Abortion: Truth in Advertising

Gerald Warner at his Daily Telegraph blog has a very interesting take on what the pro-life movement in Britain should do now that the powers that be have decided to allow advertisements for abortions to run on TV.

Tonight’s scheduled screening of an advertisement for abortion on Channel 4 by the Marie Stopes organisation marks a new low in moral sensitivity. More significantly, it removes the last argument against pro-life organisations being allowed to broadcast images demonstrating the realities of abortion. The pro-abortion lobby is pleading the need for openness about abortion: fair enough, they should be taken at their word.

Dana Hovig, chief executive of Marie Stopes, said: “We hope the new ‘Are you late’ campaign will encourage people to talk about their choices, including abortion, more openly and honestly…” Julie Douglas, marketing manager of Marie Stopes, explained: “We thought it was right to bring abortion out into the open… It doesn’t help to keep it under wraps.” In that case, why is the word “abortion” not mentioned in the advertisement?

Since the pro-abortion lobby wants the practice brought out into the open, presumably it will have no objection to the Pro-Life Alliance broadcasting real-life images of what happens to a child being aborted. The Alliance’s factual election broadcasts have repeatedly been censored by the television companies. After the censoring of its 2001 election broadcast, the Alliance won a temporary victory against the BBC in the Court of Appeal in 2002.

On that occasion Lord Justice Laws stated: “The reader of this judgement will see that I have used the word ‘censorship’ from the first sentence. I have well in mind that the broadcasters do not at all accept that their decision should be so categorised. Maybe the feathers of their liberal credentials are ruffled at the word’s overtones. Maybe there is the implicit plea for the comfort of a euphemism. However in my judgement this court must, and I hope the broadcasters, recognise unblinking that censorship is exactly what this case is about.”

. . . snip . . .

Since the legalisation of abortion in 1967, more than 7 million British babies have been aborted. Clearly, Marie Stopes does not think that is a high enough figure and wants to facilitate its increase. Of abortions in this country, more than 98 per cent are performed for “social reasons”, the euphemism for abortion on demand.

Now that Marie Stopes is advertising, in an obvious attempt to attract more consumers, it is only reasonable that its product should be subjected to the same scrutiny as any other advertised service. Consumers have a right to know exactly what they are being offered. So, let the Pro-Life Alliance broadcast films of the realities of abortion, including the severed limbs and heads of very recognisably tiny children. The “good taste” argument is totally inadequate to counter the self-evident public-interest issue at stake here and, as an eminent judge pointed out, the unacceptability of political censorship by broadcasters.

Read it all here. My hunch is that if abortions were shown on television, we could have abortion banned in a year. Denial, ignorance and closing one's eyes to scientific truth are what the pro-abortion movement is built on.

Journo-politico Violence: Iowahawk Has Warned You!

The Democratic Party has been attempting to portray the Tea Party Movement as a group of racist, right-wing fanatics. Obviously, they have been spending more time with Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals than with Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

A Gallup poll shows the Tea Party Movement to be made up of 49% Republicans, 43% Independents and 8% Democrats. Who knew there were that many racist, right-wing fanatics within the Democratic Party? Maybe after the demonizing and dismissing tactic blows up in their faces, the Democrats will shift gears and treat the Tea Partiers like normal voters with concerns. To do so they will have to give up their juvenile habit of referring to them using a sexual slang term best left in the gutter where they found it.

Anyway, the attempt to link all those who oppose the health care government takeover with violence and rabble rousing continues to shape the narrative the Democrats and their tame media fellow travelers are putting out there. Enter Iowahawk with his usual ironic satire.

"Journo-politico Violence: Deadly Threat or Menacing Trend?

A Public Safety Alert from David Burge
Executive Director and Chief Research Officer
The Media Violence Project / Center for the Study of Politician Sociopathy

At the Media Violence Project, our charter is to protect public safety by researching, documenting and raising awareness about the ever-increasing wave of violent, disgusting crimes perpetrated by members of the American news media. It is a largely thankless task -- often requiring a cast iron stomach -- but if our work has prevented one more American child from falling victim to a criminally insane anchorman or newspaper reporter, it will all have been worth it.

Every day at the MVP we receive emails from concerned citizens, such as this:

Dear Mr. Burge:

I have read with increasing alarm new reports of violence erupting around our country. For example, the recent rampaging campus murderer in Huntsville, Alabama; the Austin, Texas man who flew his plane into an office building; and the unhinged shooter at the Pentagon. Do you suspect these people may have been journalists? Also, what can I do to prevent my family from falling victim to these violent journalists?

