Religion & Medicine

Does prayer work? How could you tell if it did? The New York Times is reporting about a study to be published in the American Heart Journal that seeks to scientifically study the effect of prayer on patients recovering from heart bypass sugery.

In the study, the researchers monitored 1,802 patients at six hospitals who received coronary bypass surgery, in which doctors reroute circulation around a clogged vein or artery.

The patients were broken into three groups. Two were prayed for; the third was not. Half the patients who received the prayers were told that they were being prayed for; half were told that they might or might not receive prayers.

The researchers asked the members of three congregations — St. Paul's Monastery in St. Paul; the Community of Teresian Carmelites in Worcester, Mass.; and Silent Unity, a Missouri prayer ministry near Kansas City — to deliver the prayers, using the patients' first names and the first initials of their last names.

The congregations were told that they could pray in their own ways, but they were instructed to include the phrase, "for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications."

Did it work? Well, no. In fact. it may have hurt a little bit.

Analyzing complications in the 30 days after the operations, the researchers found no differences between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not.

In another of the study's findings, a significantly higher number of the patients who knew that they were being prayed for — 59 percent — suffered complications, compared with 51 percent of those who were uncertain. The authors left open the possibility that this was a chance finding. But they said that being aware of the strangers' prayers also may have caused some of the patients a kind of performance anxiety.

"It may have made them uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to call in their prayer team?" Dr. Bethea said.

On the other hand, your chances of having major complications were slightly reduced if you'd been prayed for.

The study also found that more patients in the uninformed prayer group — 18 percent — suffered major complications, like heart attack or stroke, compared with 13 percent in the group that did not receive prayers. In their report, the researchers suggested that this finding might also be a result of chance.

Also in the Times today (Friday), a front page article on trachoma.

What's trachoma? It's caused by a tiny organism called Chlamydia trachomatis, and it effects the eyes. Repeated infections cause scar tissue to build up under the eyelid, and for the eyelashs to turn underneath -- scratching the cornea and eventually leading to blindness. It occurs in poor, underdeveloped countries, and is very often spread by flies. (No doubt you've seen the pictures of flies swarming about weak, starving children). The World Health Organization estimates that 70 million people are infected with it. Five million suffer from its late stages. And two million are blind because of it. The disease itself and the blindness caused by it are entirely and pretty cheaply prevented.

One of the organizations that has been doing more than its share to help is Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. As much maligned as drug companies are these days (and deservedly so, in many cases) Pfizer should be lauded for what they're doing here.

The use of Zithromax, an antibiotic manufactured by Pfizer, has proved a breakthrough. The most common alternative is a cheap, messy antibiotic ointment that has to be applied twice daily to the eyes for six weeks. Zithromax, in contrast, can be taken in a single dose — making compliance easier and distribution to millions simpler.

By 2008, Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker, will have donated 145 million doses for trachoma control. Its contribution is administered by the International Trachoma Initiative, a nonprofit group. The drug has been provided in 11 of the 55 countries where trachoma remains a problem.

But globally, the World Health Organization estimates that at least 350 million people need the antibiotics once a year for three years to bring infection rates under control.

That equals more than a billion doses of azithromycin, the generic name for Zithromax. Trachoma is so rampant here in Ethiopia that an estimated 60 million people, or 86 percent of the country's population, need the drug.

Pfizer has not officially announced any additional donations, but Dr. Joseph M. Feczko, a Pfizer vice president, says the company will provide whatever is needed. "There's no cap or limit on this," he said. "We're in it for the long haul."

Another organization that has been doing a lot to help is the Carter Center. Founded and headed by former President Jimmy Carter, the Carter Center is a "nonprofit public policy center founded to fight disease, hunger, poverty, conflict, and oppression around the world". It's one of the reasons that Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. (It's up to history to evaluate the relative merits of presidents, but nowhere in my crystal ball do I see George W. ever winning one.)

The significance of this article for us, ComMedia students, is its location -- front page, above the fold, in the New York Times. Trachoma is an ongoing problem. Millions of people can be kept from going needlessly blind, if enough people choose to do something about it. And a front page article in the Times will remind people of the necessity to do just that.

Now I don't call that liberal or conservative, religious or scientific -- I call it humanitarian.

Religion and the Media

When choosing slots for our AMS reports, no-one in the class chose "Religion & Morality". (Kind of surprising in such a sensitive and thoughtful group!)

So let me provide you with a couple of stories from this morning's papers.


From the Hartford Courant: "Church Moderates Seek Airtime".

Now at first glance one would say that Religion is more evident in the media and in society than it has been in a long time. The question posed in the article, though, is "whose voices are we hearing?"

The major networks have "silenced" mainline religious voices in favor of more conservative or fundamentalist church leaders, said the Rev. Robert Chase, communication director for the United Church of Christ, which this week launched an effort to get more moderate religious views on the air.

Moderate voices are conspicuously absent from cable news and Sunday morning talk shows, Chase said Wednesday.

By comparison, he said, the Rev. Pat Robertson; the Rev. Jerry Falwell; James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family; Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention; and Gary Bauer, former head of the Family Research Council, have accumulated more than 30 appearances on Sunday talk shows such as NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBS' "Face the Nation" over the past eight years.

In the same period, the principal U.S. leaders of the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church have not appeared at all.

"The fact is that these [mainline] leaders do speak for millions of people whose perspective is not being heard," Chase said.

Pat Robertson, seen on TV's The 700 Club, has previously called for the assassination of a foreign head of state, and blamed hurricanes and 9/11 on gays.

Jerry Falwell, perhaps most famous for outing Tinky Winky, (of course they deny it), blamed 9/11 on " the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way."

Why are these guys getting all the airtime, if they don't represent the mainstream, if some of their ideas tend toward the outrageous? Well, they're well-known, and outrageous is good TV. It's this thirst for viewers, more than political bias, that results in bad tv.

"There is a dangerous trend with the political and religious right feeding off each other's agenda and ascribing theological validity to it that is troubling to me, because we have a society that supposedly is built on a diversity of voices," Chase said.

From the New York Times: "A Preacher's Credo"

Maybe you've seen this man on tv. His name is Joel Osteen, and he's a very wealthy man. How did he get to be rich? By preaching.

You may not think that ministering is a very lucrative profession. But it can be. The first thing you need is a big enough church. Lakewood Church, Mr. Osteen's church seats 16,000. (It's the former home of the Houston Rockets basketball team.) When they pass the plate at Lakewood, it's a big plate.

Collections at the church's service bring in close to $1 million a week, with $20 million or so a year more sent in by mail, said Don Iloff, Lakewood's spokesman and Mr. Osteen's brother-in-law. Don't get too excited, though. It's not all profit.
The money goes to pay the staff of 300, service the debt on the $95 million it cost to turn the Compaq Center into a church (now about half paid off), support ministries in India and elsewhere and buy television time around the country.

And Mr. Osteen doesn't even take a salary from the church. He doesn't have to.

Two weeks ago he signed a contract with Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, that could bring him as much as $13 million for a follow-up book to his debut spiritual guide, "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential," which, since it was published by Warner Faith in 2004, has sold more than three million copies.

It's not enough to have a big church though. You need the right message.

