of the money makers realizing that they can get more money out of a show if they drag it out. We were feeling this same thing in season three of LOST with the "will they get off the island" question. There, they artfully answered the question while raising others that kept (most) people watching.

And granted, How I Met Your Mother is not your typical sitcom. Here's the Chicago Tribune:

A lot has been written about the supposed demise - and even the comeback - of the half-hour comedy on network television. Traditional sitcoms, we’re often told, are too stodgy and predictable and are just not cutting it anymore, while “single-camera” comedies such as “The Office, “My Name Is Earl” and “30 Rock” are all the rage.

But the line between “30 Rock” and “HIMYM” is not that distinct. Just as “Ugly Betty” isn’t quite a comedy and isn’t just a drama, “HIMYM” is something of a hybrid.

For one thing, some “single-camera” shows use more than one camera at a time. And though “HIMYM” does have a laugh track, the fact that the laughs (from a studio audience that watches a tape of the show) are put in after filming means the comedy is not “a slave to the audience” as executive producer Greg Malins says.

How I Met Your Mother is unique show and it has a unique problem. Ted's future wife could be any number of women who've gone through his life--or some mysterious, yet unmet person. The problem How I Met Your Mother faces is that whoever the mother is will have to have a strong on-screen presence--strong enough to stand on equal footing with actors/actresses we've seen onscreen for years. This trumps even the problem with Castaway: we have Tom Hanks alone on camera for almost two hours and only maybe twenty minutes of the wife, yet she's supposed to hold the audience. In the case of Castaway it worked, because of Helen Hunt. I have to argue that How I Met Your Mother will need an equally strong, if not stronger, presence to introduce the mother.

But that said, here are some quotes from everyone's favorite skirt chaser:

(Barney talking about how easy it is to run a marathon)
Barney: "Step 1: You start running. There is no Step 2."

(Talking about Barney's dating strategies)
Ted: These strategies ever work for you?
Barney: The question is: Do these strategies ever NOT work for me? Either way the answer is about half the time

(Lily asks Barney to come with her for wedding dress shopping)
Barney: I can’t go, I’ve got this thing….
Lily: What thing?
Barney: ...a penis.

Lily: Marshall and I are just growing up.
Marshall: And it's gonna be sweet, too. Like tonight, we're tasting all these different wines, pairing them up with these cool, gourmet cheeses.
Barney: Wow. Who knew being in a committed heterosexual relationship could make a guy so gay.

(Ted talks about visiting a girl and her family)
Barney: Did you sleep with her sister?
Ted: No..
Barney: Did you sleep with her mom?
Ted: No..
Barney: I'm losing interest in your story

Ted: Why are you sleeping in our tub?
Barney: The porcelain keeps the suit from wrinkling.
Lily: Wait, were you here when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night?
Barney: Don't worry, I slept through it. I totally didn't sleep through it. For a little girl, you've got a big tank.

(talking about Carl the bartender)
Lily: These look kinda like blood.
Marshall: OK, I know that you've all dismissed this theory before, but is there any chance that Carl is a vampire?
Barney: That's ridiculous.
Marshall: I'm serious. Think about it. He always wears black, we never see him in the daylight, only after dark.
Robin: Oh my God, that does describe a vampire, or you know, a bartender.

[Barney just discovered he did not sire a baby with his latest conquest and tells Marshall about it]
Barney: Marshall, great news: I'm not a father.
Marshall: Congratulations. [Shakes Barney's hand]
Barney: I know, this is the happiest moment of my life! Marshall, the way I feel about not having kids. I never knew I could love something this much. That's why, I'm creating a holiday. From now on, today will be known as "Not A Father's Day"!
Marshall: Wow, you're creating a holiday.
Barney: Why not? Everybody gets a day - mothers, fathers, Bastille's...why can't there a be a day for those who are single and like it that way?

GopherLink! Found this story an email from about a year ago. Besides the election reference, it's still a completely relevant piece on the lack of evangelicals in newsrooms. Read more here.

Sesame Street's Grover discusses what Marriage is

StormTroopers and 9-11: Too Soon?