Please do not print my name, as I live near a journalist and am concerned about my safety.

Name Withheld By Request

Dear "Name Withheld By Request," let me first say these are excellent questions. Second, let me also say that I do not withhold names by request. Your name is Michael R. Bartolo, and you live at 2311 Briarcliff Court, Brown Deer, WI.

But let's get to the crux of your questions: yes, in the cases you cited there is some circumstantial evidence that the alleged perpetrators harbored pre-journalistic tendencies (for instance, violent hatred of George Bush and capitalism, and messianic obsession with President Obama), but it doesn't appear they were actual professional members of the news media. For one thing, unlike the vast majority of journalists, all of the suspects involved in these crimes reportedly had actual marketable skills -- biochemistry, computer programming, growing weed, and so on. Until further evidence of journalism emerges, I believe we can attribute these incidents to a handful of those rare random psychopaths who do not possess press credentials.

Unfortunately, it now appears that these are the exceptions that prove the rule. In the two years since the MVP issued our first report, another tidal wave of media-related bizarre or violent crimes has come to light, each more shocking than the last. Like CNN reporter Richard Quest, arrested in New York's Central Park in 2008 brandishing a noose or ABC Miami reporter Jeffrey Weinsier, charged with entering a school with a firearm. Or New Hampshire Union Leader sports writer Kevin Provencher, charged with operating a prostitution ring. It is unknown whether Provencher's alleged activities were related to WABC New York sports anchor Marvell Scott, who was arrested earlier this year for allegedly raping a 14-year old prostitute. It is also unclear whether this Granite State "mack daddy" used a "strong pimp hand" with his "bitches," but he might have shared tips and techniques with fellow journalists like Jason Scott Kidd, charged in 2009 with hitting a woman in the face at a Mexican restaurant, Gawker editor Richard "Date Rape Tips" Blakely, arrested for domestic violence, or Boise anchorman and alleged wife beater David Tester.

Yet, dangerous as journalists, are there is an even greater menace to ordinary citizens:

"And yet, Americans may be facing an even worse wave of domestic attacks from the only organized group arguably even more violent, stupid and useless than the news media: elected public officials.

"In response to growing public outcry, the board of the Media Violence Project earlier this morning established a new affiliate organization, the Center for the Study of Politician Sociopathy. What our comprehensive 15 minute Google search revealed was an explosive outbreak of violence that, if trends continue, may actually eclipse the media public safety crisis by November. Most Americans were relieved to hear of the resignation of Congress's disgraced predator Eric Massa, but we must realize his ticklefight dungeon was only one cell in a complex nationwide network of politicians with a thirst for violence or perversion. Like Illinois Lt. Governor candidate Scott Cohen, arrested for assaulting and holding a knife to throat of his prostitute ex-girlfriend. Or former U.S. congressman Craig Washington, indicted for aggravated assault in a shooting incident. Or Tennessee State rep and judiciary committee chairman Rob Briley, who allegedly tried to kick the window of a state patrol car after leading police on a drunken 100 mph car chase. Or California U.S. congressman Bob Filner, arrested for security tresspass and assaulting airport workers. Or Racine, WI mayor Gary Becker, facing five counts of felony child sex crimes.

"There's an deep undercurrent of anger, alienation and frustration in Congress, as well as America's statehouses and city halls," explains CSPS study director Vadid Grube. "They feel that voters are no longer listening to them. Then come the drugs, followed by the extensive, journalist-like paranoid fantasies. And then... snap.""

Read it all here. In case you haven't noticed, the funniest thing about this whole spoof is that if you click on the links you will find that every one is legitimate. Not a single one goes to The Onion! Every link is for real. Think about that.

When they begin to laugh at you . . . it's time to go back to the propaganda drawing board.

More on the Media's Double Standard and Ideological Bias

Neil Braithwaite, writing on the American Thinker blog makes a sensible point that any reasonable observer of liberal media bias would have to concede in this post entitled: "Media ignoring Obama 'gotchya moment' from Fox News interview."

"When Charlie Gibson interviewed then Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and asked her about the "Bush Doctrine," it was apparent that she had been stumped by the question. The newbie "national" politician's answer revealed a weakness in her understanding of President Bush's national security policy.