Mr. Osteen exhorts readers to shun negativity and develop "a prosperous mindset" as a way of drawing God's favor. He tells the story of a passenger on a cruise ship who fed himself on cheese and crackers before realizing that sumptuous meals were included. "Friend, I don't know about you, but I'm tired of those cheese and crackers!," Mr. Osteen writes. "It's time to step up to God's dining table."

Or, as he also puts it: "God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner."

He is not shy about calling on the Lord. He writes of praying for a winning basket in a basketball game, and then sinking it; and even of circling a parking lot, praying for a space, and then finding it. "Better yet," he writes, "it was the premier spot in that parking lot."

Are there critics? Sure. Some people are always jealous of success.

"He's not in the soul business, he's in the self business," said James B. Twitchell, professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida and author of a forthcoming Simon & Schuster book on megachurches: "Shopping for God: How Christianity Went From in Your Heart to in Your Face."

"There's breadth but not too much depth, but the breadth is quite spangly, exciting to look at — that's his power," said Dr. Twitchell who called Lakewood "the steroid extreme" of megachurches. He said church critics fault Mr. Osteen for "diluting and dumbing down" the Christian message, "but in truth," he said, "what he's producing is a wild and alluring community."

Whatever. It sure sounds like a form of religion that would appeal to a lot of 21st century Americans.

All-in-all, a very positve piece on Mr. Osteen from, of all places, the New York Times.

The Death Penalty for Moussaoui. . .

is looking less and less likely.

The problem is, he didn't actually do anything. He might have. He was trying to learn to fly planes. But he was in custody on September 11, 2001.

He can get the death penalty, though, if the prosecution can prove that if he had not withheld information, the plot would have been uncovered and all those lives saved. That never would have been that easy. It got a lot harder thanks to Carla Martin.

And today it got even less likely.

The F.B.I. agent who arrested and interrogated Zacarias Moussaoui just weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks told a jury on Monday how he had tried repeatedly to get his superiors in Washington to help confirm his certainty that Mr. Moussaoui was involved in an imminent terrorist airline hijacking plot.

But, said the agent, Harry Samit, he was regularly thwarted by senior bureau officials whose obstructionism he later described to Justice Department investigators as "criminally negligent" and who were, he believed, motivated principally by a need to protect their careers.

Mr. Samit's testimony added a wealth of detail to the notion that officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation played down, ignored and purposely mischaracterized the increasingly dire warnings from field agents in the Minneapolis office that they had a terrorist on their hands in Mr. Moussaoui.

"I accused the people in F.B.I. headquarters of criminal negligence" in an interview after Sept. 11, Mr. Samit acknowledged under intense questioning by Edward B. MacMahon Jr., Mr. Moussaoui's chief court-appointed lawyer.

And get this: he was a witness for the prosecution! Sheesh!

The Tillman Investigation

A front page article in the New York Times today.

Patrick K. Tillman stood outside his law office here, staring intently at a yellow house across the street, just over 70 yards away. That, he recalled, is how far away his eldest son, Pat, who gave up a successful N.F.L. career to become an Army Ranger, was standing from his fellow Rangers when they shot him dead in Afghanistan almost two years ago.

"I could hit that house with a rock," Mr. Tillman said. "You can see every last detail on that place, everything, and you're telling me they couldn't see Pat?"

"All I asked for is what happened to my son, and it has been lie after lie after lie," said Mr. Tillman, explaining that he believed the matter should remain "between me and the military" but that he had grown too troubled to keep silent.

There were problems from the beginning.

The Tillman family's first glimmers of distrust began in the month after Corporal Tillman was killed, at the age of 27, on April 22, 2004.

Within hours, military officers came to the family home here, the same house where Corporal Tillman had grown up. No one mentioned, though, that the shooting had been at the hands of his colleagues. Even Corporal Tillman's younger brother Kevin, who served in the same Ranger unit and was in a vehicle far behind the shooting and did not see what had happened, did not learn the truth for more than a month.

Instead, eight days after Corporal Tillman's death, Army officials awarded a Silver Star and issued a news release that seemed to suggest that he had been killed by enemy fire during an ambush.

At the end of May, as the rest of Corporal Tillman's unit was returning to the United States, the Army notified the family of what it believed really happened. In the months that followed, in private briefings for the family, the Army assured the Tillmans that a thorough investigation would be made and that those responsible would be disciplined.

"They said they'd take care of it, and I believed them," Mr. Tillman said.

But the Army has not been forthcoming. And when you're not forthcoming, it makes people wonder what you're hiding -- even if you aren't hiding anything.

An examination by The New York Times of more than 2,000 pages of documents from three previous Army administrative reviews reveals shifting testimony, the destruction of obvious evidence in the case and a series of contradictions about the distances, the lighting conditions and other details surrounding the shooting.

All of it has even left Mr. Tillman suspicious of the military's central finding in their son's case so far: that the killing was a terrible but unintentional accident.

"There is so much nonstandard conduct, both before and after Pat was killed, that you have to start to wonder," Mr. Tillman said. "How much effort would you put into hiding an accident? Why do you need to hide an accident?"

There's already been one investigation, but there were problems with it.

But at least one Army officer, the records show, changed his sworn statements about which supervisor had actually ordered the split and what conversations had occurred before the order was given.

Even the soldier who conducted the military's first review of Corporal Tillman's death — in the hours and days immediately afterward — expressed concern about the changes in the accounts.

That soldier, whose name, like many others, was redacted from the Army files provided to The Times by Mr. Tillman, said he believed Rangers had changed their versions of what happened and were not receiving the "due just punishment" for what he concluded was "gross negligence."

The stories, he said in a sworn statement as part of General Jones's subsequent review, "have changed to, I think, help some individuals."

Among a number of conflicts in the descriptions of what happened, some Rangers said that in the dusk they could see nothing more than "shapes" and "muzzle flashes" even as Corporal Tillman tried to tell his colleagues who he was, waving his arms, setting off a smoke grenade signal and calling out. Others said they had seen and aimed for the Afghan fighter, his "dark face" and his AK-47.

After the shooting, the Rangers destroyed evidence that would be considered critical in any criminal case, the records show. They burned Corporal Tillman's uniform and his body armor.

Months later, the Rangers involved said they did not intend to destroy evidence. "It was a hygiene issue," one soldier wrote. "They were starting to stink."

Another soldier involved offered a slightly different take, saying "the uniform and equipment had blood on them and it would stir emotion" that needed to be suppressed until the Rangers finished their work overseas.

"How could they do that?" Mr. Tillman said. "That makes no sense."

The family still wants to know, he said, what became of Corporal Tillman's diary. It was never returned to the family, he said.

Not to worry, though.

Col. Joseph Curtin, an Army spokesman, said the Tillmans deserved answers. "We deeply regret their loss," Colonel Curtin said, "and will continue to answer their questions in a truthful and forthright manner."

Playing Doctor with your TV

This study is a couple of weeks old, but LostRemote just brought it to my attention today. This is from Betsy's department -- Health and Medicine -- but she's been working 24/7 on the bird flu story, so here we go. A study was done that looked at how health stories were covered on the local tv news (Channel 3, Channel 30, etc.)

Viewer beware: Local TV news covers health a lot, but not always well, study finds

First-ever national analysis of local TV news health coverage reveals
opportunities for both broadcasters and health experts to improve

ANN ARBOR, MI – Local television newscasts, where most Americans get most of their news, are packed with medical stories and health information. But the first-ever national study of that coverage finds many problems with it, and sees room for improvement by both TV stations and the health experts whose work fills the news.

