Who buys stuff from Sky Mall?

A recent look through Sky Mall magazine confirmed that there are things you see in Sky Mall that no one in the world owns. Or would buy, if given the choice. Some examples:

Voice Activated R2-D2-
"This motorized replica of the headstrong little "droid" from the iconic Star Wars films responds to over 40 voice commands, navigates rooms and hallways."

Buying a plastic one too cheap for you? Buy one that can creep out your friends. Thanksgiving dinner? Try the "launch lightsaber" command so you can carve the turkey a bit more cleanly.

The Pet Observation Porthole-
"This clear acrylic dome opens a window to the world that helps satisfy a pet's natural curiousity while maintaining safety and security."

Don't make your dog go through the trouble of looking under the fence! Now he can look through the porthole to see if the neighbors are cooking beef, have another dog over, are skinny-dipping, etc. If my neighbor had one of these, I might move.

Lawn Aerator Sandals-

"Aerating your lawn is as easy as taking a walk. Aerating your lawn revitalizes hard, compacted soil, and helps prevent thatch buildup, but lawn services charge a mint for this service."

I've never even heard of an "aerator." But I tell you what, it looks like those are the meanest soccer spikes I've ever seen. C'mon try to stop my dribble, these babies'll cut right through your gastrocnemius.

Towel-Matic Touchless-
"Dispense paper towels with a wave of your hand! No more wasted paper towels! The Towel-Matic's sensor-activated control dispenses one sheet, two sheets or the new half-sheet with just a wave of your hand."

Think of how much work you save waving your hand in front of a paper towel rather than ripping it! And I like the "new half sheet" part. No one has ever thought of using a half sheet of paper towel. Truly ground-breaking.

Relax 'N Nap Pillow-
"Our new Relax 'N Nap Pillow relieves tension on neck, back and shoulders and the patented "air portal" ventilation system allows you to rest face down in comfort while breathing fresh clean air."

Sleeping on a regular pillow? Pmph. You're not getting "fresh clean air." You need that air portal. Could you imagine seeing someone sleeping on one of those things? I think I would laugh in their face. And maybe slap them in the face.

E-Z Chord Kit-
"Patented E-Z Chord device attaches to any guitar in just 5 minutes and gives you instant success. E-Z Chord replaces difficult finger moves with just four numberred buttons."

In college, you don't have to be the guy who can't get a date anymore. Just slap this thing on there.Why actually learn how to play guitar when you could learn to fake it with an odd device on the top. Remember those hard guitar chords like "G" or "C"? No problem. Just press the buttons.

The Batarang Money Clip-
Is using a regular money clip not nerdy enough for you? This will complete a pocket-protector ensemble. You can whip it out of your backpocket, pretending the guy behind the counter isn't a hotdog vendor but Killer Croc or Two-Face. I suggest getting the chrome plated. You don't want the stainless steel to rust from the rain. You know, from when you're out there fighting crime.

"Big Foot, The Garden Yeti" Sculpture-
"With his characteristically big feet, our over two-foot-tall Garden Yeti will have guests doing a double-take as they admire your creative gardening style!"

Guests will be doing a double take, but it won't be because you have "creative gardening style." Make sure none of your guests have guns they might shoot it, thinking they wandered into the Planet of the Apes.

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.

Our Generation, Unimaginative?

In a recent article in the Atlantic, P.J. O'Rourke discusses the difficulty Disney's had in renovating the House of the Future attraction in Tomorrowland. The problem is of course that when it came out, folks apparently were willing to accept that the 1950s was the golden age of Americana (an ideology most recently and perhaps effectively argued against in AMC's "Mad Men.")

His thesis is that Disney can't imagine what the House of the Future would look like because our culture is unimaginative. But here's an excerpt from the crux of his article, which is worth quoting at length:

Well, given the future envisioned in Disney’s House of the Future, who can blame us for looking the other way?Disney’s Tomorrowland is deeply, thoroughly, almost furiously unimaginative. This isn’t the fault of the “Disney culture”; it is the fault of our culture. We seem to have entered a deeply unimaginative era.

