Saw it Coming...

This morning's NYT reported on Disney's potential problems as the June edition of Vanity Fair will reveal a picture of topless Miley Cyrus.

The fifteen-year-old star of the hit show Hannah Montana is a role model to many young girls, and some parents are very concerned that this picture will lead their yound daughters in the wrong direction.

Two things come to mind here:

1. Who did not see this coming? It happens to most child stars. Lohan, the Olson twins, they all seem to break at some point. You kinda knew it would happen to Cyrus sooner of later.
2. Girls today have enough shameful role models to follow. I don't particularly think the picture of Cyrus is terrible, it is actually quite artistic, but it does promote underage girls taking clothes off for a camera, which is never a good thing.

What concerns me is that the message keeps on being repeated that the only way a woman can get any attention is by showing her body. That is what is really wrong, not the picture. Miley is getting so much attention (even negative publicity is publicity) that it only makes it more alluring for other girls to try to do the same.

Masking Prejudice

As human beings we have mastered the art of masking our prejudices by demonizing those we cannot abide. Muslims are terrorists, Blacks are loud, Whites think they are better than me, and the list goes on.

I did not, however, expect to find such blatant prejudice on a blog roll on the New York Times. Timothy Egan posted a blog on April 23, entitled Faith of Our Fathers. He used his ill-researched knowledge to attack the entire Mormon community around the world. Here are some of his comments:

"...But religion can also be used as an excuse for awful behavior – from the torture of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, to beheadings by Jihadist killers, to the sexual manipulation of children by early Mormons and their latter-day sects... [Their] faith was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith Jr., an itinerant treasure-seeker from upstate New York who used a set of magic glasses to translate a lost scripture from God...It would have been just another Christian faith had not Smith let his libido lead him into trouble. Before he died at the hands of a mob, he married at least 33 women and girls; the youngest was 14, and was told she had to become Smith’s bedmate or risk eternal damnation. Smith was fortunate to find a religious cover for his desire. His polygamy “revelation” was put into The Doctrine and Covenants, one of three sacred texts of Mormonism. It’s still there – the word of God. And that’s why, to the people in the compound at Eldorado, the real heretics are in Salt Lake City.
As his biographer, Fawn Brodie, wrote, Joseph Smith “could not rest until he had redefined the nature of sin and erected a stupendous theological edifice to support his new theories on marriage... His successor, Brigham Young, married 57 women – a harem that attracted curious libertines like Sir Richard Burton to study the American social experiment...
Fast forward to this century, when the polygamist group makes the same argument at their West Texas compound and at their earlier one in Colorado City, on the Utah-Arizona border. I was at that Colorado City compound, twice in the last four years. It spooked me: the gnarly old men and their child brides, the creepy guards in their pickup trucks, the sing-songy women tending to a dozen children in houses the size of a Motel 6. They were ripping off the state, living on welfare and food stamps, even as they defied civil authorities. In Colorado City, I spent time with DeLoy Bateman, a high school science teacher, who told of losing his daughter after church authorities ordered her to leave her husband and marry her father-in-law – a man twice her age..."

I am obviously not a Mormon, nor do I believe in children being forced into sexual encounters, but I do believe that this article is divisive, and it is the kind of propaganda that causes the rise of more violence and intolerance in the name of religion. Here is a comment on the blog that expresses my feelings the best.

"What baton are you holding, Mr. Egan? The bodies of 6,000 Mormons scattered
across the Western plains are a testament of the legacy of the baton YOU hold.
What role did the 19th century press play in hyping up persecution, exaggerating
and exploiting the sensational to make a buck and stir up hatreds and violence?
Is there a study you are aware of that suggests Mormons married underage
girls in the 19th century at a rate greater than the general population around
them, or are you just taking a sophisticated potshot from the media cheapseats,
and counting on the righteous indignation and general prejudices of your readers
to carry your point?I think I already know the answer to that question."
Posted by clay a

Another comment I appreciated was:

"All this generalization, as if all 437 children have been abused, if any.
Nothing is proven- what happened to American’s ability to think critically,
instead of having a mob mentality lead by the feeding frenzy of mass media and
bloggers. Where is the blogger who will stand up for due process and innocence
until proven guilty? Did the love of our constitution go by the wayside with the
Patriots Act? Abuse does not occur in any higher percentage in any particular
church or in any particular community. it is everywhere. And do not forget that
the marriageable age in Texas was only recently raised to 16 years from 14
years, so before you go riding your merry
bandwagons to the lynching, maybe
you should wait for due process, if it occurs…."
— Posted by Quaker girl

Green Thumb?

I have killed plants that people swore could not die. There was the bamboo Trevan gave me for my birthday a couple years ago, then there was the cactus...no wait...I have actually killed two of them. Yet, I continue to bring plants into this house hoping that my thumb will magically become green.

This year I have actually taken a stab at growing herbs. That's right, I am growing Cilantro and Basil as we blog.
Do you see the little sprout? I cannot tell you how happy I was when it actually sprouted. I will take pictures every couple days and show you the progress here.

Again, let's hope for a long, productive, summer for our little friends.

Valentine's in April

This year Trevan promised me an orchid for Valentine's day. It took us two months to find one that we were both happy with. On April 14, exactly two months after V-day, we finally bought our little orchid.Let's hope that it survives me, since I have a long history of sending perfectly innocent plants to their graves way before their time...

StoryCorps

If you listen to NPR at all, you might have heard stories from the StoryCorps project. This project seeks to document moments in ordinary people's lives as a sort of live library of memories to pass on to future generations. I am sometimes moved to tears with some of the stories. This story in particular was very touching.

Aired on Morning Edition, March 28, 2008 ·

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends
his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat
at
his favorite diner.
But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the
No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected
turn.
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and
pulled
out a knife.
"He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and
told him, 'Here you go,'" Diaz says.
As the teen began to walk away, Diaz
told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be
robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep
you warm."
The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, "like what's
going on here?" Diaz says. "He asked me, 'Why are you doing this?'" Diaz
replied: "If you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess
you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if
you really want to join me ... hey, you're more than welcome.
"You know, I
just felt maybe he really needs help," Diaz says. Diaz says he and the teen went
into the diner and sat in a booth.
"The manager comes by, the dishwashers
come by, the waiters come by to say hi," Diaz says. "The kid was like, 'You know
everybody here. Do you own this place?'"
"No, I just eat here a lot," Diaz
says he told the teen. "He says, 'But you're even nice to the
dishwasher.'"
Diaz replied, "Well, haven't you been taught you should be nice
to everybody?""Yea, but I didn't think people actually behaved that way,"
the teen said.Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. "He just had almost
a sad face," Diaz says. The teen couldn't answer Diaz — or he didn't want
to.
When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, "Look, I guess you're going
to have to pay for this bill 'cause you have my money and I can't pay for
this.
So if you give me my wallet back, I'll gladly treat you."The teen
"didn't
even think about it" and returned the wallet, Diaz says. "I gave him
$20 ... I
figure maybe it'll help him. I don't know."
Diaz says he asked
for something in return — the teen's knife — "and he gave it to me."
Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, "You're the
type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your
watch."
"I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope
that they treat you right. It's as simple as it gets in this complicated world."

"It's as simple as it gets in this complicated world"