May 12, 2005 by s.z.

Why Air Force Cadets Need to Join the Jesus Team Here's a bit from of the USA Today story about how a USAF Academy chaplain who didn't clear her remarks with the top brass has been let go (emphesis mine) Michael Weinstein and Americans United lay some of the blame on evangelical Christian groups in Colorado Springs, the state's second-largest city. Across Interstate 25 from the academy are such groups as Focus on the Family, the International Bible Society and New Life Church, an 11,000-member church whose pastor, Ted Haggard, heads the National Association of Evangelicals. I recall that back in December I read a piece from the local Colorado Springs paper that claimed that the Academy leaders were too close to the Focus on the Family ministry.  The main issue back then was an allegation that Academy grads in town for reunions were being scheduled to attend tours of FoF as part of the official procedings.  I can't find the story now, but here's part of the Focus on the Family radio "Daily Broadcast" notes, which report James Dobson's response to it -- which teaches as much about FofF as the news story did.  FOCUS ON THE FAMILY BROADCASTS ABOUT ISSUES  Colorado Issues Update: December 7 2004 Dr. Dobson is joined in the studio by Paul Hetrick, Vice President of Media Relations, and Tom Minnery, Vice President of Government & Public Policy, to discuss a news story published in the December 5, 2004 edition of The Gazette, the Colorado Springs local newspaper. The article is titled AFA Grad Calls Focus Tours Out of Line, written by Pam Zubeck. Dr. Dobson responds to this very biased and unfair lead article that appeared in the Colorado Springs metro section, in which the paper took a pretty vicious shot at Focus on the Family and the Air Force Academy. The main issue was that Focus on the Family gave tours to some 1963 Academy visiting graduates for their reunion, at their request. Focus on the Family hosts about 250,000 visitors per year that visit us for tours. Steve Dotson, a retired brigadier general who lives in Ohio, accused Focus of proselytizing and fund-raising to finance their political agenda. Call to action:  [...] Dr. Dobson cancelled his subscription to The Gazette yesterday and plans to get his news some place else. Paul Hetrick is also going to cancel his subscription toThe Gazette, and it may be that some of our friends and supporters might want to consider getting their news from some other source. They can express their views by contacting Sharon Peters (Editor & Vice President) at [phone #] or by e-mailing her at [email address]. So, publish a mildly unfavorable article about Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, and James Dobson will exhort his followers to boycott your paper.  Learn from this, newspaper editors, that Dr. Dobson has ways of making you not talk!  (I wonder what he'll do about these new allegations about FofF and the Academy, since they're appearing in the national press.) Oh, my favorite tidbit about Ted Haggard of the New Life Church comes from Bartholomew, who informs us that one of Haggard's subordinate pastors is Mell Winger, who happens to be Doug Giles' brother-in-law!!!  Bartholomew relays the story (as told by preacher Dutch Sheets) of how Doug had an "extremely ungodly lifestyle," and used to leave the house whenever Mell and his wife, Doug's big sister, showed up.  But Mell and his wife prayed that Doug would shape up, and after about seven years he did!  And now he heads a "powerful evangelical ministry based out of Miami" -- in a hotel.  But I can't find any link between Mell and the troubles at the Academy, which is a big disappointment to me.   So back to the USA Today story: Cadet surveys show more than 90% of the students are Christian. Of those, about one-third consider themselves evangelical Christians. "There's a great deal of overlap of on-campus and off-campus evangelism," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United. "You simply don't find that at the other service academies. Since all of this broke, we have had over 50 new incidents in e-mails and complaints, and all but one relate to the Air Force Academy." Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, said Lynn's group is on a "witch hunt here. They will not rest until religion is eradicated from that campus." Minnery said the academy's most recognizable building, its multispired Cadet Chapel, "is not there by accident. These cadets are being trained to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country, to meet their maker." So, that's the purpose of a military academy: to train young people to DIE!    Thanks, Focus on the Family, for pointing this out so bluntly. 7:12:30 AM