Let us not confuse imagination with innovation or even with progress. Man’s descent from the trees and adoption of the brilliant mechanics of bipedalism were innovation and progress of the first order. But what did we do with this progress for our first million years as humans? As best we can tell, we hung around the Olduvai Gorge and beat some rocks together to make “chopping tools.”

On the other hand, the Italian Renaissance was so imaginative that during its three centuries, practically everything worth imagining was imagined. And yet not much was actually invented in Florence, Pisa, or Rome.

Global imagination, like global climate, seems to have cycles—natural, man-made, or whatever. Sometimes what people imagine for the future is bogged down in the literal—call it “blogged” for short. The last thousand years of the Roman Empire, for example, were no great shakes. The Romans had all the engineering necessary to start an industrial revolution. But they preferred to have toga parties and let slaves do all the work.

The Chinese had gunpowder but failed to arm their troops with guns. They possessed the compass but didn’t go much of anywhere. They invented paper, printing, and a written form of their language, but hardly anyone in China was taught to read.
And here we are in 2008. Name an avant-garde painter. Nope, dead. Nope, dead. Yep, Julian Schnabel is what I came up with too. But it’s been a quarter of a century since he was pasting busted plates on canvas. He’s making movies now. And movies are famously not any good anymore. Name a great living composer. Say “Andrew Lloyd Webber” and I’ll force you to sit through Cats and Starlight Express back-to-back. Theater is revivals and revivals of revivals and stuff like musicals made out of old Kellogg’s Rice Krispies commercials, with Nathan Lane as “Snap.” More modern poetry is written than read. Modern architecture leaks and the builders left their plumb bobs at home. The most prominent contemporary art form is one that is completely unimaginative (or is supposed to be): the memoir.

To top it all off, we have just experienced perhaps the greatest technological advance in the history of humans. And what are we using the Internet for? To sell one another 8-track tapes on eBay and tell complete strangers on Facebook the location of all our tattoos. And, apparently, to tell ourselves what to do with the groceries we just bought.

Ouch. I contend that under the way O'Rourke seems to define "imagination," he might have a point. But His definition of "imagination" seems to focus solely on artistic works.

I offer three explanations as to why our generation is not as "imaginative" as others:

(1) Our imagination IS our innovation. But that "innovation" and "progress" he writes off so quickly in the
third paragraph, is an imagination of it's own. Why is imagining a
world where people can make calls, watch movies, listen to music and
write memos in a box that fits into the palm of ones hand artistically
inferior to imagining the world in dots (pointillism)?

(2) Our tools are new. No other generation has had so much innovation. Convergence Culture isn't a thing of the future. It's here. When I turn on my Sony Playstation 3, I can download episodes of Gossip Girl, I can download music, I can download games, I play games on Blue-Ray (as well as audio CDs, DVDs, and Playstation 1 and 2 formats--not to brag). When I turn on my iPod classic, I can also download episodes of Gossip Girl, I can download music (bigger selection), I can download games (a smaller selection). I can do all of these same things on my Mac. It's no longer a matter of whether there's a place where you can get media convergence it's about who profits from it. Are you going to get your convergent media through Sony? How about Apple? Microsoft? Fries with that?

When I was born, not only did these companies not exist, the technology didn't exist. Painting tools existed a long time before the Mona Lisa. The Printing Press existed for 400 years before we received "Les Miserables" and "Tale of Two Cities." You have to learn how to use a paint brush before you make a masterpiece.

(3) Why can't we imagine what the House of the Future looks like? With all the tools and access to built up imagination of the ages, it's hard to agree on what the future looks like. On a cultural standpoint: does the House of the Future have a husband-wife-kids nuclear family? Some would like to envision a future that does. Statistically, it doesn't look likely. Could the House of the Future have same-sex parents? Can that be done while respecting previous stages of the House of the Future? From a technological standpoint: does it look like this:

Inside it will feature hardware, software and touch-screen systems that could simplify everyday living.