Palin's response of, "In what respect?" was blood in the water for Gibson. Intent on pursuing Palin's weakness on the subject, Gibson immediately asked, "Well, what do you interpret it to be?" Palin went on to beat around the bush (pun intended) and never answered Gibson's question. Charlie Gibson got exactly what he had hoped for from the Palin interview and delivered a potent "gotcha" moment for the liberal media to highlight at every chance they could get - which turned out to be every time they opened their mouths until election day.

Bret Baier of Fox News delivered a similar "gotcha" moment in his interview with President Obama earlier this week. In a line of questions about "special deals" in the health care bill, President Obama answered that he knew, "...what was in and what was not in" the health care bill. Baier immediately asked the President, "Is Connecticut in?" President Obama's answer of, "Connecticut, what are you specifically referring to?" should be a stark reminder to everyone - especially the media - that President Obama isn't always the smartest person in the room. Taking a page from the Gibson book on interviewing, Baird's immediate follow-up question to the president was, "The $100 million for the hospital?"

Inheriting Sarah Palin's strategy on answering questions you don't know the answer to, President Obama proceeded to beat around the bush (pun intended again), proving beyond a doubt, that he doesn't really know what's in the health care bill.

So where is all the mainstream media coverage of that "gotcha" moment with the smartest person ever elected President of the United States of America?"

Well, the answer is, of course, that there is one standard for those who are perceived as advancing the interests and worldview of the liberals who dominate the mainstream media in the US and another standard for those who are perceived as threats to those interests and the worldview of the left. And Sarah Palin was (and still is) a threat.

Sarah Palin, John Edwards and Media Bias

Here is a very interesting story from the New York Daily Post by Jamie Weinstein called: "Palin versus Edwards: A Case Study in Media Bias." Weinstein makes the valid point that the media bias against the conservative worldview that Sarah Palin holds it the real reason she is so vilified and hated. John Edwards is not objectively smarter or better qualified than Palin, but since he represented the worldview held by the liberal media he was not attacked or ridiculed as Palin has been:

"No one can confuse me for someone who is an enthusiastic supporter of Sarah Palin. I think Sen. John McCain's selection of Palin as his 2008 running mate will be counted among the very worst legacies in the Arizona senator's long and storied career.

Nonetheless, there is little question that Palin has been treated unfairly by the press, at least in comparison to other politicians.

And no comparison best illustrates the double standard the media has with Palin than how they treated another former vice-presidential nominee, Sen. John Edwards.

When in 2004 John Kerry picked Edwards, whose entire resume in public life at that point consisted of six years in the U.S. Senate, to be his vice-presidential nominee, few questioned whether Edwards was qualified for the post.

Search "Edwards is unqualified" in Lexis-Nexis from the time Edwards was tapped by Kerry through Election Day 2004, and you get 11 results. Do the same for Palin and you get 174 results - and the search period is nearly two months shorter for Palin, because she was picked by McCain much later in the 2008 election cycle.

We now definitively know just how much of a liar, cheat and phony John Edwards is. But if the media had been one half as interested in exposing Edwards as a fraud as they have been in excoriating Palin, perhaps it would not have taken the National Enquirer to discover the truth that has led to the downfall of a politician who had a very real chance of becoming President.

One of the media's favorite attacks against Palin revolves around her failure to tell Katie Couric what magazines and newspapers she regularly reads. The clumsy answer was an early flash point that led many to scoff that the Alaskan governor didn't read anything at all.

But guess who doesn't read very much either? That would be John Edwards, if you believe John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's new book "Game Change." According to their reporting, when a friend inquired if John Edwards read a particular tome, his wife, Elizabeth, apparently found the idea of her husband reading laugh-out-loud funny, saying, "Oh, he doesn't read books."

Yet this impression of her husband as an anti-intellectual "hick," as Elizabeth reportedly referred to him, never became a common undercurrent during his his 2004 campaign for vice president or his later run for President.

So why did Palin get painted so quickly as a bombastic dunce and Edwards escape without such a negative characterization?

It probably has to do with the fact that most members of the media bought Edwards persona. They liked his world-view.

They believed in his claim that there were "two Americas." So they didn't dig deeper to see if there was any substance beneath his shiny surface.

Palin was never given the benefit of the doubt, in large part because the world-view to which she subscribes is anathema to the one held by so many pundits and reporters."

Now there is nothing wrong with members of the media holding political opinions. But there is something wrong with pretending to be objective and then being allowed to get away with trying to manipulate public opinion by biased news reporting. There is a reason why Fox News exists and why it is now trusted by more Americans than the so-called "mainstream media." Things have come to a pretty pass when Fox is not the most biased media outlet in the US.