Ask Uncle Cal Cal Thomas's new Townhall column is so full of old-fashioned, crotchedy, Ann Lander-style pseudo-wisdom that I thought it would play better as an advice column than as a comentary on the media.  So, I made up some questions and interspaced them in Cal's piece, and it ended up looking something like this .... Dear Uncle Cal, I keep hearing talk about this new group blog founded by Arianna Huffington (the apostate conservative who allegedly took up the liberal lifestyle to get back at her gay ex-husband; and who almost got belted by the beloved Govenor Schwarzenegger).  Should she be allowed to blog, what with all the other blogs out there (some of them so good that they're really not blogs, so quit saying that they are, liberal media)? -- Matt D. Dear Matt, It isn't that its founder, Arianna Huffington (who named it for herself in true Hollywood "enough about me, not what do YOU think about me" fashion) doesn't have every right to join the increasingly clogged blog superhighway. Rather, this blog has an agenda and speaks mostly to people who already believe what most of its writers say. ==================================== Dear Uncle Cal, Per Arianna. the Huffington Post's agenda to find common ground between people on all sides of the issues. That sounds like commie talk to me!   So, exactly what are the commie pinkos on the left trying to do by publishing posts like Dennis Prager's Campus Barbarians ("I see in this student who screams obscenities at a conservative speaker and all the students who joined or supported him, our version of the Hitler Youth, our barbarians ")? --David H. Dear David H., The left is now trying to gin-up the same level of anger the right has used to propel itself into political power and media heaven by its dominance of talk radio and much of cable TV.  =============================  Dear Uncle Cal. So, a bunch of celebrities get a forum where they can write pieces like Two Years Later, Body Armor Problems Continue in Iraq, or Fly Me, I'm Broke ("The United Airlines default on its pensions has huge implications for Social Security reform, and for the general sense of economic insecurity in the country,") or D.C. Buzzes While Millions of Babies Die ("Four million children die each year around the world within one week of being born. Three million of them could be saved if they had proper sanitation, clean water, nutrition. Simple things").  What's the problem with that? -- Arian .. .I mean, Anonymous Dear ArianAnonymous, The problem with blogs like The Huffington Post is that they divert our attention from real and serious journalism. OK, there hasn't been much serious journalism for at least 20 years as real journalists have died or gone on to other rewards and the networks have been taken over by people who care only about the bottom line and little about covering news that matters. ========================== Dear Uncle Cal, It kind of sounded like you were dissing Rupert Murdoch in that above response -- and since you do a couple of shows for Fox News, I know that can't be true!  So, my question is: What do you really think about Fox News, and the great work you are doing there? --Roger A. Dear Roger, The quality of stories has diminished and we now fixate on runaway brides, car chases, celebrity trials and other sideshows, serious subjects such as the war and coming conflicts with China and possibly Russia take a back seat. ======================= Dear Uncle Cal, If we do go to war with China, and possibly Russia, whose fault will it be?  Can you please blame it on the blogs? Please, please, please? -- Dan R. Dear Dan, If the public is unprepared for new threats and challenges, it will largely be the big media's fault for failing to prepare them. The public will share the blame for fixating on blogs. ============================ Dear Uncle Cal, I can't believe that you are dissing blogs this way.  I mean, blogs brought down Dan Rather.  They brought down that guy from CNN too.  And they would have brought down the entire Democratic Party if it had turned out that Dem staffers fabricated that Schiavo talking points memo -- and even though they didn't, that doesn't mean that Time's Blog of the Year was "wrong," because a newspaper and a Democrat made the blog say what it did, so the paper and the Democrats are to blame. Anyway, think of the kerning, man.  THE KERNING! --H. Rocket Dear H. Rocket, Blogs have their place. They played an important role in the last presidential election by contributing to the debate over John Kerry's experience in Vietnam and George Bush's National Guard records. But if they replace solid journalistic principles and practices, the public will be ill-served and the profession may suffer a mortal wound from which it might not recover. ================= Dear Uncle Cal  How DARE you imply that bloggers don't have solid journalistic principles. They do so.  Indeed!  Why, rignt now I am so upset with your piece that I have a mind to tell my readers not to read the whole thing!  