Month: January 2009

Seth Godin tells everyone to cut it out:

Someone is in a horrible car wreck, so what happens? People slow down to look.

Leaving aside the time tax they place on the people behind them (once I was in a three hour jam due to rubber necking of a death on the other side of the road, across the median), what are these people doing? People who wouldn’t dream of paying money to watch a snuff film are indulging their curiosity to see carnage on the side of the road and paying with their time and attention.

You know the punchline: the Net is suddenly filled with rubberneckers. People who spend their time at work watching flame wars or indulging their desire to act like trolls, just to get a response. They race to post about plane crashes or server crashes, and they have no trouble investing an hour in debating something that just makes them feel sick.

It’s funny but even during the mayhem of Inauguration week, the image of that A320 being landed safely on the Hudson kept coming back to me. And when I read that its remains had ended up floating not far from Ground Zero, I couldn’t help but marvel at the historical and civilizational symmetry of it all.

Over seven years ago, a group of religious extremists seized control of an aircraft in that same airspace, men who had very little flying experience and a philosophy of maximizing the deaths of innocent civilians on the ground. They did all they could to murder as many as they could in order to secure the maximum reward for themselves in heaven and in worldly renown.

Seven years later, two pilots who have since remained remarkably distant from media attention, were in a similar cockpit in the same crowded area and their over-riding concern was to prevent any civilian casualties at all. That’s why they even avoided small airports which might have led to a crash into inhabited neighborhoods. With enormous expertise, gained by rigorous training in a civilized society, they managed to land safely on the river and save everyone both on board and on the ground.

It seems to me that dignity and training and expertise and humaneness are the values of our society at its best. All of them are self-evidently superior to the values of vainglory, amateurism, impulsiveness and cruelty that bedevil our enemies. If these are the grounds on which we fight this war – and they are ours to choose – then we will win. And we will deserve to.

This small study hasn’t been replicated but it blew my mind. The resilient gap between black and white test scores is one of the most intractable and debilitating social facts of our age. If any part of it can be erased by a psychological shift in the hearts and minds of African-American students, it’s cause for rejoicing.

A small anecdote. I know a neighbor in my hood from walking my beagles. She teaches in a local school and is even more aware than the rest of us in this city how challenging it is to teach and rear a self-confident generation of minority kids. She’s African-American and has long bemoaned the ubiquitous use of the n-word by young black teens. But she pointed out to me months ago that there was one man they never used the n-word to describe. It was Obama. If he can help lift eyes to a larger horizon for more generations of minority children, then surely liberals and conservatives and everyone in between can be glad.

Ellen makes a call to Gladys:

More sad details here. At some point, surely evangelical Christians will have to ask themselves: are we going to continue to demonize homosexuality to such an extent that even our ablest preachers and leaders are led into destructive, secret and often abusive relationships because we cannot allow them to pursue open and honest and loving ones?

The countless gay men who are currently running many of the world’s leading Christian denominations are threats to themselves, to other gay men, to their wives and their churches because ancient doctrine forces them into twisted shells of human beings. In the Catholic church, this led to a horrifying epidemic of child abuse, protected and enabled by the last two Popes. And their response to this? To ratchet up the psychological pressure even further on the men whose psyches and souls they have already permanently warped.

When will this end?

A reader asks:

For the curious and relatively new among your readers (like me), could you tell us how many emails you get each day from readers, how many you read, how you select the ones you read, how you select the ones you respond to and/or publish?  Do you like getting emails? Are you glad we write you about what we’re thinking, even if you can’t respond?  Is it helpful, or just burdensome?  Is there something that readers like me, who yearn for more conversation at the Dish, can do to make our emailed thoughts helpful, and not burdensome?

The volume varies with the season. At the height of the campaign, we may have been getting over a thousand emails a day. It’s lighter on weekends. My current in-tray shows, LOL, 94,000 emails. That’s cumulative since the latest culling. It’s roughly 500 a day by my count. It is physically impossible to read them all, but I check them several times a day, respond to as many as I can and have learned over almost nine years how to scan them for helpful links or tips or arguments. Some email addresses I know by heart and also know they will contain wisdom or amusement. Others I just open at random like Christmas presents. Patrick then goes through as many as he can as well so we catch as much quality as we can.

I love the emails. It’s wondrous to me how much time and effort people put into them when they know they will get no recognition – but that anonymity also brings out more honesty and passion. People write because they feel strongly about something and that comes across. It takes work – but when people say we have no comments section it isn’t entirely true. We have a highly edited comments section and one that we try hard to keep cogent and critical of our own work.

And then there are times when I’m sick like the last few days when the emails of fun and cheer and encouragment really make my day. None of this is burdensome. I feel immensely lucky to have found a readership this smart and knowledgeable and wise. It’s like our own private Wikipedia back here. So keep ’em coming – photos, quips, quotes and brutal take-downs.

Commercials make viewing TV more enjoyable?

This vile anti-Semite and Holocaust-denier has just been allowed back into the Catholic Church. Benedict’s rationale:

"The Holy Father in this decision was inspired by the wish that full reconciliation and full communion can be achieved soon," the Vatican said.

Unbelievable. But if you really grasp how reactionary Benedict is, not terribly shocking. The Times’ Ruth Gledhill:

Could the clock really be turned back this far on Nostra Aetate and the teachings of Vatican II?

Yes, they can. Here’s the bigot himself:

I am truly, deeply ashamed of my church for this action and hope this provokes such an outcry it is reversed. These are not the words of Christ. They are the words of evil.

Tucson, Arizona, 12 pm.