Oooh. Kinda funny but...too soon?

The Social Media Revolution

Is social media a fad? Or the biggest change since the Industrial Revolution?

Paper Towels!!

Come to think of it, Paper Towels are pretty cool.

GopherLink! Inside a Netflix sorting facility. The Long Tail in action! Read more here.

Ann Arbor loses the News

On July 24, the Chicago Tribune printed a mournful column, lamenting the death of the Ann Arbor News. Unlike many other cities, the death of the Ann Arbor News is the death of the only major news source in the area.

The News was not just a hometown paper for the 114,000 residents of this university town about 45 miles west of Detroit, it was the hometown paper. Ann Arbor has become the first American city of any size to lose its only full-time daily.

But perhaps understandably (less so for the many journalists sitting in the seats), they are starting from the ground up. The editors are trying a business model that has been semi-successful for other digital news outlets: small staff, small circulation, niche advertising (see AnnArbor.com--oh and the top story this morning is dead swans).

While this maybe the first "city" to lose it's full-time daily, there's certainly been documentation about what happens when a community loses it's daily. Want to make your palms sweat? See what happens to volunteerism, civic involvement and political participation when a local newspaper closes.

It's impossible for me personally to have a clear thought on the matter of a newspaper closing. On one hand, I've sat in the newsroom. I know what the loss of a colleague is like and I know the good that a skilled journalist can do. But I'm unfortunate enough to see where the market is headed. Will news survive? Of course. Will newspapers survive? Yes, in some capacity. But it means a new model with new strengths and a lot of new weaknesses. With that in mind, it's easy to understand how the columnist feels when he writes:

This radical reinvention looks ominously like a smoke screen for radical cost-cutting and wholesale firings, one that will be replicated in city after city where lone, moribund daily newspapers are so many dominoes waiting to fall now that this first one has toppled.

As I mourn the passing of the Ann Arbor News, I’m haunted by the fear that AnnArbor.com will succeed. Even more, I’m haunted by the fear that it will fail.

Is there a way to save these newspapers, that still attract millions online but don't charge for it? Some people think so. The LA Times on "Free Riding" and it's affect on newspapers:

Practically anyone can start a website and get software that snags fresh online
news from those who originate it. Website owners pluck the freshest, most interesting reports and quickly post condensed rewrites. That costs them little, and they then surround the rewrites with cut-rate ads.

When readers get to work in the morning, they can read fresh news on the newspaper's site or equally fresh rewrites on competitors' sites. The free-riders may link to the newspaper's report, but why click on the link to read the same story twice?

Take Newser.com, an "aggregator" of others' news reports. It boasts on its site: "We choose the most important stories from hundreds of U.S. and international sources and reduce them to a headline, picture and two paragraphs. And we do it 24/7 -- you can come back morning, noon, night (and in between) for something new that matters."

Competing with each other and newspapers for advertising, free-riders enter the market undercutting each others' ad rates until many of them can still profit, but newspapers, which bear the hefty labor costs of gathering the news, can't.

But on the other side, some journalists have, despite the obstacles, managed to make it in the digital world. But they're reporting on a beat, not on a city. Individual journalists can survive, but the industry?

NASA tapes over Apollo 11 moon landing

Seriously? I learned this lesson when my sister taped CareBears over my copy of Godzilla Vs. Megalon--you always break off the little tab.

It was humankind's crowning achievement, with millions around the world glued to their television sets as US astronaut Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon 40 years ago.

But in the scientific equivalent of recording an old episode of EastEnders over the prized video of your daughter's wedding day, Nasa probably taped over its only high-resolution images of the first moon walk with electronic data from a satellite or a later manned space mission, officials said today.

It means that the familiar grainy and ghosting images of Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind" are all that remain from the mission, though the space agency has managed to digitally restore the footage into new broadcast-quality pictures that it released today.

"I don't think anyone in the Nasa organisation did anything wrong. It slipped through the cracks and nobody's happy about it," said Dick Nafzger, one of the last Apollo-era video engineers still working for the agency at Maryland's Goddard Space Flight Centre.

