Abortion and the MSM

Recently I became aware of the Gosnell prosecution.  What's that you say?  You've never heard of it? Well, join the club.  Once again, the MSM is doing a fine job of editorializing by omission.

These are the facts at issue:

It is hard to decide the most appalling images to emerge Thursday at the murder trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. What happened in his abortion clinic is beyond any morbid Hollywood horror.

Tiny severed feet and hands stored in jars over a sink in the “procedure” room.

Digitalis injected into the stomachs of pregnant women to stop the beating hearts of their unborn babies so that they would be born dead.

Survivor babies whose spinal cords were severed, whose brains were removed with suction, whose tiny bodies were placed in a waste bin for disposal.

Then there is commonwealth exhibit C-147, depicting a large baby balled in the fetal position, bloody, stuffed in a bin. “Big enough to walk me home,” joked Gosnell when he saw the child’s remains, testified Ashly Baldwin, a clinic employee.

Gosnell, 72, is charged with killing seven born-alive babies and causing the death of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, an immigrant from Nepal who had sought an abortion at his West Philadelphia clinic. The clinic was busy, doing brisk cash business, catering not only to local women in West Philadelphia, but also women from the affluent surrounding suburbs of Bucks and Montgomery counties. Gosnell’s reputation for no-wait abortions was so well known, women would fly in from other states. (Taken from a local news outlet not affiliated with Fox News).

The funny thing is, until recently, there was precious little about this on the MSM.  Jodi Arias's trial, in which one man was viciously murdered, has been in and out of the news for months.  Until this case was about to go to trial, there was not one wit of it on the national news or even the major cities' newscasts or in their newspapers.

One has to ask, Why?  Unlike the gun control debate, which is thrown in the public's face at every opportunity, these gory details are kept from the public.  When Sandy Hook is discussed, the twenty-six so cavalierly murdered are often referred to in reverential tones as angels.    And truly, they were innocent souls, angels as it were.

But how are these aborted babies any different?  No, they weren't murdered with a semi-automatic weapon.  But they are dying hideously, cruelly, painfully, every bit as much as the souls lost at Sandy Hook.  Yet because there are those who do not accord humanity to the fetuses, this is equivalent to taking out the trash, worth nothing more than a passing dismissive mention that the lunatic fringe that opposes abortion rights is making a mountain out of a molehill.

But the question must be asked:  If a law-abiding minority can have their rights challenged nightly in the MSM for the action of a lone nutjob, why isn't a man -- a doctor at that -- who allegedly wasn't following the law being tried for the murder of eight people even rating a mention in any of the MSM?

The answer may well be found in the rest of the article quoted above:

I asked one of the court staff why so few are interested.

“If you’re pro-choice, do you really want anybody to know about this,” he said, motioning to the filthy medical equipment set up in the courtroom.

It’s a good point. As saturation coverage of the Sandy Hook elementary school coverage has caused Americans to reconsider the limits of the Second Amendment, saturation coverage of Kermit Gosnell’s clinic would likely cause the same reconsideration of abortion rights.

The details are that horrifying.

Irrespective of whether there should even be a right to an abortion (admittedly, I'm against the pro-death contingent, with very limited exceptions), what about the MSM's selective editorializing on this issue.  If a pro-lifer had caused the deaths of eight people and were being tried for their deaths, there would be wall-to-wall coverage.  But because of the part in bold in the above quote, the MSM has elected to support the pro-death movement because that's where its agenda lies.  That, necessarily, removes its status as journalist and casts it into the role of editor.  If it's not giving comparable stories the same level of treatment, it is no longer practicing journalism.

Perhaps Gosnell is guilty.  I don't know, and I haven't looked into the case enough to say whether, with certainty, he should be convicted.  My inclination is that he should, but those are my biases. The evidence and an unbiased jury must determine that.