The Global Warming Scare is Over and the Mainstream Media Haven't Even Noticed Yet

There is lagging behind and then there is being comatose. Although the North American press is lagging behind, the British and Indian newspapers are turning up the heat on the grand hoax that is known as Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). The turn against AGW has been caused by Climategate (the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia) and the recent damaging revelations about the use of non-peer reviewed articles originating from environmentalist lobby groups by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Nobel Peace Prize winning 2007 report.

The Daily Telegraph has been on the case for a while and even the Times of London has been digging up dirt on the IPCC. But even the left-leaning, The Guardian in the UK is harassing the AGW alarmists. See here and here.

On this side of the water, the major networks and newspapers slumber on. But Walter Russell Mead, writing in The American Interest, declares the AGW scare to be dead.

"The global warming movement as we have known it is dead. Its health had been in steady decline during the last year as the once robust hopes for a strong and legally binding treaty to be agreed upon at the Copenhagen Summit faded away. By the time that summit opened, campaigners were reduced to hoping for a ‘politically binding’ agreement to be agreed that would set the stage for the rapid adoption of the legally binding treaty. After the failure of the summit to agree to even that much, the movement went into a rapid decline.

The movement died from two causes: bad science and bad politics.

After years in which global warming activists had lectured everyone about the overwhelming nature of the scientific evidence, it turned out that the most prestigious agencies in the global warming movement were breaking laws, hiding data, and making inflated, bogus claims resting on, in some cases, no scientific basis at all. This latest story in the London Times is yet another shocker; the IPCC’s claims that the rainforests were going to disappear as a result of global warming are as bogus and fraudulent as its claims that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. It seems as if a scare story could grab a headline, the IPCC simply didn’t care about whether it was reality-based."

Read the rest here. The editors of the National Review Online have a nice summary of the situation in which they put AGW in its proper historical context:

"Exaggeration and alarmism have been a chronic weakness of environmentalism since it became an organized movement in the 1960s. Every ecological problem was instantly transformed into a potential world-ending crisis, from the population bomb to the imminent resource depletion of the “limits to growth” fad of the 1970s to acid rain to ozone depletion, always with an overlay of moral condemnation of anyone who dissented from environmental correctness. With global warming, the environmental movement thought it had hit the jackpot — a crisis sufficiently long-range that it could not be falsified and broad enough to justify massive political controls on resource use at a global level. Former Colorado senator Tim Wirth was unusually candid when he remarked in the early days of the climate campaign that “we’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” (Not surprisingly, after Wirth left the Senate and the Clinton administration he ended up at the United Nations.)

The global-warming thrill ride looks to be coming to an end, undone by the same politically motivated serial exaggeration and moral preening that discredited previous apocalypses. On the heels of the East Anglia University “Climategate” scandal have come a series of embarrassing retractions from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding some of the most loudly trumpeted signs and wonders of global warming, such as the ludicrous claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear within 30 years, that nearly half of the Amazon jungle was at imminent risk of destruction from a warming planet, and that there was a clear linkage between climate change and weather-related economic losses. The sources for these claims turned out to be environmental advocacy."

Read the rest here.

The whole environmentalist or "Green" movement has suffered a deep loss of credibility among people capable of critical thinking because of the uncritical treatment of the movement by the mainstream media. If it were not for the Internet, the scandal would not have been exposed. I'm not sure the mainstream media will ever fully recover from this blow to their credibility.

How to Read Newspapers

Newspapers are a lot less important than they were during their heyday of the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries, but they are still an important source of opinion. Their function of providing "breaking news" has mostly been usurped by television and internet, but the electronic media has difficulty providing "color" and "texture" to the news, that is, an "interpretation" of the meaning of the bare facts scrolling across the screen on cable news or popping up in 500 word stories in your in box. Such methods are fine for stock quotations, sports scores and weather reports, but very poor for conveying political ideas, moral dilemmas or analysis of why things happen. This is where newspapers come in.

Now, having spoken a good word for the dead tree media, I now have to acknowledge what is widely known to be true: daily newspapers are dying out. Lay-offs at all the major dailies (including recent ones at the Washington Times and the New York Times transcend all ideological brands (WT - conservative, NYT - liberal) and are not limited to towns and small cities (they don't come much bigger that NY). Newspapers are being replaced by on-line versions of newspapers, blogs and new websites.