Role of Media in Islam

Reviews: Essay, “Local Contexts of Islamism in Popular Media,” “Reporting Islam,” and “Muslims and the News Media.”

This post will be a review of the three different works I’ve sampled in the past two weeks. All of them are so interrelated that it makes sense to summarize them together.

“Local Contexts of Islamism in Popular Media”

In this essay, Lila Abu-Lughod talks about the degree to which Egyptian television serials in the past two decades have shaped Egyptian perceptions of Islamism, the piety movement. She notes that Egyptian television serials work differently from other nations. Egyptian serials run day-after-day for a maximum of 30 episodes and then they’re finished. And often these serials run through the nation’s religious authority, al-Azhar. She notes that in the early 90s, there were few depictions of Islam (or Islamism) in television serials. “All that viewers could see were people for whom religion was taken for granted as part of their identity and that sometimes offered solace in times of personal trouble. Piety was seen only among the elderly” (Abu-Lughod 8). But then in 1993, a new policy was announced that Egypt would try to combat terrorism (which was happening through Islamism) through media. Since then serials have begun to appear which show Islamists as swindlers, thugs, etc. In the famed “boy-loses-his-way” storyline, serials tend to have the boy drift toward Islamism which will put him in even more trouble.

For a time, there was outrage from Islamists in Egypt, especially the rural Upper Egypt. Because many Islamists were from rural areas. Well, post-9-11, a serial was released set in Upper Egypt in which the rural people are tempted to join Islamism. They don’t expressing that they don’t do that because “I’m a Sa’idi” (Abu-Lughod 17)! Thereby framing Islamism as criminal activity and Upper Egypt as an honorable place. She notes that the essential movement of television serials has been toward depicting religion as culture (Abu-Lughod 15-16). This narrative does accentuate differences between traditional Islam, Islamism and Coptics (which is perhaps negative), but those differences are made to see culture and perhaps, relative.

This is an interesting essay, because this is a case where there is a good Islam and a bad Islam, but the media gets to tell us which is which.

“Reporting Islam”

This book is the culmination of a study on the depictions of Muslims in British media. Not surprisingly, the British media doesn’t come out well, for numerous reasons.

(1) Lack of Muslims in newsrooms- if newsroom culture lacks someone who can be a “normal” Muslim model, it’s difficult for the media to determine what Islam is if there’s no model.
(2) Lack of knowledge about Islam- the people in the newsrooms know little about Islam, the most they know is what has been mediated, likely by others who know little about Islam.
(3) Increase in poverty, prison-rates among Muslims- this is perhaps a bit self-perpetuating. In Britain, if Muslims are increasingly criminal and lower-class, society and depicted that way, society to a certain extent keeps it that way (Poole 20).

Interestingly, the study found that depictions of Islam on a local level (ie. The story on the local Ramadan, etc) tended to be far more positive than those on a global level. On both levels, they’re the same religion, but are depicted differently in the two narratives (Poole 258). As a result, Poole notes that discourse is closed between the British and Muslims. The media conditions have resulted in defensive constructions of identity on the part of the Muslims (Poole 18), while simultaneously created the British continue to put Muslims into a presumed narrative.

“Muslims and the News Media”

This was the most helpful resource by far. In this book, Gary Bunt has a chapter foreseeing the information revolution in the Islamic world. He notes that the internet is a tool proliferating through the Islamic world, making freedom of speech and expression more possible even in authoritarian regimes (Bunt 160). To certain extent, the internet is still just a tool of the elite and the government. The governments of some countries have seen the internet as a tool to better survey possible dissidents. But of course it hasn’t worked that way and the internet is a growing force, expanding quickly beyond elites (Bunt 153).

Governments have applied the Internet as a means of observing ‘dissident’ activities online. However, sophisticated encryption programs have made control of many aspects of the Internet more problematic for government agencies in Muslim (and other) contexts, for example in censoring email exchanges…States have been under attack from opponents, including hackers/crackers of varying grades of proficiency (including Muslims) seeking to compromise governmental online interests – for example through changing content of websites or accessing ‘confidential’ databases. These ‘Muslim hackers’ range from individuals to highly organized groups, not all operating with ‘Islamic’ agendas in mind (Bunt 160).