Lights and thermostats will automatically adjust when people walk into a room. Closets will help pick out the right dress for a party. Counter tops will be able to identify groceries set on them and make menu suggestions.

Communications standpoint: are the kids text-messaging each other from across the room? My students do. Or have they found some new way to communicate (Telepathy sounds neat but would be lame, since you couldn't hear it in the attraction).

It's to easy to label our generation as unimaginative. Every generation has it's strengths and weaknesses. I'm sure when the "Greatest Generation" was born, the grandparents were muttering "so unimaginative..."

Yes, Virginia, There is...

I've of course heard the famous newspaper story before. But never before this year has it been so publicized. I heard about this article on three different occasion. What makes an editorial in the New York Sun from 1897 so pertinent today?

First, here's the story from the Newseum website:

Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York's Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history's most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps.

Virginia's letter to the editor:

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

Here's an excerpt of the response:

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

An amazing call for faith that has transcended the ages. Merry Christmas one and all!

Faith as a Unifier or Divider?

I read this article in USA Today and was reminded of this study.

Yes, religion can be a forum for people of different discussions to converse...if they go to the same Church. I'm not sure how often that's the case. I hope for the sake of our national conversation that Mr. Thomas is right. But he certainly has the right thesis:

People are pack animals. We need one another. From the earliest chapters of Genesis we read that it is not good for people to be alone. People need community. Only in community are we fully human.

There are lots of places we go looking for community: bars, golf courses, civic clubs. But it's hard to find real community. Especially since the advent of air conditioning, VCRs, home computers, video games and iPods. Forget gated communities. Most of us live gated lives.

Tales from DC: Unity

I've lived in Washington DC long enough to see that it is, as the saying goes "Two Cities." There's Washington: that famed center of pomp and power; and DC the land of crime and generational poverty. In an essay by one of my students this past semester, he said that Washington was divided "if not racially, at least socially." And I think that's fair. Living off Anacostia on the green line is very different than living off DuPont Circle on the red line. They may as well be two cities.

But I do believe that sometimes the city is one. There's two things we all have in common here in DC: that were all different and we're all here. Maybe that's enough.

A few weeks back, I was on the yellow line headed from Columbia Heights to Chinatown. And I saw something that's stuck with me.

It's a typical metro scene.

I'm sitting down behind a large, graying Caucasian man. He's wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jacket and hat. He's staring out the metro at the nothing that whizzes by through the tunnels. Two black girls are sitting in front of him chit-chatting with their mouths while their eyes are glued to their phones. They're hands pass expertly over the phones, sending text messages perhaps. An older white woman with a sour face is standing, holding onto the rails. Her Georgetown Medical Center tag sways with the tilting of the metro. There's a Hispanic girl also standing, examining her long green fingernails. At Shaw-Howard, an elderly black woman in an electric scooter wheels on. She has oxygen tubing attached to her nose and it flows back to a steel container hooked to the back of her scooter. It takes her a while to maneuver the scooter so that she can easily drive off when we get to her stop.

We pass the Mt. Vernon Square metro station. The metro tilts harder than most. The older lady from Georgetown Medical Center is holding onto the rail with two hands now. Suddenly, the metro jerks to almost a complete stop. The force of it makes the girl with the long fingernails and the woman from Georgetown cling to the rail. But the woman in the electric scooter tumbles to the ground. Her steel oxygen container flies down the metro's center aisle. The scooter pins her to the floor. She cries out. Her body begins shaking under the scooter. For a moment, everyone is still. Not quite able to believe what we're seeing. The metro starts moving again.

The man in the Philadelphia Eagles jacket leaps to his feet and rushes to the woman's side. He shouts "Somebody call for help!"

I hit the red emergency button. I've never used it before. It looks old and rusted. I don't believe it works. There appears to be a speaker so I'm not sure what to do. I push it down and try talking into it: "Hello? We need some help back here...a woman fell...I guess you should get an ambulance." The speaker is dead. No response. I keep pressing it, trying to get it to work.