It remains to be seen whether any of the older, traditional, print version newspapers can actually make a successful transition to the electronic age or not. Maybe a few will, but never again (please Lord) will we see the situation in which an entire city or region depends for its "interpreted events chronicle" on one or two large conglomerates of news which represent a particular worldview not shared by the majority of their readers and which act in a paternalistic manner to "educate," (which, actually means in this case "indoctrinate"), their readers.

Public opinion today on the Internet is a glorious smash up of contradiction, passion, debate, accusation, defense, counter-accusation, satire and cut and thrust. This is a far healthier state of affairs than the situation just prior to the Internet when corporate ownership of media was becoming overly concentrated and the worldview of journalists was becoming nearly monolithic.

Nevertheless, even in this great conflict of opinion on the net, newspapers still matter. A person who wants to be informed and alert to what is going on around him needs to read them. But how? How, in particular, should a Christian who wants to develop a Christian mind read them?

1. Never Read Just One: If the choice was between reading only one newspaper or reading none, I would recommend none. I'm serious. Most newspapers have a political and religious slant and they are not famous for conducting debates about things within their pages. Sorry, but that is not what they are good at doing. Reading only one is little short of indoctrination.

2. Read Editorial/Columnists' Take on the News, Not Just the News: In Canada, the Toronto Star is the organ of the left wing of the Liberal Party. It has great sympathy for the NDP but can be counted on to recommend that (1) the Liberal Party adopt NDP policies and (2) we all vote Liberal. The National Post will advise you to vote Conservative, but often will urge the Conservative Party to adopt Liberal policies in order to get elected. The Globe and Mail is an interesting and eclectic mix that treats subjects that more liberal papers will ignore, but will seldom do so from a conservative perspective.

In the US, the New York Times marches in lockstep with the Democratic Party. The Washington Times is a conservative, usually pro-Republican paper, while the Washington Post is, well, not.

In the UK, the Times of London will give you a leftist slant with enough business news to maintain some of its non-leftist readership. Actually, many paper are quite adept at this. The Daily Telegraph is a bit more conservative, but in the sense of allowing the conservatives to have a voice along with others.

All these mainstream papers tend to march in ideological left of center lockstep when reporting the news. The entire mainstream media in the West reflects the left-wing worldview of the universities where the journalists and editors were trained (one hesitates to say "educated"). Where you see some differences from the party line tends to be in the "Op Ed" pieces written by non-journalists such as politicians, political staffers, employees of think tanks, religious leaders, etc. The Washington Times will run an Op Ed by Sarah Palin, for example, while the New York Times would not. Sometimes the blatantly leftist bias in the reporting of news stories will be challenged directly by columnists and op ed writers and this is the most interesting part of reading a newspaper. Sometimes the contradiction is sharp and deep and then the reader actually gets a chance to use his brain and think about the issue. Unfortunately, such moments are rare in certain newspapers.

3. Read More Than One Newspaper: I usually read the Times of London, New York Times, Washington Times, and the National Post. I also subscribe to the dead tree edition of the Toronto Star - although it is often pornographic and sex-obsessed - because I want to know what the enemy is thinking. I also check the stock market on the Globe and Mail daily and that gives me an excuse to scan the headlines and columns there.

Now, let me hasten to add, lest this make it sound like I do nothing else with my time, that I am using the word "read" in a peculiar sense. I never read a newspaper "from front to back" as you read of characters in novels doing in the old days. Much of the time, I am just scanning the headlines and reading the odd column or op ed piece here and there.

The really crucial thing is to read the same news story in two or more papers and then to read columnists' take on that story from two or more papers of different ideological bents. I also read blogs and other internet material that challenges or contradicts what the newspapers are saying. (I do not listen to news on the radio or watch it on TV because it is so shallow and biased that it is basically a waste of time.)

This kind of reading helps gain perspective and requires critical thinking. So, for example, on global warming. During the Copenhagen summit, for example, I would typically read the Times of London account, an op ed piece in the Washington Times, the anti-AGW blog of James Delingpole at the Daily Telegraph site and then note how the Toronto Star's treatment differed from the National Post.

The goal is not simply to detect bias. That is laughable; bias is everywhere. As I like to tell my students, the mere uncovering of bias in an author is not a refutation of his position; a person may very well be biased in favor of something and still be quite right about it. And the fact that someone you dislike is against something does not make it good. Smoking is not a good habit just because Hitler was against it. In fact, bias is more a sign of intellectual life than anything else; the only problem is when people are unaware of their biases or dishonest because of them. But that is mainly a problem because it prevents them from arguing well.