But what, exactly, is your problem with blogs?  (If you say that they have no editors, I shall be forced to once again cite their self-correcting nature, and nobody wants that.) -- Glenn R. Dear Glenn, With blogs, we do not know if what we read is true. For most blogs, no editor checks for factual errors and no one is restrained from editorializing. The Big Media sometime are guilty of these same shortcomings, but at least with them there is a presumption in favor of accuracy and fairness, plus there's a way to shame them and occasionally force a correction if they mess up. Blogs have no checks and balances. ============================ Dear Uncle Cal, As the world's foremost expert on blogging, I urge you to read my book, Blog.  It's about how blogs are the wave of the future, and will soon replace the MSM.  So, buy a copy of Blog, you old coot, and join the 21st century! --Hugh H Dear Hugh, I suspect - and hope - that once the bloom is off the blogs, serious people (and they seem to be an endangered species) might still crave real journalism and be able to remember what it looked and sounded like. =================================== And that's the end of Cal's column.  So, I hope you have learned some valuable lessons, like that when Cal was a journalist, everybody wrote their own copy (they did it while walking to school to get a degree in journalism, in the snow, uphill, both ways).  And they didn't have no runaway brides or blogs back then, and they LIKED it that way. Now, fetch Uncle Cal his chewing tobacco and his porn, and stay the hell out his hair, you young whippersnapper! 5:36:02 AM

Free! Free! Free! The new Virtual Occoquan is out, featuring the best of the Salon blogs. Check out such great pieces as:   No Chocolate Mess - Paul Hinrichs (did the President Bush intend to use that hand with the Saudi prince?)  Shocked and Appalled - Nancy Jo Bush  (parody too subtle for Howie Kurz) Maxine Daley (a cartoon in the style of the New Yorker) Sweat Lodge - Rick Hutchison (I bet George Bush didn't do anything like this during his military service in Texas) Superman Hater's Club Spring Meeting - Mark Hoback  ( l love Mark's superhero dramas) Gregorious (Let them eat cake!) Is That a Tick in Your Pants? - Katy Hipke (Revenge is a dish best served with ticks)  And more!  Call now.  Operators are standing by. 4:01:15 AM

Bill O'Reilly Wrong Again On Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle published an editorial which said that Florida's new sex offender law "has emotional appeal," but isn't the best way "to stop sexual predators from preying on children."  It quotes an expert who says that abduction/murders are very rare, and that most sexual abuse is committed by people in the child's household, or by family friends or acquaintances.  The editorial adds: Tracking sex offenders with GPS bracelets — which will cost Florida $4 million in the first year alone — might be useful as an lab experiment. But lower tech, less showy and better documented measures are likely to work better in most cases. One approach is to increase the number of well-trained probation officers. John Couey, charged with murdering Jessica Lunsford, was a convicted sexual offender who had violated probation. The private company hired to monitor him did not know he was a sex offender and lost track of him for more than a month, the Miami Herald reported. Another low-tech method, periodic polygraph tests, can't be admitted as evidence in court but can track activities of offenders identified as special risks. [...] Although some compulsive offenders can only be contained rather than cured, counseling reduces recidivism. Community watch programs — as simple as parents patrolling play areas — are a powerful disincentive for predators, researchers say. Finally, educating children about healthy and unhealthy touch, whether by family or acquaintances, remains the best defense against sexual abuse. See anything there that anybody could object to?  Well, Bill O'Reilly did.  Here's what the blurb on Bill's site says about an "O'Reilly Factor" segment that aired on Tuesday: Unresolved Problems Segment - Punishing child molestersGuest: Attorney Courtney Anderson Under a new Florida law, anyone convicted of molesting a child under age 12 faces a minimum sentence of 25 years to life. Some liberal observers feel the law is too harsh - the Houston Chronicle, for example, editorialized that the best weapons against sexual abuse are "counseling" and "educating children about healthy and unhealthy touch." The Chronicle said nothing about feeling that the law was too harsh, and it's pretty funny that the "No Spin Zone" would let somebody say that it did.  Defense attorney Courtney Anderson defended that point of view. I saw the segment.  