Once we get to Chinatown the metro begins to grind to a halt. The man in Eagles jacket, the girl with the long fingernails and the woman from Georgetown Medical Center are all around the woman now. An athletic young black man in expensive workout clothes rushes from the back of the train. He and the man in the Eagles jacket lift the scooter off the old woman. Then the woman from Georgetown and the Hispanic girl try to lift the elderly woman. When they can't get her up, the two young black girls put down their cellphones to help and manage to get her back into her scooter. The Hispanic girl breaks a nail and doesn't notice. The woman from Georgetown crawls under the seats to get the steel container.

The doors open. A large batch of commuters try to plow in the doors all at once, but are faced with an elderly woman convulsing in her scooter. A woman from the metro authority tells them to back out of the way. She's holding a walkie-talkie and telling them to bring EMTs down into the metro. She seems annoyed--possibly because of the young guy who kept pressing the emergency button.

The woman from Georgetown returns with the steel container. The girl with the fingernails is rubbing the elderly woman's back, cooing to her that everything will be alright. The two black girls have retreated backwards but only by a step. They want to do more but don't know what to do. The young athletic man and the man with the Eagles jacket step back to let the woman from Georgetown reconnect the oxygen container and strap it back on the scooter.

When she's done, she rubs the elderly woman's back as well and kneels down to be face-to-face with her. The old woman hides her face and her body continues to shake, not longer from fright or pain, but, I think, shame. She seems to be sobbing. The Hispanic girl and white woman's hand touch several times as they rub her back and tell her everything will be okay. They don't seem to notice. The woman from the Metro authority manages to convince the woman to wheel her scooter out of the metro. Before she does, her crying picks up and she shouts "Thank you." It has a southern twang, drenched in her tears.

We all get off the metro. Everyone lingers around the woman for a moment longer than they needed to. Part of it was sympathy I think, but part of it was also that we'd done something together. Something good.

Commuters are beginning to complain about the transition time. A young professional behind me mutters, "In New York, they do this much faster. They don't know how to do this stuff."

Part of me wants to tell him to go back to New York, because what I saw in the metro convinced me that Washington DC as a whole does know how to do this stuff.

Upon further urging, everyone begins to leave. Our metro train departs empty so we can get another one. I watch the two black girls leave. They're holding their cellphones in their hands but not using them and their chit-chat is more somber now. The hispanic girl still hasn't noticed her nail, but she shrugs her purse further up her shoulder and goes to leave as well. The man in Eagles jacket shakes hands with the young athletic black man and they part ways. The only one who stays is the woman from the medical center who continues to rub her back and promises to stay with her until the EMTs come.

XoXo Gossip Girl

Alright, it's weird and I can admit it. I think I like Gossip Girl. I've been warned that strange TV addictions like this can happen, but I was fairly convinced (after watching the pilot more than a year ago) that this would be the last show I would watch. My wife, Mimi, suggested we rent it so we could be up to speed with what my former youth group kids were watching. Sounds good right? Educator keeping up with kids.

The first disc went by uneventfully. I kept thinking to myself: "Man these girls are just snobs. Phhh! Like I'd want to live on 'upper-east side.'"

But by the end of disc two, something scary happened. I began to have different sorts of thoughts: "Man, Jenny really is an up-and-comer. Blair better watch out, or the princess will lose her throne," "Gossip Girl is always open on Jenny's computer...could she be...no!
Too easy. They won't introduce her until, like the LAST episode. And
it'll be Serena," and "Chuck Bass!? What is Blair thinking? Spotted: Total idiot!"

So in true form, I have decided to outline the factors that have led to this:

(1) Catfights- Catfights are like car accidents. You don't want to look, because you know what you'll see. But you have to look anyway. Blair says something to Serena. Then Serena lets it slip to Jenny then it makes it back to Blair and it is on. The cruelty and meanness of these fights makes you want hide under the couch, hoping not to incur the wrath waiting for the characters, but you have to watch it happen.