It is also important to stress that the goal of reading multiple accounts of the same events or issues is not because we assume that one can find the truth in the middle. That is intellectual laziness. In fact, quite often the truth is almost completely on one side or the other. This is not always the case, but it is the case more often than lazy thinkers might think.

Once one has made up one's mind on an issue, the next step is not to cut oneself off from contrary opinions, but to try to apply the arguments one has been convinced by to one's opponents. This prevents a stultifying self-satisfied, ossification of thought. It also keeps the door open to intellectual conversion by better arguments that may be developed for a point of view than the ones you rejected in rejecting that point of view.

With the advent of the net, reading newspapers has become more feasible than ever and safer than ever - so long as one avoids these rules:

1. Never read just one newspaper and never read just the new stories themselves.
2. Always read contradictory interpretations of the same events and issues.
3. On major issues continue to read contrary perspectives even after you have made up your own mind.

It is not easy to think Christianly; but it is a certainty that one will never think Christianly until one begins to think in the first place. Reading newspapers can help you think if you do it well.

Maureen Dowd: the Glen Beck of the New York Times

Maureen Dowd makes Glen Beck look sober, moderate and thoughtful by comparison. In this column she displays monumental ignorance, takes cheap shots at the pope that would not be out of place in a Chick Publications tract, speculates about "right-wing" Anglicans coming into the Church as part of some sort of plot instead of an ecumenical initiative and then tops it all off by suggesting that the Church hates women and wants American nuns to go back into the cloister.

Charles Lewis has written a calm and reasonable piece in the National Post that puts Dowd's apocalyptic rantings in perspective and answers some of her base accusations arising out of anti-Catholic prejudice and hate. He concludes as follows:

"By all means, Ms. Dowd, be angry if you feel that is warranted. But somehow
your readers deserve something more than Dan Brown paranoia hiding behind the
name of a prestigious newspaper."

Memo to M. Dowd: When someone associates you with Dan Brown, that is not a compliment.

Where in the world does the New York Times dig up such people to write opinion columns? Whys is someone as ignorant of the subject of religion allowed to spout off on theological and ecumenical issues she does not understand? Why is it OK to reduce the complexities of life to a straight-forward Feminst/Marxist, good versus evil, innocent female dominated by angry patriarchialist analysis where everything, especially theology, is merely a function of feminist ideology? And if that is OK, how is Glenn Beck worse, except that his views are the opposite of the liberal establishment? And, finally, is it any wonder the New York Times is sinking below the waves?

The newspaper of record sets new records for narrow-minded, ideological-motivated, fatually innaccurate drivel.

UPDATE:
Father Z. gives Dowd's hit-piece the fisking it deserves here.

Stop Watching, Start Loving

Here is an excellent article by Mark Shiffman from Front Porch Republic on "Why We Do Not Own a Television." He tells the story of his own journey and quotes one of my favorite writers: Simone Weil. Here is a snippet in which Shiffman summarizes and applies Weil's insights:

"In my own effort to make sense of my intuitive reservations about the medium, however, it has helped me to turn to one of my favorite writers, Simone Weil. One important thing she points out is the vital connection between love and attention.

The quality of our life depends to a great extent on the quality of our love. The quality of our love depends on the attention we give to other human beings and to our natural surroundings. Attention is not only a sign or expression of love. In an important way, it is the very substance of love, a central part of the very practice of loving. By receptive attention, we make space in ourselves for the presence of something or someone else. If we do not do this, we do not love.

What does television do to our habits of attention? It habituates us to see less, to see it less completely, and to engage it less actively and imaginatively. Our attention is strung along moment by moment, from one thing to the next. What we pay attention to is managed, packaged, enclosed in a frame according to someone else’s priorities for what we should see. We are encouraged to be passive and impatient at the same time.

- snip -

By habituating us to follow along impatiently and passively, to filter and frame the world before we’ve had the chance to see anything, television damages our capacity to love well, to love others and the natural world for what they are rather than for what they can do for us. Television is, after all, one of the great tools and purveyors of consumer culture. The culture of consumption and exploitation has every interest in encouraging our self-centered and unreflective egoism and our oblivion to the loveliness of the natural world. Why should we be surprised if the medium that is its most powerful tool encourages the same vices?"

We have never had cable and we have never had a TV that worked very well all through our married life. But I have not watched anything but Hockey Night in Canada (maybe 20 times per year) for the past five years. There is always reading I don't have time to do - so why bother?. But the strongest argument against TV is undoubtedly the harm it does to our ability to love, as expressed above. This seems to me to be a classic case of technology making our lives worse.