But the MSM should be taken to task for once again letting down the country.  It's positively shameful what the MSM in the name of journalism.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Sports potential

Years ago, I played basketball and baseball.  I was pretty good in both, although whether I had any talent that would have allowed me to go beyond high school competitively is open to question.  Politics in high school derailed any chance I had of finding out, although in both cases the ultimate decision was mine.  Knowing as I did even back then what my ultimate career would be, I decided to focus on studies and play sports on the side in intramural leagues.  That didn't mean the competitive fire burned any dimmer, just that I didn't put as much energy into competing with intent to advance in the sports.

If I had to be honest, I was no better than Division II material in basketball, probably Division III.  I had no speed to speak of, no jumping ability and little in the way of shooting skill.  I did have, as they say, a high basketball IQ.  I could outthink anyone on the court.  Of that I'm sure.

The case for baseball is less clear.  I ruined my arm as a twelve-year-old curveball specialist.  This was back when the effects of throwing weren't as known as they are today.  We'd never heard of pitch counts, much less the effects of breaking pitches on developing bodies.  After I blew out my arm -- which to this day hangs differently than does my other arm -- I switched to first base and was quite good there.  Despite my size, I was never much of a power hitter, but with the right coaching, I may well have been a decent hitter.  Again, politics cost me my shot.  Despite not playing in high school my last two years, a college wrote me and offered me the opportunity to play at the school. Unfortunately, that offer didn't include a scholarship.  Had I pursued baseball, I might have had a future in it.

These musings came to mind because I was reading today about college football recruits who never realized their potential for one reason or another.  The same has held true in baseball and basketball as well.  These kids are touted as being the next Ted Williams or the next John Elway and then they don't reach the professional leagues, much less the halls of fame.  It has to be a sobering realization sometime in their twenties or thirties to know that what was once said about them will never be.

The ones that are saddest are the ones that threw away the opportunity.  No one can prevent catastrophic injuries.  But if someone were injured and therefore unable to realize the potential he possessed, it would be sad but not as sad as someone who threw his future away because of drugs, sex, gambling, etc.  All too often, stories are heard of athletes who veer from the path toward greatness because of the lure of other temptations and as a result lose what could have been theirs.

I wonder what they must think when they look back in their middle age.  Do they find excuses to blame their own mistakes?  Do they admit that they did it to themselves?  If I'd been in their shoes, I'd beat myself up every day knowing that it was my fault I didn't realize my potential.

The same argument holds true for any profession, I suppose.  But professional sports, like celebrity in music or acting, holds the twin combination of riches and eternal popularity that aren't found as widely in other arenas.  For me, sports were about competition, not wealth or popularity.  For others, they're more about wealth or popularity or both.  Whatever the ultimate goal, it's sad when it isn't realized for any reason, but all the moreso when it's due to carelessness, irresponsiblity, stupidity, greed or whatever vice one chooses to name.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Random thoughts, the beat goes on

It's a day for random thoughts:

Just what is a Tilda Swinton?

It's amazing how many times I use Potter Stewart's description of obscenity -- I know it when I see it -- when it comes to other things.

Has Brent Musberger stopped calling Tyrann Mathieu the Honey Badger willingly or did Katherine Webb distract him off of it.  Either way, he's gotten far too creepy.

Hot dogs are fun to eat.  Too bad they're not good for you.

Abraham Lincoln was a complicated man, but hardly of presidential timber when he was practicing law.  We should read more biographies of our presidents to see just how human they really are.

Summer is here this week.  Somehow we've seemed to skip right over Spring.  Would that Autumn did as Summer's done and make an early entrance.

I still can't believe how bad a book Storied Stadiums was.

I'm hooked on Sudoku again.  Blame Lisbeth Sander.

Carolyn Moos, meet Brad Paisley.

It amazes me how people can have such divergent views on books, especially ones that are non-fiction and deal with very narrow topics.

Either Mrs. Tsarnaev is nuts or she's in on it.

There are far too many hokey singing competitions on television.

It's creepy to watch entertainment reporters try to make it seem like they're journalists.  They're really nothing more than glorified stalkers.

I admit it:  I'm a nerd.  I love The Big Bang Theory.

Dinner tonight may be chicken and quesadillas.  Not chicken quesadillas.