The good news. . . there's a lot of health coverage.

In all, health and medical stories comprised 11 percent of the news portion of late-evening newscasts in the one-month period studied, with 1,799 such stories carried on 2,795 broadcasts captured from the representative sample of 122 stations in the nation’s top 50 media markets.

The bad news. . . it's not exactly what you'd call "in-depth".

The average story was 33 seconds long, and most did not give specifics about the source of the information presented.

Oh, well, who needs to be bothered with all those boring facts. (Still, some facts are nice.)

But most disturbing, the study’s authors say, were the egregious errors contained in a small minority of studies — errors that could have led to serious consequences.

For instance, a story that aired on several stations reported on lemon juice’s effect on sperm and speculated about, or presented as fact, the use of lemon juice as an effective contraceptive, and its potential effect on preventing sexual transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Despite the fact that the study was done in a research lab, nearly all the stories failed to mention that it had not involved humans. Even more alarming, one of the stations misinterpreted the study altogether and stated that lemon juice may be a substitute for “costly” HIV medications.

As often happens in the media, especially on tv, certain topics got a lot of attention, while other important topics were ignored.

The two most common specific health topics for stories were breast cancer and West Nile Virus. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, an occasion that many TV stations use to focus on breast health issues. And many areas of the country were experiencing an ongoing outbreak of West Nile Virus infections at the time.

But the coverage of these two topics highlights some of the problems found throughout the study, Pribble says. For example, breast cancer got far more coverage than lung cancer, which is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States; only five stories focused on lung cancer. And 40 of the breast cancer stories focused on one study about the effectiveness of teaching women to examine their breasts for signs of cancer. But those stories often contained conflicting messages with introductory statements such as “breast self-exams are a waste of time” followed by recommendations at the conclusion of the story that encouraged women to continue performing breast self-exams.

Meanwhile, most of the West Nile stories didn’t put the disease into perspective by comparing its prevalence and severity with that of other, much more common and deadly, infectious diseases. In fact, stories about West Nile made up more than half of all stories about infectious diseases carried by local newscasts in the study period.

To be fair, many tv stations will refer the viewer to their website, where they can get more information. If you see something on tv that seems important to you, you'll want to go out looking for more information. Fortunately, with the growth of the internet, that imformation is easier to find than ever.

And the study doesn't just blame tv. TV is what it is. It's up to the health care industry to give tv what it needs.

Pribble and Goldstein don’t blame just the newscast producers and reporters for these problems. They emphasize that public health authorities, clinical experts and researchers must give reporters information, interviews and pre-taped video that meet the demands of TV newscasts, which must tell stories quickly, visually and in language that’s understandable to non-experts. At the same time, the authors say, they should help reporters put individual news items into perspective, and help them understand what health and medical topics have the most bearing on the public’s health.

Iraqi Blogs

The last (or next -- these blog entries read backwards) post told about how things are going in Iraq these days, at least from the media point of view (which may or may not be more or less correct).

But we don't have to rely just on the MSM (main stream media) to tell us what's going on. There's also the blogosphere. One blog that I've been following the shortly before the war began is called "Baghdad Burning". It's written by a young Iraqi woman who calls herself "Riverbend". She's a fairly secular Muslim (she had no desire to wear the veil).

Her most recent post starts off talking about the anniversary of the beginning of the war, then gets into the widening divide between the Sunnis and the Shiites.

The thing most worrisome about the situation now, is that discrimination based on sect has become so commonplace. For the average educated Iraqi in Baghdad, there is still scorn for all the Sunni/Shia talk. Sadly though, people are being pushed into claiming to be this or that because political parties are promoting it with every speech and every newspaper- the whole ‘us’ / ‘them’. We read constantly about how ‘We Sunnis should unite with our Shia brothers…’ or how ‘We Shia should forgive our Sunni brothers…’ (note how us Sunni and Shia sisters don’t really fit into either equation at this point). Politicians and religious figures seem to forget at the end of the day that we’re all simply Iraqis.

Her own family, it turns out, is mixed Sunni and Shia, and like most Iraqis, used to be able to get along fine with that.

Please also scroll down the page to the post from Thursday, January 12, 2006.

You may have heard of Jill Carroll. (That's not her. That's the actress Juliette Binoche.) Jill is a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor who was abducted over two months ago. A deadline was set by her captors -- if certain female Iraqi prisioners were not released by a certain date, she would be killed. The deadline has come and gone. We don't know if she's alive or not.

Jill was accompanied by here translator, Allan Enwiyah, when she was abducted. He was killed on the spot. The world still holds its breath over the American girl -- the Iraqi man killed was little noted and is already long forgotten (by most).

(I've decided to quote the whole post, to save you the trouble of finding it. And because you really should read it. Even if it seems kind of long.)

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Thank You for the Music...

When I first heard about the abduction of Christian Science Monitor journalist Jill Carroll a week ago, I remember feeling regret. It was the same heavy feeling I get every time I hear of another journalist killed or abducted. The same heavy feeling that settles upon most Iraqis, I imagine, when they hear of acquaintances suffering under the current situation.


I read the news as a subtitle on tv. We haven't had an internet connection for several days so I couldn't really read about the details. All I knew was that a journalist had been abducted and that her Iraqi interpreter had been killed. He was shot in cold blood in Al Adil district earlier this month, when they took Jill Carroll... Theysay he didn't die immediately. It is said he lived long enough to talk to police and then he died.

I found out very recently that the interpreter killed was a good friend- Alan, of Alan's Melody, and I've spent the last two days crying.

Everyone knew him as simply 'Alan', or "Elin" as it is pronounced in Iraqi Arabic. Prior to the war, he owned a music shop in the best area in Baghdad, A'arasat. He sold some Arabic music and instrumental music, but he had his regular customers - those westernized Iraqis who craved foreign music. For those of us who listened to rock, adult alternative, jazz, etc. he had very few rivals.

He sold bootleg CDs, tapes and DVDs. His shop wasn't just a music shop- it was a haven. Some of my happiest moments were while I was walking out of that shop carrying CDs and tapes, full of anticipation for the escape the music provided. He had just about everything from Abba to Marilyn Manson. He could provide anything. All you had to do was go to him with the words,"Alan- I heard a great song on the radio... you have to find it!" Andhe'd sit there, patiently, asking who sang it? You don't know? Ok- was it a man or a woman? Fine. Do you remember any of the words? Chances were that he'd already heard it and even knew some of the lyrics.

During the sanctions, Iraq was virtually cut off from the outside world.We had maybe four or five local tv stations and it was only during the later years that the internet became more popular. Alan was one of those links with the outside world. Walking into Alan's shop was like walking into a sort of transitional other world. Whenever you walked into the store, great music would be blaring from his speakers and he and Mohammed, the guy who worked in his shop, would be arguing over who was better, Joe Satriani or Steve Vai.

He would have the latest Billboard hits posted on a sheet of paper near the door and he'd have compiled a few of his own favorites on a 'collection' CD. He also went out of his way to get recordings of the latest award shows- Grammys, AMAs, Oscars, etc. You could visit him twice and know that by the third time, he'd have memorized your favorites and found music you might be interested in.