And the internet has allowed differing interpretations of Islam a virtual space to discourse. Indeed, internet skills have grown so important to Islam that they are now being taught in Islamic seminaries.

The online translations of al-Qaradawi [a Qatar-based religious scholar] into other languages, and the reproduction of his materials on affiliated websites, have been extremely influential, particularly following 11 September. His website statements on jihad, denouncing the targeting of civilians as contrary to Islam, were quoted in the international press (Bunt 160).

And finally Bunt notes that authoritarian control is much more difficult in an internet age. The ability to speak out against an interpretation of Islam is more difficult when you need a printing press or a television studio to spread the message than when you only need an iPhone (Bunt 159-161).

Does Marriage Matter?

For those who've followed the breakdowns of the Sanfords, the Edwards, the Gosselins -- well, need I go on?--marriage may seem a bit bleak. TIME takes the issue straight on in a compelling piece sure to draw flack: "Why Marriage Matters." (Although it seems a bit odd to follow that with "Top 10 Mistresses!") In the piece, Caitlin Flanagan notes a connection between one-parent marriages and poverty, drugs, jail time, etc. According to Flanagan, growing up in a two-parent marriage creates a better environment for raising a family.

In response to TMI reports on the Sanford affair, Flanagan quotes Leonard Michaels:

"Adultery is not about sex or romance. Ultimately, it is about how little we mean to one another."

She goes on:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in May that births to unmarried women have reached an astonishing 39.7 percent. How much does this matter? More than words can say. There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers' financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation's underclass.

The poor and the middle class are very different in the ways they have forsaken marriage. The poor are doing it by uncoupling parenthood from marriage, and the financially secure are doing it by blasting apart their unions if the principals aren't having fun anymore.

The growing tendency of the poor to have children before marriage — the vast majority of unmarried women having babies are undereducated and have low incomes — is a catastrophic approach to life, as three Presidents in a row have tried to convince them. Bill Clinton's welfare-to-work program encouraged marriage, George W. Bush spent millions to promote marriage, and Barack Obama has spoken powerfully on the need for men to stay with their children: "We need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one."

Interestingly, the response of some press reports has been to imply that the failings in some of the high-profile conservative affairs (of which the Gosselins, the Sanfords and the Ensigns fit) are related to their religious backgrounds.

Alan Breed of the Associated Press does a bit of editorializing after noting a quote by Mark Sanford:

“Their point is that love is not a feeling,” Sanford told the Associated Press in a tearful two-day confessional. “It’s a choice. It’s an action.”

That sentiment might seem cold to many Americans, but it is perfectly consistent with the born-again, evangelical Christian world that Sanford inhabits, says sociologist John Bartowski.

H/T Mollie for finding that. I'm married so maybe I have a different response to that statement. My feeling is that a commitment is the highest measure of what love is meant to be. Breaking it is the highest measure of what love is not. To quote Mollie:

I can’t help but laugh that this sentiment might seem cold. To me, cold is cheating on your wife with an Argentine bombshell because you feel like it. Cold is messing up your sons’ view of marriage, romance and love through your narcissism and lack of foresight. Cold is breaking the heart of your wife and partner. Cold is telling the world that you so callously disregarded your marital vows that you somehow managed to pick up a “soul mate” who lives 5,000 miles away. Dios mio! But believing that love is demonstrated through your behavior? That doesn’t seem particularly cold to me.

In response to this piece, I think that last thing we need in American society is more feeling. We feel just fine. We feel fine enough to shop and buy whatever we want, whenever we want it without regard to our finances or the environment. We feel fine enough to be with whoever we want, whenever we want, without regard for the people that get hurt along the way. And people do get hurt. Divorce and adultery don't just happen between two people. What we do need in American society is commitments to action. Just like we need commitments to act positively toward the environment, we need commitments to act positively toward our wife. That's what marriage is. And what we need is a society that keeps it.