I wish teaching paid more.  And writing.

Baseball really belongs in the Olympics.  Trampoline really doesn't.

There is no better board game than chess.

Ansel Adams is my favorite photographer.

I think I really came from a different era.

Women shouldn't have to wear high heels.

What is it with Asian drivers?

I miss Spain.

One of these days I'll read more than seventy-nine books in a year.  That's my record.

I marvel at people who can compose music.

The fascination people still have with Elvis and Michael Jackson just confuses me.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Race and the MSM

Ordinarily, I wait until the next day to make another post about something that piqued my interest, but today I've decided to forego the wait and just let loose.  I was reading, as I do almost daily, nbcnews.com, and saw an article about George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin, waiving temporarily a hearing on the stand your ground immunity defense.  Because I'm not from Florida, I don't particularly understand all the intricacies and nuances of the SYG defense, so I wanted to see what waiver of the defense meant in practical terms.  I still don't know what it all means because I got sidetracked by more editorializing by the MSM.

In the third paragraph of the story, this nugget appeared:

Zimmerman, who has pleaded not guilty, is a former neighborhood watch volunteer of white and Hispanic descent who has maintained he shot Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, in self-defense after Martin attacked him.

Unless one has been living under a rock for the last year or so and is unaware of the basic facts, Zimmerman was a member of some self-appointed Neighborhood Watch outfit who shot and killed a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, allegedly in self-defense under the SYG law.  I don't know whether Zimmerman has a valid defense or not.  That's not the issue here.

Look closely at the part in bold.  For those of you not familiar with Zimmerman, here's a photo:

Zimmerman is the son of a Caucasian father and a Peruvian mother.  Martin, for all I know, is strictly African American.  What galls me is that the MSM is splitting hairs in an attempt to sway bias against Zimmerman.

How is that, you ask?  Well, let's go with what we know:  Zimmerman is biracial.  Yes, he's of white and Hispanic descent.  Those are facts.  It's not the facts themselves but how they're presented.

If the headline read Hispanic Shoots Black, would the outrage be as great as if it were White of Hispanic Descent Shoots Black?  Of course not.  By injecting the white v. black angle, what now exists is a racial controversy.  Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

Rahm Emanuel is credited, lately, with pushing the phrase Never waste a good crisis.  The MSM is taking it a step farther and pushing its agenda by the presentation or non-presentation of the news.  By couching this story as a white of Hispanic descent shooter, the MSM ups the racial ante, ensuring that readers are going to think that there was a racial motivation -- or at least moreso than if the line read that Zimmerman is Hispanic. 

It's undeniable that Zimmerman is biracial.  I'm not arguing that he isn't.  Factually, nbcnews.com is correct.  But compare and contrast that with how it describes other high-profile biracial people:

When is the last time you heard Barack Obama, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Derek Jeter, Shemar Moore, Lenny Kravitz, Tiger Woods, Soledad O'Brien or Halle Barry described as whites of African American descent?  For that matter, when was the last time anyone in the MSM dared to call them biracial?  Because they're accomplished in their respective fields, they are black.  But if outlets like nbcnews.com are going to bend over backward to be factually correct, shouldn't these folks bear some hyphenated, awkward yet accurate description?  Or is it only when someone is charged with a crime that factual accuracy is important?

One possible argument in favor of such hyperaccuracy is that for too long, blacks who were the product of biracial couples weren't extended the same courtesy.  By that measure, whites should endure four hundred years of slavery.  In the same breath, why does Zimmerman deserve to bear the weight of faceless white racists to whom he bears no relation?  The MSM knows full well what it's doing:  It's invoking a corollary of Emanuel's dictum about using a good crisis for political gain.  Here, the MSM is using hyperaccuracy to ratchet up the sensationalism of its story to attract and keep readers.

It's unfair.  There's no other way to describe this.  If and when I'm charged with a crime, I want my headlines to be accurate: white of Irish, Polish, Russian and German descent charged with....  That way, people can draw their own conclusions from the stereotypes contained in my DNA:  I did it because I'm a lush, I'm stupid, I'm a Communist and because I'm warlike.  Perhaps then I'd have a built-in defense.