Anderson spent most of her time claiming that Bill had misread the editorial.  The Factor lambasted the Chronicle for promoting "touchy-feely" solutions that simply don't work. "Taking convicted predators off the streets is the best defense - not counseling, not community watch programs. That newspaper's incredible stance is what has failed in this country for years." Yeah, teaching kids that nobody has the right to molest them is "touchy-feely"stuff that just doesn't work, and we should instead be spending our time warning them not to sleep at night in case somebody breaks into their room and kidnaps them.  W'oC thinks that the Factor is a maroon..  Today the Chronicle replies to Bill: At the start of the segment, O'Reilly stated that the Chronicle had "taken a lot of shots at me, so it must be left of center." O'Reilly's name has appeared only once in a Chronicle editorial, which concerned not O'Reilly, but Fox News' suit against Al Franken for his use of the phrase "fair and balanced." The suit was thrown out of court. Hey, Bill never forgives and never forgets!  However, in his favor, a search of the Chronicle's archives reveals that they have mentioned Bill in other sections of the paper -- such as the in front pages, which in October reported that "O'Reilly and Co-worker Settle Harassment Case." While this was just a news report, I think mentioning anything that might be unfavorable to Bill is considered "a shot" -- at least, by Bill.  And Bill probably took this story as a "shot" at him: "Olbermann really clicks in sexiest newscaster poll."  A paper which would print a story like that must be left of center, like Bill says. But back to the Houston Chronicle: O'Reilly told his viewers that the Chronicle editorial said the Florida law was too harsh. He was mistaken. The editorial excerpts that O'Reilly projected on the screen said nothing about the harshness of the punishment. The editorial, citing extensive research on this subject, said hooking GPS monitors to sexual predators released from prison might prove less effective than closer supervision by parole officers and other low-tech strategies. The Chronicle did not call for lighter punishment; it called for the adoption of the most effective measures to protect our children. O'Reilly said the editorial advocated "community service" for sexual predators. It did not. O'Reilly accused his guest, Austin defense attorney Courtney Anderson, of misleading the audience when she defended the Chronicle editorial. O'Reilly then read what he said was a quote from the editorial. Unfortunately, not one word of what O'Reilly read appeared in the Chronicle editorial or anywhere else in the paper. He and his staff apparently confused someone else's commentary with the Chronicle's. Oopsie! Lately hosts from Fox News (and CNN) seem to be on a crusade to scare parents, and to convince them that sex offenders are poised to snatch their kids. For instance, on Monday, while talking about the case of the murdered girls in Illinois, Sean Hannity said that it's no longer safe to left your kids ride their bikes unsupervised. He also stated that the police should round up all the registered sex offenders in the area because "These guys kidnap children from their beds, molest them, and murder them!" That the girls were killed by one girl's father probably was as unwelcome a surprise to Sean and his ilk as was the fact that the missing bride wasn't murdered by her fiance. However, Sean and Bill have recovered from the blow, and for the past couple of days have been playing up Jerry Hobbs' criminal history, apparently in an effort to blame the justice system for the girls' deaths -- you know, because Hobbs wasn't kept locked up forever. But what Sean and Bill don't seem to be focusing on is Hobbs record of domestic violence. See, instead of warning viewers of dangerous ex-cons, they could be educating viewers about domestic violence and the dangers it poses to children. But while info like that might actually be useful, it's kind of depressing and unsensational, and so doesn't bring in the viewers -- plus, it might make viewers wary of guys with bad tempers who shout a lot.  Anyway, it appears that the goal of these shows is to terrify and titillate viewers, and apparently the hosts don't appreciate their work being hampered by common sense -- as witnessed by Bill's reaction to the Chronicle piece. And if the Chronicle reminded people of the less-sensational but more helpful truths about who is actually molesting the majority of children, then it's time to make up some inflammatory stuff and claim the Chronicle said it, because Bill can't afford to have his audience realizing that maybe a tabloid TV journalist isn't really looking out for them, but is instead looking out for ratings. Now, on to a segment about how illegal aliens are plotting to murder you while you sleep! 3:00:05 AM