(2) Guys you can cheer for- in some shows, the guys are so ridiculously portrayed, you wonder if the writers have ever actually had a conversation with some one of the opposite sex. But in Gossip Girl, you find yourself thinking: "you know, Dan's just a pretty cool guy. I would have totally punched Chuck Bass for that," or "Rufus may not be the most successful musician, but he's living the dream."

(3) Alien Culture- coming from the guy who did a stint in a trailer park during college, this is a completely different world. The riches of course are beyond my comprehension, ("Oh sure, let's just ride the limo around New York until we see someone we know!)  but I feel like I'm understanding my wife to a much better extent.

When we reached the "Masked Ball" episode, I told Mimi: "Masked Balls are only cool if the Phantom of the Opera shows up. This is just going to be the classic case of mistaken identity because someone will switch masks."

To which Mimi responded, "Oh this is so fun!"

(4) Gossip Girl's Got Sass- At first, I thought the narrator (the mysterious Gossip Girl blogger) was really annoying, but what can I say, she's got attitude. I find myself waiting to hear what she says. "Spotted: Friendship in flames! Looks like things are going a little heated in the upper-east side."

Environmental Storytelling and Mickey Mouse

Over the weekend, I traveled to Orlando for a friend's wedding (Allison LaForte, of WJC fame). My wife and I, as recovering Floridians, promised we wouldn't end up at Walt Disney World.

Last day of the trip. Three hours to spare. Where did we end up? Disney.

Disney thrives on what media theorist Henry Jenkinscalls "environmental storytelling"--creating an immersive environment of images on every side so people get the sense that they are "there." By immersive, I mean that you are drawn into it. You can't go through adventure land without running into wild-west themed rides or seeing Clint Eastwood-esque saloons. And, of course, all those places feature characters from Disney lore. 

We ended up at Downtown Disney (I've been there a million times, but how can you go to Orlando and not do something Disney? We just gave up). As we walked through the LEGO area of Downtown Disney, I began spouting incomprehensible dork language at her: "Don't you see how this is environmental storytelling? Look at the all the figures! See how they add to the immersive experience!" Luckily, she's used to this by now. But sure enough there was a statue of a tourist family there, designed so they looked as if they were made of legos. There was a shark statue coming out of the water, also designed to look like it was made of legos. Further in, there was a sea dragon coming out of the water that, yes, was also looked like it was made of legos. It made it almost impossible to get through the area because so many people wanted to take pictures with the different lego statues.


Granted, this is just the Downtown area, and it features nowhere near the images one experiences in the main disney parks (you even eat your lunch/dinner in places themed to fit the area of the park you're in).

If environmental storytelling is an art, Disney's got it under wraps. Consider an ad campaign they did a few years ago with the help of Annie Leibovitz (she of half-naked Miley Cyrus fame).





 

























































And the message of these advertising pictures is written right on the photos. All of them are variations of the phrase: "Disney is the place where dreams come true." In other words, if Scarlett Johansson can be Cinderella, you can too--at Walt Disney World.

The National Enquirer and the future of journalism

When the story broke last week that Sen. John Edwards admitted an affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter, the effects were more far-reaching than just his own political career. This case study proved once and for all that traditional media had lost their hold over other forms of media.

From the start, the Edwards scandal has belonged entirely to the alternative and new media. The tabloid National Enquirer has done all the significant reporting on it -- reporting that turns out to be largely correct -- and bloggers and online commentators have refused to let the story sputter into oblivion.

There was a time when tabloids could run stories about illegitimate children, naughty affairs, etc. and we would all just giggle and flip through them while waiting at a grocery checkout counter. But what happens when they report the news that a biased media is unwilling to report? I have speculated that in an age where blossoming reporters don't want to simply report, they want to opine, we're returning to the pre-penny press days where media was largely funded by political parties. To get the truth you had to read several newspapers. Are we looking at a future age where people will need to read a New York Post, New York Daily News...and the National Enquirer?