He was an electrical engineer- but his passion was music. His dream was to be a music producer. He was always full of scorn for the usual boy bands - N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, etc. - but he was always trying to promote an Iraqi boy band he claimed he'd discovered,"Unknown to No One". "They're great- wallah they have potential." He'd say. E. would answer, "Alan, they're terrible." And Alan, with his usual Iraqi pride would lecture about how they were great, simply because they were Iraqi.

He was a Christian from Basrah and he had a lovely wife who adored him- F. We would tease him about how once he was married and had a family, he'd lose interest in music. It didn't happen. Conversations with Alan continued to revolve around Pink Floyd, Jimmy Hendrix, but they began to include F. his wife, M. his daughter and his little boy. My heart aches for his family- his wife and children...

You could walk into the shop and find no one behind the counter- everyone was in the other room, playing one version or another of FIFA soccer on the Play Station. He collected those old records, or 'vinyls'. The older they were, the better. While he promoted new musical technology, he always said that nothing could beat the soundof a vintage vinyl.

We went to Alan not just to buy music. It always turned into a social visit. He'd make you sit down, listen to his latest favorite CD and drink something. Then he'd tell you the latest gossip- he knew it all. He knew where all the parties were, who the best DJs were and who was getting married or divorced. He knew the local gossip and the international gossip, but it was never malicious with Alan. It was always the funny sort.

The most important thing about Alan was that he never let you down. Never. Whatever it was that you wanted, he'd try his hardest to get it. If you became his friend, that didn't just include music- he was ready to lend a helping hand to those in need, whether it was just to give advice, or listen after a complicated, difficult week.

After the war, the area he had his shop in deteriorated. There were car bombs and shootings and the Badir people took over some of the houses there. People went to A'arasat less and less because it was too dangerous. His shop was closed up more than it was open. He shut it up permanently after getting death threats and a hand grenade through his shop window. His car was carjacked at some point and he was shot at so he started driving around in his fathers beaten-up old Toyota Cressida with a picture of Sistani on his back window, "To ward off the fanatics..." He winked and grinned.

E. and I would stop by his shop sometimes after the war, before he shut it down. We went in once and found that there was no electricity,and no generator. The shop was dimly lit with some sort of fuel lampand Alan was sitting behind the counter, sorting through CDs. He was ecstatic to see us. There was no way we could listen to music so he and E. sang through some of their favorite songs, stumbling upon the lyrics and making things up along the way. Then we started listening to various ring tones and swapping the latest jokes of the day. Before we knew it, two hours had slipped by and the world outside was forgotten, an occasional explosion bringing us back to reality.

It hit me then that it wasn't the music that made Alan's shop a haven- somewhere to forget problems and worries- it was Alan himself.

He loved Pink Floyd:

Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder why we
Had to run for shelter when the
Promise of a brave, new world
Unfurled beneath the clear blue sky?
Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on.
Goodbye, blue sky
Goodbye, blue sky.
Goodbye. Goodbye.


(Goodbye Blue Sky - Pink Floyd)

Goodbye Alan...

Three Years in Iraq, and Counting. . .

Part I

Here's a very good piece from MSNBC comparing "then and now".

From lifeless to menacing

When I first arrived in Baghdad before the war, Iraq seemed lifeless. Baghdad felt like a city without oxygen, where those with big dreams couldn’t breathe or imagine a better life. Now, the country is very changed — in some ways for the better (as you'll see in the chart below) — but it has become equally menacing, terrifying and sinister.

Be sure to click through the chart.

• Political freedom
• Safety
• Health care
• Education
• Economy
• Basic services
• Prospects for the future

Each of those opens up its own before and after window.

And be sure to check out the blog at the end of the article.


Part II

Last week, "Operation Swarmer" went into action.

It was billed by the US military as "the largest air assault operation" since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, with attack and assault aircraft providing "aerial weapons support" for 1,500 US and Iraqi commandos moving in to clear "a suspected insurgent operating area north-east of Samarra."

The international news agencies immediately rang the urgent bells on the story.

Around the world, programmes were interrupted as screens flashed the news, which dominated the global media agenda for the next 12 hours or more.

On the New York Stock Exchange, oil prices jumped $1.41 (£0.80) a barrel "with a massive US-led air assault in Iraq intensifying jitters about global supplies of crude", as one agency reported it.

Wow! The "largest air assault operation" since the beginning of the war. And we all remember what that was like, the thousands of tons of ordinace dropped on and fired at Iraqi targets. Obviously the U.S. is grabbing the bull by the horns. But wait. . .

By the middle of Day Two in the ongoing operation, it was clear from both US and Iraqi military sources that the advance had met no resistance.

There were no clashes with insurgents. No casualties were reported.

In what was clearly a combing operation using cordon-and-search tactics in a patch of remote desert terrain with scattered farms and homesteads, military spokesmen said the advancing forces uncovered six caches containing arms, explosives and other insurgent material.

They detained 48 people, of whom 17 were freed without delay. Officials said they did not believe they had captured any significant insurgent leaders.

So what's going on? The biggest "air assault" since the war began, or just another "combing mission"? The answer: yes. Turns out air assault can just mean anything using helicopters -- no bombs required.

Some people think that the Pentagon played "Operation Swarmer" as a public relations stunt.

“Operation Swarmer” is really a media show. It was designed to show off the new Iraqi Army — although there was no enemy for them to fight. Every American official I’ve heard has emphasized the role of the Iraqi forces just days before the third anniversary of the start of the war. That said, one Iraqi role the military will start highlighting in the next few days, I imagine, is that of Iraqi intelligence. It was intel from the Iraqi military intelligence and interior ministry that the U.S. says prompted this Potemkin operation. And it will be the Iraqi intel that provides the cover for American military commanders to throw up their hands and say, “well, we thought bad guys were there.”

It’s hard to blame the military, however. Stations like Fox and CNN have really taken this and ran with it, with fancy graphics and theme music, thanks to a relatively slow news day. The generals here also are under tremendous pressure to show off some functioning Iraqi troops before the third anniversary, and I won’t fault them for going into a region loaded for bear. After all, the Iraqi intelligence might have been right.

Others think that the media needs to be manipulated, because they're not doing their job.

The reporting on Operation Swarmer is a microcosm of the sub-par reporting on the Iraq war. Events are immediately placed into a political context. Commentary is often mixed in with reporting. There is little understanding of operational intent or how the military even works. Operations are viewed as individual events, and not placed in a greater context. Failure and faulty assumptions are the baseline for coverage and analysis. Success is arbitrarily determined by a reporter or editor's biases. The actions of the U.S. and Iraqi military are viewed with suspicion and even contempt.

If you don't believe me, just read the "objective" reports from Time's Brian Bennett and Christopher Allbritton. Would they have preferred a bloody battle? Should the military sought their advice in advance to determine the size and composition of the assault force? (March 18/ "Swarmer" and Media Coverage)

(Full Disclosure: Thanks to TV Newser for these leads. I got most of this from their site.)

Eat at Joe's -- or Mom's -- Anywhere but Denny's

Third SoCal Denny's Shooting In 3 Days

(CBS/AP) A gunman opened fire early Friday morning at a Denny's restaurant and one man was killed and another seriously wounded, police said. It was the third fatal shooting to occur at the restaurant chain in Southern California this week.