My touchstone in this is what my liberal friend Bill said after the Benghazi affair:  the MSM is letting the country down.  By its constant editorializing by presentation of the news, the MSM is closer to Dr. Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl than it is to the proud tradition of the free media that flourished in the most free country on earth.  This is demagoguery at its worst, wielded by those who have control of news outlets.  Unless and until this changes, the country will continue on its downward spiral from greatness to mediocrity to worse.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Satellite radio

Before there was Facebook and Twitter there was radio.  Not the old time radio where soap operas and baseball games were aired, but the more recent vintage of talk radio, where mere sports and news was a prelude to talk shows about sports and politics.

When this changed exactly I'm not sure.  But sometime in the last thirty years, talk radio exploded. Sports talk shows probably ran neck-and-neck with political talk shows, although to call them talk shows would be a little bit of a misnomer.  Sports talk often involved more shouting than anything else, and were it not for the medium political talk shows would have involved deaths, given the vitriol often heard on those shows.

From Wikipedia I see that satellite radio in the United States began with an application to the FCC in 1990, but that it wasn't until 2001 it began broadcasting (and of all people, Tim McGraw was the first artist aired on satellite radio.  Tim McGraw?  Seriously?).  Subscribers have been slow to transition to satellite radio, mostly because it's not free, but automakers have been including the service in their cars for limited periods upon the purchase of new vehicles, and some buyers have renewed their subscriptions when they expired.

That's what happened with Karen.  When she got her new Chevy last year, it came with a free subscription to Sirius/XM radio.  Sirius/XM has so many channels it's inconceivable that a person could listen to all of them sufficient to decide which are good and which are crap.  It's easy to pick out the favorites pretty quickly, but to listen to every offering would take far too much time.

This past weekend we made another six hour trip in the car.  This time we took Karen's Chevy, because my Volvo is still in the shop awaiting a transplant or two.  Although I prefer my car for several reasons, the one feature about Karen's Chevy that I really enjoy is her Sirius/XM radio, to  which we listened the entire time.

What's interesting about satellite radio is its diversity.  One can listen to music from every era, from the 20's all the way through the present day.  There are more sports channels than one can reasonably listen to and political radio has staked its very territorial claims stridently.  We even discovered that there's a Mel Brooks channel that features songs from his movies.  Perhaps it even airs interviews of the comedy legend.  Who knew?

The most fascinating channels are the political ones.  Given my conservative bent, I don't find much on the conservative channels that offends me, except for the occasional condescending attitude of the hosts.  I don't enjoy debates where people talk over each other, belittle each other and make snide, sarcastic comments.  This is what passes for rhetoric on the conservative channels.

What's most entertaining about the conservative channels is the callers themselves.  More often than not -- with notable and very infrequent exceptions -- the callers are wired, antagonistic and condescending themselves.  More than anything they're ill-informed, citing statistics that would make Ronald Reagan's reliance on Reader's Digest positively academic.  There is nothing like a liberal to make a debate go because their mantra, as I've often said, is Do as we say, not as we do.

But whatever the conservative channels may be, the liberal channels are that much worse.  I've never heard such cloyingly mawkish, self-righteous, cluelessly strident balderdash in my life.  Some young radio host on one of the liberal stations was talking about the recent bombing in Boston and invited people who agreed with him to comment on the AP's decision to remove Islamophobia from its working lexicon.  First of all, I don't know what good removing a word from a dictionary does; people are either going to use the word or not, and if AP writers use the word in defiance of their employer, does that mean they can be fired?  Second, the thrust of the host's argument was that by removing it, the AP was treating it as if there was no more hatred for Muslims when, obviously, there still was.  His argument was that the word needs to remain in circulation to more properly describe the situation as it's portrayed by the Left.