You know it's bad when only the tabloid paper is willing to look pass their own bias to report on something worthy of report.
I rarely find myself siding with Bill O'Reilly, but I think he had a legitimate point when he said last Monday: "I do know it were Mitt Romney instead of John Edwards, this would be on the front page of the New York Times."

Howard Kurtz, at the Washington Post, disagrees with me:

I don't think the party favoritism charge holds up. Yes, the media went hard after two Republican senators, Larry Craig (who pleaded guilty in that bathroom incident) and David Vitter (who admitted calling an escort service). But they also pounced on New York's Democratic then-governor, Eliot Spitzer (whose taste in prostitutes was revealed by the New York Times), and, famously, Bill Clinton (whose Monica Lewinsky mess was disclosed by The Post and hotly pursued by Newsweek).

The Elizabeth Edwards factor cannot be underestimated. The enormous public sympathy for a woman who campaigned for her husband, even as she battled an incurable form of cancer, extended to many of the reporters who followed and interviewed her on the trail. The emotional high point of the Edwards campaign came last year, when he and Elizabeth held a news conference to announce that her cancer had returned, but that he would not leave the race.

But as Tim Rutten at the Los Angeles Times noted, there were reasons to look past our sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards:

First, it was less than unlikely that Elizabeth Edwards was unaware of the allegations. (She says now she knew of the affair in 2006.) Second, Edwards' name has surfaced as a possible running mate for Barack Obama and as a possible attorney general or Supreme Court nominee -- posts in which character and candor matter. Finally, throughout his political career, Edwards has made his marriage a centerpiece of his campaigns.

Rutten goes on to describe Edwards' campaign reporters as "sheep...who meekly accepted Edwards' categorical dismissal of the Enquirer's allegations." There I disagree with Rutten. Several sources have told me they knew about the story but were disuaded by editors. It's easy to forget that reporters are people too. They have bills to pay, mouths to feed and bosses to answer to if they want to do the manage the first two.

Question raised: Does this place America in a position where the only news source willing to go after a sensitive story is the organization that usually handles Britney Spear's latest outburst of crazy?

Another Five Things I've Learned About DC

Two months in D.C. and still alive. After reflecting on a previous post, "Five Things I've Learned About DC," I found myself wishing there were things I'd included. Some point soon, I'm sure to run out of things to learn. But for now, here are five more lessons from D.C.

(5) Visiting the monuments is like going to war- On my first attempt to bring family to see the touristy sights like the Capitol building, the White House, etc. I realized why I don't go by myself. A mad house isn't a fair way to describe it because everyone else is trying to get out of a mad house. But here, everyone wants to stay and take pictures, but you're the lone soul trying to escape. Plan to duck, stop and hide to avoid getting in the way of pictures. On one side of you are smiling folks, waiting for a camera shutter and on the other side are people with cameras. Both will kill you if you get in between them. Safest bet to get through the gauntlet? I vote for a Jack Bauer-esque shoulder roll.


(4) Churches are pretty polarized- Do you like extremely progressive churches? You're in luck. Do you like extremely conservative churches? You're also in luck. Are you one of the 30-40 percent of Americans in the middle? You're in trouble. All those divisions you read about in the paper are here. Presbyterian PCA Churches vs. Presbyterian USA Churches. American Baptist Churches vs. Southern Baptist Churches. Heck we've even got an African-American Catholic Church in town.

(3) The 42 bus only goes to cool places- There's really not a whole lot more to say about it. I've ridden many buses, but every time I get on the 42 bus, I end up in places often considered "hip." Adam's Morgan, DuPont Circle, Mt. Pleasant--all of them are pretty cool. Word to the wise: those transfers you get on the bus are only for other buses. If you try to use them in the metro, people will laugh at you.