A New Terminal Digestive Aperture for Rummy *

* Courtesy of David Brooks of the New York Times. (Remember, although the Times is a liberal paper, Brooks is a conservative columnist.)

I'll have the whole Op-Ed piece for you in class on Monday. Here's a preview.

Some weeks nothing happens; some weeks change history. The week of March 24, 2003, was one of those pivotal weeks. U.S. troops had just begun the ground invasion of Iraq. They were charging north, but hadn't reached Baghdad. The Fedayeen had begun to launch suicide attacks and were putting up serious resistance in Nasiriya.

Everybody denigrates pundits and armchair generals, but immediately the smartest of them recognized that something unexpected was happening: the U.S. was not in the midst of a conventional war, but was in the first days of a guerrilla war.

Michael Kelly, embedded with the Third Infantry Division, wrote a column describing how Fedayeen guerrillas had taken control of towns like Najaf. Kelly predicted the war would be long and tough. David Ignatius in The Washington Post wrote that it was "time to shelve the rosy scenarios" for the war and face the fact that the U.S. was confronting a difficult battle against resistance fighters.

If newspaper columnists could see what was happening, why didn't the generals and the White House?

The officers on the front lines saw the same thing the smart pundits saw, and in more detail. But Rumsfeld and Franks stifled the free exchange of ideas, and shut out the National Security Council. They dismissed concerns about the insurgents and threatened to fire the one general, William Wallace, who dared to state the obvious in public. The military brass followed the war in real time on computer screens. As long as the blue icons representing U.S. troops were heading north to Baghdad, the U.S. was deemed to be winning. The technology seemed to provide real-time information, but it was completely misleading.

The week of March 24 is vital because if Rumsfeld had made adjustments to the new circumstances then, much of the subsequent horror could have been averted.

But it is also a reminder of the reality one sees again and again: Debate inside any administration is less sophisticated and realistic than the debate among experts outside. The people inside have access to a bit more information. But they are more likely to self-censor for fear of endangering their careers. Debate inside is much more likely to be warped by the egotism, insecurity, power lust and distracting busyness of people at the top.

Brooks's outlook has been changed due to a book that he recently read: Cobra II, by New York Times reporter Michael Gordon and former Marine Gen. Bernard Trainor.

Here's a short blurb about the book appearing on the NPR webiste. If you're interested, follow the link to the Talk of the Nation radio show, where Gordon and Trainor are interviewed. There's also an audio clip from the book on the same page. This is a book that will be getting a lot of media play in the coming days, I would think.

On Monday in class we'll watch Gordon and Trainor in a short interview on PBS's Newshour. Then we'll see David Brooks elaborating on his Op-Ed piece on the same show.

Just one question: if these pundits knew, and were trying to tell us -- why didn't we listen?

My Space: Fix of the Week

I get the Hartford Courant, but I don't always read it. I never read the comics, and I never read "Ask Amy". But I did today.

Mom should end daughter's Web site access

By Amy Dickinson

Tribune Media Services

Dear Amy: Although I have been aware of myspace.com, I didn't realize the harmful nature of the Web site until I received an anonymous copy of my 16-year-old daughter's myspace page. She thought it was "just fun and games" when she posted provocative pictures on her home page. I was shocked when I read her Web space, which was tame by comparison to many other kids from our community who have posted lewd and lascivious pictures with profane comments for the world to see!

I will be monitoring my daughter's activity if not deleting it altogether, but what about all of the parents who are unaware of this Web site?

What has our culture degenerated to when photos of girls drinking from tequila bottles, imitating sexual acts, and wearing bras and garter belts in the midst of other boys are posted online for anyone to see?

No wonder we are so concerned about predators. Our children are making themselves targets for anyone to exploit. They might as well be wearing a bull's-eye.

- Saddened by Complacency

Dear Saddened: Our kids have been taught since they were little about the dangers of posting personal information on the Web. They've also been taught about the dangers of driving recklessly. And yet, teens continue to crash their cars at alarming rates. And they also stupidly use the Web as if it is one big slumber party with their friends.

It's a question of cognition.

You are right to monitor your daughter's computer use. However, why she still has a myspace account at all baffles me. The site is intended for people 17 and over. I realize that this rule can be ignored, but if your daughter is demonstrating such poor online judgment, then it's time to take the "car keys" away until she figures out that those provocative photos she is sharing with the universe could affect not only her life now but haunt her well into the future.

I don't have to provide you with nightmare scenarios - just open the newspaper and pick and choose among horror stories about images of young people posted on the Web that end up being bought, sold and traded on porn sites. You need to talk to your girl not just about these dangers but about the more basic idea that her body belongs to her alone. You should then take the lessons you've learned to your community of parents - through the school's PTA.

Racial Identity

At the Sports and Medical Sciences Academy, a magnet school on Hartford (also know as the Sport Sciences Academy) there's trouble. Once again, it may turn out to be not so much the crime as the coverup.

Administrators at a Hartford magnet school, facing state guidelines requiring more white students, changed the designations of at least six biracial students from African American or Hispanic to white in school documents, in some cases without parents' permission.

Eduardo V. Genao, principal of the Sport & Medical Sciences Academy, said officials made the changes only after calling each student's parents to determine whether school records were correct, and only in cases where mistakes had been made.

But the parents of two students who said their classifications were altered told The Courant they were never called and would not have approved the change.

You may be wondering, why? Changing students from black to white? What's the point?

Money.

Genao conceded that he asked teachers to help him identify biracial students and that he called the students to his office. In the course of discussing their racial classifications, he acknowledged, he spoke with them about the school's funding. "I did indicate to the students and the parents how the formula works," he said.

In fact, state guidelines tie the funding of magnet schools that opened before this year to residency, not race. Bill Magnotta, the state Department of Education's magnet school manager, said that to qualify for magnet school funding, schools must draw at least 30 percent of their students from the suburbs - a standard Sport & Medical Sciences Academy meets.

Race becomes a factor, for schools established before this year, in regard to compliance with the Sheff vs. O'Neill school desegregation settlement. It says 28 percent of a magnet school's students must be white in order to count toward reducing racial isolation. With just 89 white students in a population of 400, or 22 percent, Sport & Medical Sciences falls far short.

Genao, who is in his first year at the magnet school and is new to Hartford, said he did not realize the state law linking funding to racial quotas applies only to new schools and not to established schools such as his. He denied, though, that the change in the students' racial classifications was linked to money.

One black parent, one white parent -- what does that make you?

"I think I would remember something like that," Rufus Gartrell said. "I never talked to Brandon about it. My son, he could pass for white, but I've taught my son he's also black. I've taught him to be proud of what he is."

She said she registered her son as black "because we thought for him to be accepted in Hartford it would be better for him and for us for him to be perceived as black."

(In the old days, if you had any black blood in you you were considered black. Look up"quadroon" or "octoroon" in the dictionary some time.)

The school itself looks pretty cool. You can take "Introduction to Sports Law" or "Advanced Sports Marketing", "Sports Journalism and Communication" or "Life Guarding", as well as Algebra and English.

This is Eduardo Genao's first year as principal at SSA. Reading between the lines, I think he may have rubbed some of his faculty the wrong way.