There are a couple of things that are amusing on this front.  First, is it wrong for people to fear a group that has declared its intention to destroy those same people?  To be sure, we can't generalize, but it makes sense that if Islamofascists (I can only imagine how the Left would react to that word...) are bent on our destruction, we shouldn't welcome them with open arms singing Kumbayas.  Second, if we're trying to be more accurate in our descriptions of things, shouldn't the term pro-choice be replaced with the term pro-death?  Whether you believe the fetus is a human being or not, it's a living something, and by terminating the pregnancy you are killing it, i.e., making it dead.  So if one is going to contort oneself about the use or meaning of the word Islamophobia, we should strive to be more accurate in all our descriptions, and what is more fundamental to humans than life or death?

The First Amendment guarantees the right of all Americans to free speech, whether they pay for it or not.  I certainly follow the Voltairean approach to free speech and will willingly die to protect another person's right to say something I find distasteful, but I will also acknowledge the abject hypocrisy of certain people who insist on foisting their mores on me.

Plato descried democracy because its natural evolution brought it closer to anarchy.  Liberals often forget that even in a democracy, brakes need to be applied at times lest the whole system go careening off a cliff.

But if it does, Sirius/XM will be broadcasting along the way.

For a monthly fee, of course.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Cleaning out the basement

This past weekend I spent helping Karen get the house shaped up to either rent or sell as we move from one of the worst states in the Union to one of the best.  It was no fun at times and fun at others.  Having Sherman and Custer around made it more enjoyable.

Karen's biggest beef is that I have way too much stuff.  She thinks I'm a hoarder, which I'm not. The problem has been that I have had to move offices several times and usually that meant bringing home boxes of materials that either I had to sift through or that I needed to keep for my job.  The one thing that I will readily cop to is that I have an inordinate amount of books.  One time Karen, the former librarian, asked me to keep only those books that were my friends and I innocently and very honestly replied, But they're all my friends which, on some levels, is too sad to acknowledge.

But beyond the mountains of books (I do not exaggerate on that point...) there were boxes with papers that I hadn't looked at in ages.  Many of these boxes hadn't been opened in ages since the time that I hurriedly threw papers into them in the hopes that I would be able to go through them to weed them out.  I found stuff in these boxes that defied explanation, small Post-Its with phone numbers and names that didn't jog my memory at all.  I found business cards of financial people with whom I couldn't remember working on a case at all.

There were briefs and memoranda and seminar materials by the bunches.  Some of them were outdated and got tossed.  Others were still relevant and were reboxed to follow me to yet another office and out of the basement.

Yet as I leafed through the seemingly endless reams of errant papers, there were some surprises and wistful memories with which I became reacquainted.  I saw old sports articles that I'd saved in the hopes of framing them and putting them on a wall in my basement.  I found articles of important events, like the headline that announced the hanging of Saddam Hussein, that I kept for memorabilia.

I found articles of events or people that had touched my life.  I found the obituary of Henry Lilienheim, the attorney to whom my aunt introduced me when I was still in school, who had not only survived Dachau but who was invited to be in David Ben Gurion's first Israeli cabinet, only to demur because he had to search for his wife in postwar Europe.  He found her and then wrote a memoir Aftermath.

There was the article about the man who would have been my high school basketball coach (had I not been screwed over by the sophomore coach) who was approaching 700 career victories.  I must have kept the article in shock that he was nearing that milestone because he had a proclivity for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.  It was a testament to his persistence and the district's tenure program that he lasted as long as he did.  If nothing else, he would be remembered those who came in contact with him because he wore a buzz cut hair style until the end of his career in the 1980's.

The Playboy magazines I'd collected and hardly looked at in ages -- no, I never did read an article -- went into a file drawer.  There were articles on how to throw certain pitches with a baseball, others on the size of military units, and others that explained certain historical facts about Ireland.  I discarded the redundant or useless ones and kept a few of the others.  Someday I may well pitch the rest of them.

There were the funny emails that I got, like the one explaining the differences between men and women, how you knew if you played an FPS too much and how 24 lacked verisimilitude.  I got a few chuckles out of them and kept the ones I thought were worth passing on.