(2) Customer service is non-existent- Needless to say, customer service issues are everywhere, but I can honestly say, I've never noticed it more than here in D.C. (And I've heard people say that it's worse in New York City. Yes, you're right: the seventh circle of hell is worse than the sixth.) At local coffee shop in Mt. Pleasant, I ordered some breakfast pastries. Twenty minutes passed. Folks came and went with coffee and pastries. Eventually, I went to the counter and asked about it. "Oh, we must have given it away." There was no "sorry" or "we'll get another one." That was the end of the story. When I did ask if I could get another to replace it, the lady sighed and looked at the ceiling to make sure I realized that I was really putting her out. If I was more of a jerk, I would have reminded her that I'd already paid her for the pastry, I just wanted the pleasure of eating it.

(1) Even the homeless have blogs- I've known that DC was a blog-happy community, but I never knew how blog-happy. Anyone who walks the route from Union Station to Capitol Hill probably knows Peter Bis. He's one of the biggest celebrities of Capitol Hill--his home is the street corner in front of the Congressional Exxon gas station on Massachusetts Ave. Pete shouts out good mornings to folks going to work and on Thursdays at 5 p.m., he reminds commuters "one more day." In my conversation with him, he shared that the CIA was after him for an operation he bungled 10 years ago. In that same conversation, he encouraged me to check out his blog. Please feel free to check it out as long as you remember that the viewpoints expressed there are not necessarily those of WJC or of the CCCU. It gave me some fascinating reading and led me to information about the "reptile-enhanced capabilities" of Sen. Hillary Clinton and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Greatest Quotes from "The Office"

The new season of The Office is set to run on Sept. 25th. That seems to me far too distant. In order to hold myself over, here are some Office Quotes:

-Michael Scott (talking into phone): "Thank you very much sir! You are a gentleman and a scholar. ...Oh. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm sorry. My mistake. ...That was a woman I was talking to. She has a very low voice. Probably a smoker."

-Dwight Schrute:  "Let me describe the perfect date: I take her out to a nice dinner. She looks amazing. Some guy tries to hit on her... now he wants to fight- so I grab him- I throw him into the jukebox! Then the other ninja's got a knife, he comes at me, we grapple, I turn his knife on him. Blood on the dance floor. She's scared now. I take her home. I'm holding her in my arms. I reach in for a kiss... I hear something in the leaves, I flip her around, she gets a poison arrow right in her back. She was in on it the whole time... but I knew."

-Dwight: Jim! This is not funny! Why is my stuff in here?" (sees nameplate and office supplies in vending machine)
Jim: "Oh, that's weird--dollar for a stapler though, that's pretty good."
Dwight: "Well I'm not paying for my own stuff. I know you did this because you're friends with the vending machine guy."
Jim: "Who? Steve?"

-(The episode where Jim dresses like Dwight)
Jim: "Question: What kind of bear is best?
Dwight: "That's a ridiculous question."
Jim: "FALSE:  Black bear."
Dwight: "That's debatable. There's basically two schools of thought--"
Jim: Fact: Bears eat beets. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica."

-(The episode when Michael burns his foot on the George Forman grill):
Michael Scott: "Can I ask you all a question? Do you know what it’s like to be disabled?"
Phyllis: "I had scoliosis as a girl."
Michael Scott: "Never heard of it. No, a real disability, not a woman’s trouble."
Creed: "When I was a teenager, I was in an iron-lung."
Michael Scott: "What? How- how old are you? The point is: I am the only one here who has a legitimate disability. Although I am sure Stanley has had his fair share of obstacles."

-(From Diversity Day)
Michael Scott: "In the words of Abraham Lincoln, ‘If you are a racist, we will attack you with the North.’"
-(The episode where Jim moves Dwight's desk into the bathroom)


Dwight: "Where’s my desk?"
Jim: "Whoa, that is weird."
Dwight: "This is not funny. It's totally unprofessional."
Jim: "Hey, you're the one who lost a desk."
Dwight: "I didn't lose my desk."
Jim: "Calm down, where was the last place you saw it?"
Dwight: "Who moved my desk?"
Jim: "I think you should retrace your steps."