The school would not release a list of names of children whose racial classifications were changed. Genao said Brandon was not among them. But a teacher in the school, who would not let her name be used, said she saw documentation that Brandon's race had been changed.

Genao said that the staff gave him the idea to change the codes for biracial children and that former principals had done the same thing.

But teachers' union President Cathy Carpino said that teachers are outraged and that she asked Superintendent of Schools Robert Henry to investigate.

I think the story here may really be more about school politics than racial politics.

PART 2 -- Black.White

Here's the website.

An article from the Christain Science Monitor.

A review from the Los Angles Times.

Uncle Sam Fines CBS $3.6 Million for Naughty TV

CBS and more than 100 of its affiliates are facing a fine in excess of $3.6 million after a Federal Communications Commission ruling that an episode of its drama "Without a Trace" contained indecent material.

The commission also issued fines against a few other shows, including "The Surreal Life 2" and the PBS miniseries "The Blues," and upheld its fine against CBS for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that featured Janet Jackson's exposed breast and touched off the current indecency debate.

By far the biggest proposed fine is the collective $3.6 million faced by 111 CBS affiliates for airing an episode of "Without a Trace" called "Our Sons and Daughters" on Dec. 31, 2004. The FCC found a scene depicting a sex party among teenagers contained "explicit and lengthy ... depictions of sexual activity, including apparent intercourse" that went "well beyond what the story line could reasonably be said to require."

Well, of course the breast. But what's this other stuff? The Surreal Life 2? I thought that was on cable, and the restrictions on cable are "looser'".

The other fines handed out Wednesday included $27,500 against WB affiliate WBDC in Washington for a broadcast of "The Surreal Life 2" in 2004 that showed a number of guests at a pool party naked, though the nudity was pixellated. Despite the blurring, the FCC found clear enough depictions of sexual acts -- such as a man kissing a woman's nude breast -- to warrant a fine.

That's right, who are they trying to fool with that pixellation business. You know what's under it. But c'mon now -- PBS? The Blues? Wasn't that the MartinScorsese series about the old bluemen -- Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, etc?

"The Blues" was hit with a $15,000 sanction for profanity when a PBS affiliate failed to edit several utterances of "f***" and "s***," which the commission considers indecent regardless of context.

Regardless of the fact that the median age of the audience was probably and 57 and 1/2, you can't say "f***" and "s***" on tv. No f***** way. (Unless you bleep it).

So that leaves Without a Trace. The episode was called "Our Sons and Daughters". CBS had broadcast it once already, in November 2003. It was protested, and they had to pay a $3.5 million out-of-court settlement. Nevertheless, then they thought they'd try it again, on New Years Eve 2004. The stations that showed it after 10:oo p.m. were okay. But those stations in the Central and Mountain time zones, and in Alaska and Hawaii, showed it before 10:00. Those stations -- not just the network, but the local affiliates themselves -- will be fined.

What were they thinking?

"[The episode], which aired in the last hour of primetime and carried a TV-14 V-Chip parental guideline, featured an important and socially relevant storyline warning parents to exercise greater supervision of their teenage children," the network says. "The program was not unduly graphic or explicit, and we will pursue all remedies necessary to affirm our legal rights, while knowing that millions of Americans give their stamp of approval to 'Without a Trace' each week."

How graphic was it? Well, ironically enough, if you want to find out, you'd have to go to the people who were particularly outraged by it -- the Parents Television Council. (Remember them?) You'll need a magnifying glass, but from what I could tell it's pushing the envelope for network tv.

re: Foghorn Leghorn

I know that generally it's best to let sleeping dogs lie, but. . .

Foghorn Leghorn, the Warner Brothers cartoon character voiced by the legendary Mel Blanc, was based on a character called Senator Claghorn, created for Fred Allen's radio show back in the 1940's.

Claghorn would typically answer the door with, "Somebody, ah say, somebody knocked! Claghorn's the name, Senator Claghorn, I'm from the south." His obsession was with The South, and he would proudly point out his refusal to wear a "Union suit", for example, or claim to drink only out of Dixie cups. When asked a political question by host Allen, Claghorn would respond with a rapid stream of talk, shouting, repetition, and bad puns. After a quip, the senator would laugh uproariously, and quip one of his two catchphrases: "That's a joke, son!" or "Pay attention now, boy!"

Senator Claghorn, as portrayed by Kenny Delmar, in scene from It's a Joke Son, the Senator's only film appearance.

Origami

Origami -- it starts with a simple sheet of paper, and yet in the right, skillful hands, it can become. . . anything.

Origami -- a simple, go-anywhere ultra-mobile pc that in the right, skillful hands can become. . . anything!

Here's a further story on it from ABC News:

HANOVER, Germany Mar 9, 2006 (AP)— Microsoft Corp. finally took the wraps off its mysterious Project Origami on Thursday, unveiling a computer that's about the size of a large paperback book but runs a full version of the Windows XP operating system.

The ultracompact, wireless-enabled PC is everything a full computer or laptop is, minus the keyboard. Weighing about 2 1/2 pounds, the 1-inch thick device sports a 7-inch touch-sensitive screen that responds to a stylus or the tap of a finger.

Don't go to the store asking for Origami, though. (That was the name while the project was still top secret.) Microsoft is calling it the "Ultra-Mobile PC," and versions of it will be built by
Samsung, Asus and the Chinese manufacturer Founder. The first are expected to be available by April.

Here's the nifty site from Microsoft telling all about it

Topics -- Tuesday March 14.

For more on the Jay Bennish case, go here. It gives a transcript, and I believe there's a link to the audio tape made by student Sean Allen. Michelle Malkin is a noted conservative blogger.

John Feinstein on the NCAA Basketball Tournament on Morning Edition. National Public Radio is thought to be somewhat left of center.

Classroom Topics -- Monday, March 13

Peggy Noonan on George Clooney's acceptance speech at the Oscars. Noonan, a former speech writer for Roanld Reagan, writes for the conservative Wall Street Journal.

Terrorism (?) at the University of North Carolina. The National Review is a conservative magazine.

Here's the link for the "Pay Too Much on Your Credit Card" story. Check out the survey parteway down the page on the left hand side to get an idea of what kind of a site this is. (Don't forget, the original story was from the Providence Journal-Bulletin.)

The Onion Weighs In on the Bonds Situation

Barry Bonds Took Steroids, Reports Everyone Who Has Ever Watched Baseball

March 9, 2006 | Onion Sports

SAN FRANCISCO—With the publication of a book detailing steroid use by San Francisco Giants superstar Barry Bonds, two San Francisco Chronicle reporters have corroborated the claims of Bonds' steroid abuse made by every single person who has watched or even loosely followed the game of baseball over the past five years.

Read the rest here.


Actually, like all good satire, there's more to this article than meets the eye. I happened to see Bob Ley talking to Jose Canseco on ESPN this weekend. Canseco is the former player whose book a year ago forced the steroid issue into the public eye, and even led to hearings in the House of Representatives [scroll down to "Documents pertaining to Steroid Hearings before the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform"]. Ley was suitably outraged at both the steroid usage and Congress's complete and utter failure to get to the truth at the hearings (other witnesses included Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro. Palmeiro famously shook his finger at the panel and said "I never took steroids." The he turned up with a positve test in July). He also criticized Bud Selig and the lords of baseball for turning a blind eye to the problem.