Then there were the games that often circulate around offices.  One was a page with thirty or so corporate logos that we see everyday but without the names of the companies associated with the logos.  The task was to put the name with the logo.  I remember getting all but a couple when I first did it; a few I would never have gotten because they weren't national logos but regional logos.  Then there was the devastatingly difficult game that asks one to fill out the phrase.  For example, 26=L.of the A. is 26 Letters of the Alphabet.  Coincidentally, there are twenty-six such mindbenders.

There were also the touching memories.  Friends' letters from bygone days, people whose society enriched my life in various ways.  Annie, the woman who guided me in Spain, the expat who was left stranded in Europe at a tender age who had made her life there and flourished.  Professors, fellow students, coworkers and clients.  Thank you notes from people who lives I touched in mostly small but sometimes big ways.  I was transported back to those times and smiled.

Not one of those, however, touched me as much as the random pieces of paper I found from our Mother.  Notes that she'd jot down, reminders of things to look for, her kindness and generosity there as vibrant as the moment in which she shared it.  I noticed how delicate her handwriting was, how much I emulated it and tried to copy it, as I would try to copy her kindness and generosity.  Mom was a far better person than I'll ever be.  Just seeing those handwritten notes made me miss her all the more.

I'm glad I kept them.  They may be meaningless and clutter, but in truth there were only about four sheets and they remind me of a woman who not only gave me life and saved my life on several occasions, they remind me of the woman who made me the man I am today.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Anniversaries

Anniversaries are yearly remembrances of events that have significant meaning to the people celebrating them.  They can be for weddings, or sports championships, or victories in war or whatever else people choose to remember with a special feeling.

Sometimes the commemorations are joyful, other times they are somber.  They can be public or they can be private.  What matters not is that they follow a certain script but that for the people to whom significance arises, they are meaningful and memorable.

I have a thing for dates.  I'm not in the Ed Begley, Jr., or Marilu Henner class of memorization by any means.  Karen would even tell you that I have a habit of forgetting things that she tells me (she's only right sometimes; I have a slight hearing disability that keeps me from hearing some of what she says, especially when she's in another part of the house walking into another room while I'm trapped in a closet elsewhere...but I digress...).

Ostentatious celebrations are not my style, at least if I'm the person who's to be feted.  Nor do I like to put someone in the position of being the center of attention if that person isn't comfortable with it.
I love to celebrate Karen whenever I can, but so far I've only be able to do so privately.

Today is a very meaningful anniversary for us.  A few years ago today something happened that changed our lives for ever, and for the better.  I know it did for me.  It was such a life-changing event that only one other occurrence is on a par with it.  My life, fortunately, has never been the same since then.

Unfortunately, we're struggling financially.  The economy, contrary to the POTUS and his minions, is not improving.  Karen and I have met with reverses that are both unfair and unexpected.  What's more, no matter how hard we try to get our financial house in order, we stay behind an ever-growing eight ball.  This puts additional stress on both of us, and Karen cannot afford the stress.

When I tell people Karen is the love of my life, it's not mere words.  Besides being the most beautiful and kindest person I'll ever know, she's one of the savviest, sharpest, most prepared people I've ever been around.  Sure, she can be emotional at times, and she needs to rein in this tendency to worry about everything.  She can borrow trouble like it's nobody's business.

But if I have to go through this troubled time, there is no one with whom I'd rather do it.  Because for all her beauty, intelligence, kindness and preparedness, she's the most loyal and resilient people I'll ever know.  I would gladly lay down my life for her, and I know she'd do the same for me.  Love isn't tested by how well we treat each other in the best of times, but how well we look after each other in the worst.  I am the best-loved person on the planet.  We'll get through this and we'll get through this together.

A couple of years ago today, we shared the most beautiful of human experiences.  Our love was declared and bonded for all eternity.  Today, that anniversary is keeping a smile in my heart as my face struggles to keep one with my mouth.  I am the most fortunate man alive because Karen loves me.

Happy Anniversary, sweetheart.  Thank you the most wonderful years of my life.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles