Month: January 2006

I often am interested in the use of words to create (or at least reveal) a bias.

Therefore, this story from Reuters interested me:

A gay kiss in a swimming pool, which two men say got them thrown out of a luxury hotel, has caused a stir in traditionally macho Mexico, where open displays of homosexuality are frowned upon.

But when leftist deputies demanded an investigation into the incident in Congress this week, they were angrily shouted down by legislators from other parties who argued the subject was unfit for discussion in the chamber.

The ruckus highlights the discomfort about homosexuality in this predominantly Catholic country, despite recent openness toward gays in some areas.

“It is a question of profound conservatism, intolerance and backwardness,” Party of the Democratic Revolution deputy Inti Munoz said of the deputies’ reaction.

Congress voted that the issue was not urgent and shelved it in a commission for analysis.

Emphases mine, of course.

Modern. Art. Influential.

Amazing…maybe:

an ordinary white, porcelain urinal that’s been called one of the most influential works of modern art

“Dumb,” he says, putting it mildly.

This could portend (greater) trouble:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was rushed into surgery at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem late Wednesday night, after intra-cranial bleeding was detected, following what doctors described as a “significant stroke.”

There was no immediate assessment of the damage he may have suffered. Doctors said earlier that the prime minister was receiving breathing assistance as his condition was assessed.

This is still breaking news, so read the above story and this next one with great caution:

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was taken for surgery on Wednesday after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, the director of Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital said.

“The diagnosis is cerebral hemorrhaging. In light of this, the prime minister has been taken to the surgical ward,” Dr. Shlomo Mor-Yosef told reporters. Sharon was in critical condition and may not recover, a senior political source said.

“It looks very bad. I don’t know if he will recover,” the source said.

If this means Sharon is out as PM or leads to his being out, things will deteriorate over there. In my Of-Course-I-Don’t-Know opinion, of course.

I remind you again of the breaking nature of this story. And I remind you of how bad the media just got the outcome of the mining disaster last night. I went to bed having read breaking news that only one of the thirteen miners died. And I get up this morning to learn that only one of the thirteen miners survived! I’m curious to see if anyone will take up this drumbeat: “The media lied!”

You know, like they’ve been doing about President Bush and pre-war intelligence?

Interesting piece by Victor Davis Hanson last week:

So we have forgotten that most of us after 9/11 would never have imagined that the United States would remain untouched for over four years after that awful cloud of ash settled over the crater at the World Trade Center.

Now the horror of 9/11 and the sight of the doomed diving into the street fade.

This guy has some good points to make in his article (even though the bash-the-Democrats-and-the-media theme does become wearisome after awhile).

Could those same basic points be applied (somehow) to the state of the American church?

Maybe.

Whatever the case, here are a few more tidbits from his article:

Few Americans remember that nearly 750 Americans were killed in a single day in a training exercise for D-Day, or that during the bloody American retreat back from the Yalu River in late 1950 thousands of our frozen dead were sent back stacked in trucks like firewood. Our grandparents in the recent past endured things that would make the present ordeal in Iraq seem almost pedestrian….

Instead, we of the present think that we have reinvented the rules of war and peace anew. After Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and the three-week war to remove Saddam, we decreed from on high that there simply were to be no fatalities in the American way of war.

…our affluent society is at a complete disconnect with hard physical work and appreciation of how tenuous life was for 2,500 years of civilization.

So rather than stopping to praise and commemorate those who gave us our success, we can only rush ahead to destroy those who do not give us even more.

You’re welcome.

This happened recently to a family in our church. That’s pretty close to home.

It happened at a doctor’s office in Silverton, Oregon. That’s close to home also.

A mother took her toddler in for a routine check-up. In the course of the visit, the doctor asked the little girl, “What does your mommy do when you are bad?”

What?!

When the little girl matter-of-factly answered, “Spank me,” the doctor reacted by berating the mother. In front of the child.

What?!

In my estimation, that doctor committed two extremely serious wrongs here.

First, unless there is evidence (and there was none) that the child is being abused, she has absolutely and positively no business asking a little one such a question. None. Period. To me, she is guilty of a monumental ethical violation.

Secondly, to lambaste the mother in front of her daughter is a tremendous lapse in judgment, protocol, and professionalism. And manners, too.

Would the mainstream media please make an issue of doctors who thus spy on and invade the privacy of innocent families? Maybe even make this at least as big a story as the monitoring of terror suspects’ international communications?

(I’d tell you the doctor’s name but I don’t have it.)

So you tell me — Am I over-reacting? Is this normal for doctors to do? Is it morally right? Is it legally acceptable?