My question is, where was the media when all this was going on? Wasn't it obvious? they ask now. What were people thinking? Well, wasn't it obvious? What role didn't the media play. They were in the clubhouses every day. "Well, of course we suspected. But we have no proof. And that's not our job, anyway. We just cover the games."

Well, finally, two reporters made it their job. And now something will have to be done.

The Hollywood Blockbuster is Dead!

So says no less an authority than George "Star Wars" Lucas himself. Since he and Steven "Jaws" Speilberg ushered in the era of the blockbuster, I guess he should know.

Lucas: Big pics are doomed

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Leave it to "Star Wars" creator George Lucas to pronounce the death of the Hollywood blockbuster.

"The market forces that exist today make it unrealistic to spend $200 million on a movie," said Lucas, a near-billionaire from his feverishly franchised outer-space epics. "Those movies can't make their money back anymore. Look at what happened with 'King Kong.'" The portly Lucas, whose "Star Wars" sequel was nominated for the Oscar in makeup, was clearly in Yoda mode at Saturday's Weinstein Co. party — Harvey Weinstein's first Oscar bash since he abandoned Miramax to Disney last year. "I think it's great that the major Oscar nominations have gone to independent films," Lucas told me, adding that it's no accident that the "small movies" outclassed the spectaculars in this year's Academy Awards. "Is that good for the business? No — it's bad for the business. But moviemaking isn't about business. It's about art!"

Was that a smirk? "In the future, almost everything that gets shown in theaters will be indie movies," Lucas declared. "I predict that by 2025 the average movie will cost only $15 million."

You heard it here first.

New York Daily News
Sunday, March 5th, 2006

That would be fine by me.

A Conservative's View of the Oscars

Despite Jon Stewart, ratings fo rthe Oscar telecast were off this year -- under 40 million American viewers for only the second time since 1987. (More males 18 - 34, Stewart's target audience, did watch this year).

But before we all go blaming Jon Stewart, maybe we should look at the nominated movies.

It should hardly be surprising that this year's Oscars appear even more indifferent toward broad ranging audiences than most years. After all, there were few family films worth celebrating in 2005, and that fact also helps to explain the box office slump that many industry experts are scratching their heads over.

The result is an Oscar slate that, for the most part, only adults have been able to view. In the Best Picture category, four out of five films are rated Restricted, while the one lone ranger, George Clooney's PG-rated Good Night, and Good Luck. is hardly something your twelve-year-old is raring to see.

What about the women? Actress in a Leading Role again contains three rated-R titles out of five (Mrs. Henderson Presents, Transamerica and North Country). Here there is a small respite for families with Reese Witherspoon in the PG-13 rated Walk the Line and Keira Knightley playing a titled daughter in the PG rated Pride & Prejudice.

But the Supporting Actress category is an R-rated blackout--all five nominations are rated Restricted. Supporting actors are nearly the same, with four out of five nominations coming from R-rated films. Only Paul Giamatti in Cinderella Man falls in the under-R-rated category with its PG-13 rating. It's still not a movie to take young children to, but is one of the few Oscar hopefuls that offer a strong positive role model within its compelling and inspiring story.

And your point is?

My point in dragging you through this isn't to merely complain about the lack of movies nominated for Oscars with a broad age interest. Instead, it's to illustrate how Hollywood's lack of interest in creating high quality films most Americans will want to see is beginning to have an effect on all aspects of the industry.

But these were the best movies of the year. What do you think should have been nominated?

If I were an Academy voter, here is my slate for Best Picture (and my exact nominations for this category in the Broadcast Film Critics Awards which took place in early January):

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Cinderella Man

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith

Good Night, And Good Luck.

The Constant Gardner

My choices range from the PG rated Chronicles of Narnia and Good Night, And Good Luck to the R-rated The Constant Gardner. (The other two titles are PG-13.) The total domestic box office gross for this grouping as of February 21, 2006: $789,473,080. (The total easily surpasses $1 billion if you include foreign earnings.)

These numbers reveal that close to four times as many people saw these films. (Actually, the amount is likely even higher, as many attending Narina and Star Wars are not paying adult admission prices.) Imagine how many more people would be drawn to the Oscar telecast to see some of these heavyweights contending for the grand prize. The mere fact that two of these films (Narnia and Star Wars) each made more money than all five of the actual Best Picture nominees put together, reveals the incredible popularity these movies hold.

Bad News for Baseball

Barry Bonds is chasing the all-time homerun record in major league baseball. He could do it this year if his health holds up. He's been a marvelous ballplayer over the years, but lately some question has arisen as to how he came to be so good. He was involved with the Balco scandal, which also involved New York Yankee sluggers Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield.


Bonds claimed that he never did steroids, and if he did, it was by accident.

Well, today Sports Illustrated has an apparently damning article on Bonds, excerpted from teh book Game of Shadows (by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle). I haven't had a chance to read it yet: it's about twenty pages long.

So instead of reading about the World Baseball Classic, and the win of Estados Unidos over Mexico, or the Domincan Republic over Venezuela (take that, Hugo Chavez!), we're reading about cheaters. And the thing is, the guy was a damned good ballplayer without it.

A Female's View of the Oscars

I think you'll find this worth a look (if you're not all Oscared out).

Last night, knowing that I wouldn't be hearing a women's voice cracking jokes, introducing presenters, and narrating film montages, I decide to keep an eye and ear out for fabulous feminist moments – speeches and comments and tributes that put women first, that showcased women in film as more than arm candy, Oscar presenters or gracious white smiles in the sea of faces at the Kodak Theatre. Surely, in spite of what I've seen in US Weekly and E!, female celebrities would bring more to American's most prestigious film award show than fancy dresses and borrowed bling.

And they did! Sure, this year's slick, trimmed-down ceremony was a bit on the bland side (no hysterics, dramatics, polemics, or swans), but fortunately, it was also full of female-friendly moments.

And the honors go to…

Jon Stewart at the Oscars

The (mixed) reviews are in.

New York Newsday

Stewart did exactly what a contemporary Academy Awards host is supposed to do. He's supposed to keep the zingers coming fast enough to work the room while nudging and winking at those of us watching at home.

Nowhere was this more apparent than his cappers to the interminable, time-filling montages in tribute to "noir" movies, "message" movies and epics. You and I can say "as if" to each such montage and no one would care. Stewart responds to clips of movies about racism, sexism, war, religious persecution and injustice by saying, "And none of those problems ever occurred again."

The Boston Globe

For Jon Stewart fans, it was a night of relief.

The ''Daily Show" anchor didn't sell out to host the Super Bowl of awards shows. He didn't aim for the old-school vaudeville shtick of Billy Crystal to broaden his appeal. He was his Comedy Central self throughout: wry, deadpan, flip, and slightly subversive. His jokes were as sharp as ever, and punctuated with the pregnant pauses that are his trademark.

Pre-filmed comedy sequences contributed to the night's ''Daily Show" flavor. A series of fake TV campaign ads by the nominees was clever. And the clips from classic westerns, arranged with an eye for gay subtext, were a funny razz on the ''Brokeback Mountain" phenomenon. It was a viral video sent to millions of viewers. Naturally, when the lights came up, the camera panned to Heath Ledger, who was smiling.

