News Clips: April 2009 Archives

A 21 year-old English major at Brown, Kevin Roose, enrolled in Jerry Falwell's Liberty University to see what life on the other side was like. He wrote a book, The Unlikely Disciple, describing his experience. It seems he was pretty open-minded about the whole thing, and the article is refreshing insofar as it talks more about exploding prejudices against Christians than it does reinforcing them. "But Liberty students aren't hostile demagogues... We think of evangelicals as unflinching, but Liberty students spend a lot of time thinking critically..."

In the interview he makes a curious statement. He says, "I went on a few Christian dates, and I even had a quasi girlfriend. But at Liberty you can barely hug, so it was like, what am I supposed to do on these dates?"

Maybe he's just being cheeky. I want to say, "Umm ... talk?" Is he really so shallow that he sees dates as nothing more than a progression of hope to have sex, securing sex, having sex, had sex, and planning for more sex next time? Or is he just trying to be funny? Hard to say. I'm not good at figuring this stuff out.

But the article is worth a read.

Broadcasters were defeated by the Supreme Court in a ruling that the FCC can impose fines for "fleeting expletives" committed during prime time, the first case such decided in over 30 years.

Of course, who knows whether this will mean anything in the new administration — whether they'll even bother enforcing prime-time broadcast rules like Bush did.

Broadcasters have been trying very hard to get these rules struck down. I am glad to see them fail.

In this interesting article a poll indicates that Americans are redefining "luxury" and including things such as microwaves in that definition. More people are dropping microwaves, air conditioners, dishwashers, dryers, TVs, and other appliances from their classification of "necessary" items. This is kind of funny because my dishwasher broke fatally some time ago and I haven't bothered to replace it, in part due to the economy. (The other part is due to the fact that the tile floor was installed after the dishwasher, it's going to be hard to get out and even harder to get another dishwasher back in.)

This reminds me of the different definition of "poor" people have. I look at people in countries such as Haiti (I only pick them out because Food For The Poor is always telling me about conditions there) and compare them with the people in our country with cars, TVs, microwaves, air conditioners, washers and dryers, entertainment systems, cell phones, cable subscriptions, Internet, computers, and so forth and wonder if there isn't something wrong when I am made to feel guilty that I am not doing more to help them. The poor in this country are rich compared to those overseas, who often lack running water, toilets, clean water, adequate shelter, non-dirt floors, and so forth. If you go to this site, you can rank your income worldwide. Let's say you are a single person at the 2009 U.S. poverty level ($10,830). You are in the top 13% of incomes in the world. Pretty interesting, eh?

I know someone who is, by U.S. standards, poor and definitely in a difficult financial situation. He told me recently that he signed up for a $100/mo cell phone plan. (This was on top of a land line, AFAIK.) I couldn't believe it. I just didn't see this as good stewardship of his funds.

So I'm glad to see people shedding what they own.

An ad was banned in the UK (wish sometimes we could do that) for being grossly offensive to Catholics and Poles. The ad shows John Paul II dancing lasciviously with a young woman in a short dress and a beer in his hand.