-(The episode where Michael considers jumping off the roof to show the dangers of depression)
Michael Scott: "An office is as safe as the people in it. And sometimes those people can drive you to do crazy things to show the dangers of the office. That's the danger I found myself in today. I saved a life. My own. Am I a hero? [pause] I really can't say, but yes."

-Michael Scott: "You spend your whole life trying to get people to like you and then you run over one person with your car. And it's not even one of the popular ones, and everybody gets on your case. Doesn't make any sense."

Glamourizing Bad Behavior, Criticizing Bad Behavior

In the L.A. Times last week, Enid Portuguez presented an interesting piece about the hit show Gossip Girl, in which the show's producer insisted that the show does not "glamorize" teen drinking or sex:

  “When people say the show glamorizes teen drinking and sex, they aren’t really watching the episodes,” said Savage. “Not all the characters drink or have sex, and when they do, it’s always put in a context. Behaviors are rooted in character. There’s decision-making, regret and consequences involved.”

For years, I've heard similar arguments about all kinds of different media and always heard similar language: "there's sex but it's not glamorized "there's drugs but it's not glamorized." I have not seen Gossip Girl nearly enough to judge one way or the other. But I think the phrase "it's not glamorized" can cover a multitude of sins. The larger question this article raises is, what do you specifically have to do to keep bad behavior from being glamourized?

Bad behavior is pretty common in our media. So here are five things you can do to make sure the role model's bad behavior is "not glamorized" in your movie:

(5) Kill the role model: This is the most obvious and perhaps the most effective deterrent. It subconsciously reminds us that death comes to people who do bad things. If you smoke weed, you're considerably more likely to be killed by a masked serial killer. In a horror flick and having an extra-marital affair with your best friend's husband in their dark basement bedroom? The killer is in the closet. You're both dead. Examples: Chris from Carrie. If you are having premarital sex with your boyfriend and pick on dorky girls, you may get your car telekinetically flipped and die brutally.

(4) Beat down the role model: Next most effective deterrent. If you do bad things, you're going to get seriously beat up. The reason this is effective is that the person can come dangerously close to #5 during the process. Examples: Edward in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe -- You betrayed Narnia, so you're going to get kicked around by trolls, goblins and ice queens. Lucky for you your sister has a magic juice bottle to bring you back.

(3) Exile the role model: All the role model's friends stop spending time with her. The girlfriend dumps the male role model, perhaps screaming "you're just not person I used to love anymore!" It subconsciously reminds us that people don't like you if you do bad things. Examples: Michael in the Godfather -- If you become a mafia boss and begin killing off family members, your wife might not want to be married to you anymore. Also, Charlie from LOST. If you do heroin, your brother won't join a band with you, you'll crash on a mysterious island where even a bunch of outcasts won't want to hang with you.

(2) Jail the role model: The role model gets some time behind bars to think about what he did. Perhaps not the most efficient deterrent because now there is plenty of media out there that make jail look like a cake walk. This one can also include all sorts of legal action from restraining orders to community service. Examples: Barney in How I Met Your Mother. If you pee on the side of churches, you may end up working in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. Also, Jerry on Seinfeld. If you build an entire show on making fun of people, you probably will end up in prison at the show's finale.

(1) Punish the role model: This is the one seen most often and is probably the least effective. The role model does something wrong and then gets yelled at, grounded, etc. In teen shows, this only serves to further the myth of "evil adults don't want you to have fun." When the only consequence to bad actions is upset parents, we tend to think maybe it's the parents who are out of line. We tend more toward blaming parents especially when the parents themselves are depicted as having made their own bad choices. Example: Grace in The Secret Life of the American Teenager. If you date someone when your parents tell you not to, they might be upset with you...but they can still make a few witty jokes to lighten the mood before commercial break.

Are there other ways to make sure bad behavior isn't glamorized? Anyone have better examples?