The Washington Post

"Crash" was not only the film chosen Best Picture at the 78th Academy Awards last night; it was also the sound made by the show itself as, metaphorically speaking, it drove into a wall.

It's hard to believe that professional entertainers could have put together a show less entertaining than this year's Oscars, hosted with a smug humorlessness by comic Jon Stewart, a sad and pale shadow of great hosts gone by.

Stewart began the show drearily, loping through a monologue that lacked a single hilarious joke with the possible exception of "Bjork couldn't be here tonight. She was trying on her Oscar dress and Dick Cheney shot her."

That was about it -- and Stewart had five months, working with his legions of writers from the "Daily Show" on Comedy Central, to come up with good material. It goes to prove that there's still a big, big difference between basic cable and big-time network television after all.

Salon.com

Just when you thought it couldn't possibly get any more wrist-slashingly boring, the boringness collapsed in on itself and became a deadly howling void of terrible sucking from which the light of no star could escape. These Oscars were so hideously uptight, they got pulled down a worm-hole and traveled light-years, on and on, forever, until they finally ended up in the darkest, airless regions of some fat, ultraconservative's welded-on undershorts. Somehow, the roaring vacuum of these Oscars even killed the chi of the Golden Boy, our very own Jon Stewart. He began apologizing within 20 minutes, once he realized he'd never get his ankles out of the anaconda.

How ... HOW did Jon Stewart suck so hard?

I think somebody MADE him suck. I think there was some serious Hollywood penitentiary shower-shanghai going down. Somebody stuck Jon Stewart in the tent with Oscar and made him commit unnatural acts of sucking. I don't want to name names, but I think it was probably J.C. Penney himself.

Walk it off, Jon. Sasha Cohen showed us that you can fall on your ass and still lose with dignity. It's just not America's year.

BBC

A joke about Dick Cheney shooting Bjork's dress - a reference to her swan creation from a few years back - brought the house down.

The Oscars set was designed to evoke the golden era of cinema. But digs at the Democratic Party tend not to go down very well in mainly left-leaning Hollywood, and Stewart made two in quick succession, both greeted with frosty near-silence.

Even more unforgivably for the audience, he repeated the mistake made by Chris Rock last year of attacking the Academy's own, in this case, the Baldwin acting clan. The sharp intake of breath was audible, and Stewart was in danger of seriously flopping.

MTV.com

Though some of the jokes in his opening monologue fell flat and he played much nicer than many might have expected, "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart avoided any major pratfalls in his debut Sunday night (March 5) as Academy Awards host

When "Pimp" won for best original song and the group bounded up excitedly and gave (somewhat profane) shout-outs to everyone they could think of — including fellow rapper Ludacris and, just for good measure, Clooney — Stewart seemed genuinely touched.

"How come they're the most excited people out there tonight?" he said. "That's how you accept an Oscar!" Stewart said. He later added, "For those of you keeping score at home, Martin Scorsese, zero; Three 6 Mafia, one."

Assuming he did avoid that feared beat-down from Crowe, only time will tell if Stewart is the next Crystal or one-and-done Letterman. But you can be sure of one thing: He's likely the only host in Oscar history who will find a way to work in a blink-and-you-missed it joke about the toppling of an oversized Oscar statue as a metaphor for the spread of democracy in Iraq while working in a line about James Caan hitting the statue with his sandal. Think about it.

Forbes.com

You would have been more amused Sunday night if you'd revved up your TiVo and played back an evening's worth of "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" reruns while you tracked Oscar winners on the Web.

National Ledger

Jon Stewart seemed to be overcompensating a bit on Sunday night as he struggled with exactly how he should open. His monologue was dry, and while that is his strength it didn't play well in a theater full of humorless elitists.

He didn’t lay a glove on Bush, and what’s up with that? Isn’t that why we tuned in, to see Mr. Liberal get himself in trouble with the Red State Right? Then he sets up what starts out like a winner, noting how “a lot of people say this town is too liberal…out of touch with Mainstream America…a moral black hole where innocence is obliterated in an orgy of sexual gratification and greed…” But then he ends with, “I don’t really have a joke here.”

Why not, for chrissakes? Didn’t this gig pay you to write punch lines?
Hang on, even Jon just told the audience he’s a “loser.” Well put, at least for tonight.

The joke was really his audience, who came across as humorless dolts. Damn Hollywood, learn something about self-deprecating humor. But Nikki hit it pretty well; it was a tough night for Jon Stewart.

Article of the Week -- Follow Up

This week's "Article of the Week" was presented to us by Ashley Dederer. It was that one about parents using Tivo to restrict what their children were viewing.

Why would Tivo want to do such a thing? Why else? Because their stock price is down, and by appealing to concerned parents they hope to make their product more appealing. As Ashley told us, parental control hasn't really worked because

existing technology and ratings had been rarely used because both the software and the ratings were too difficult to understand. "Ratings have had a marginal effect because parents don't fully understand how to use them," Mr. Rogers said. "Nor do they bring forward what they want their kids to watch."

(It's nice to know that, even though he's dead, Mr. Rogers is still looking out for kids. You know, somehow that doesn't surprise me at all.)

So despite (or because of) a byzantine rating system, the only effective way to control what your kids were watching was no cable, or better yet, no TV! Tivo is hoping that they can solve this problem through software.

There is one problem. The parent still has to give up some authority here. Who is going to be deciding what's appropriate and what's not? Actually, you'll have two choices: the Parents Television Council, or Common Sense Media. So who are they? Let's see.

The Parents Televsion Council. As you can see, they're pretty conservative. Among other things, they have a "campaign" against MTV. (Actually, I have to agree with them on this one.) Here's their list of what kids should and should not be watching this week.

Common Sense Media. Here's their look at what's on tv. Here's what they have to say about Dave Chappelle's Block Party.

I know a lot of you will be against this kind of parental restriction, but believe me, when you have kids of your own you'll see it in a different way. That doesn't mean you'll never let them see anything other than Disney, but at least you'll have some good information on which to base your decision. And who can have a problem with that?

Your Chance to Blog!

Why should I have all the fun?

If you find something interesting, why not post to the new ComMedia Classblog? At least you could post the articles/websites that you've accessed for your weekly AMS reports.

Here's how:

Go to www.blogger.com. In the top right corner is the sign-in area.

Your User Name is: considerthesource. (That should be easy enough to remember.)

Your password is: benice. (And let's remember that. Be nice in what and why you post.)

That should take you to the "Dashboard." Click on "Consider the Source". And you're ready to go.

The software works best on Internet Explorer (which you shouldn't be using unless you have very good virus protection), or Firefox (for which you should also have good virus protection). My browser of choice is Opera (what can I tell you, I'm the opposite of everyone). Unfortunately, the blogger software doesn't work very well with Opera.

Across the top of the tan box in which you enter text you will find icons. Highlight text, then click the "b", and it comes out bold. The T box let's you change the color of your text. Right next to that is the link box . That's the most important for our purposes. Highlight text, then clink on the link box, and type in or copy the address of the page you're linking to.

[Now I know that a lot of you are just itching to try out your First Amendment rights, but be careful. This is a school sanctioned activity, so it would be a lot easier to get in trouble with this blog than if you started one of your own (and that wouldn't be that difficult). I reserve the right to edit or delete any postings. I'm sure I won't have to.]