Forgive me for asking what I’m sure some of you will consider to be a stupid question, but I’ll ask it anyway. You know that “liberal media” so many of you talk about? Sure you do…you can’t go a day without someone somewhere blaming something on the media’s left bias. In fact, such accusations are so commonplace that they’ve become generally accepted as truth, yet when pressed to cite specific examples of the bias of which they speak, several people I’ve heard refer to the press that way can’t seem to come up with one.

So, the aforementioned question to those who insist that the media is biased: When did the media “become” liberal?

Was it in the 1980’s after Ronald Reagan was elected to office, and we had 12 years of GOP leadership? Was it in the 1970’s when “Watergate” made countless headlines and infuriated housewives who missed weeks of their soap operas as the networks covered Watergate testimony? Was it in the 1960’s, perhaps as a result of everyone being so awestruck by the days of Camelot with the Kennedys? Maybe it dates back to the 1930’s and 1940’s when people generally were so much more respectful and polite that there was actually a gentlemen’s agreement that the press would never show FDR walking in his leg braces? (To this day, there are only a few film clips that exist that show him walking in his leg braces. By today’s standards, that is unfathomable.)

And while we’re on the subject, for those of you in the know, what is the media’s motive for being biased to the left? The big media companies — those many of you claim are trying to buy up as many smaller newspapers, radio stations and television stations so that they can totally control what and how you think — generally have a much better chance of such expansion when Republicans are in charge of things. Democrats tend to be in favor of ownership caps, which limit media ownership, and thereby, in some cases, profit.

Incidentally, those of you who really think that those big media companies are trying to control everything you think, might want to consider this other possible explanation: by owning more media outlets, those companies are able to trim their payrolls and share resources. It’s about saving money, really. Most of them don’t really give a damn what you think about the issues of the day, as long as you make them your source for it.

So, if anyone who has all of the inside information on when the media made that “obvious” left turn, please enlighten me.

An Op/Ed piece published in Sunday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch gives an interesting perspective to the use of images from 9/11 in campaign ads that have been making headlines and leading to criticism of the Bush camp from victims’ families.

What’s so interesting is that the writer of the essay, Debra Burlingame, is not only a lifelong Democrat, but is the sister of Charles F. ‘Chic’ Burlingame III, captain of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Says Debra: “‘The 9/11 families’ are not a monolithic group that speaks in one voice, and nothing has made that more clear than the controversy over the Bush campaign ads.”

“It is one thing for individual family members to invoke the memory of all 3,000 victims as they take to the microphone or podium to show respect for our collective loss. It is another for them to attempt to stifle the debate over the future direction of our country by declaring that the images of 9/11 should be off limits in the presidential race, and to do so under the rubric of ‘The Families of September 11.’”

“They do not represent me. Nor do they represent those Americans who feel that September 11 was a defining moment in the history of our country and who want to know how the current or future occupant of the Oval Office views the lessons of that day.”

A few other noteworthy quotes:

“I suspect that the real outrage over the ads has more to do with the context than the content. It’s not the pictures that disturb them so much as the person who is using them.”

“As ‘relatives of 9/11 victims,’ they are virtually immune to challenge on the issue of who should have the loudest voice regarding the legacy of this national tragedy.”

And finally, this lifelong Democrat raises this important point:

“Whatever these 9/11 families may think of the President’s foreign policy or the war in Iraq, I ask them to reconsider the language and tone of their statements. We should not tolerate or condone remarks such as those of the 9/11 relative who, so offended by the campaign ads, said that he ‘would vote for Saddam Hussein before I would vote for Bush.‘ The insult was picked up and posted on Al-Jazeera’s Website. In view of the sacrifice our troops have made on our behalf, this insensitivity to them and their families suggests a level of self-indulgence and ingratitude that shocks the conscience.”

I’m happy to see a fair, balanced point of view. I know that there are plenty of people out there — both Republicans and Democrats — who are capable of standing independent of their preferred party’s rhetoric. That a family member of a 9/11 victim has done so as loudly and clearly as Ms. Burlingame has should say something extraordinary to us all…something much more powerful than the obvious, oft-forgotten notion that there are always two sides to every story.

Burlingame’s essay is ©MMIV The Wall Street Journal.

Plain English supporters around the world have voted “At the end of the day” as the most irritating phrase in the language.

Second place in the vote was shared by “At this moment in time” and the constant use of “like” as if it were a form of punctuation. “With all due respect” came fourth.

The Campaign surveyed its 5000 supporters in more than 70 countries as part of the build-up to its 25th anniversary. The independent pressure group was launched on 26 July 1979.

Spokesman John Lister said over-used phrases were a barrier to communication. “When readers or listeners come across these tired expressions, they start tuning out and completely miss the message - assuming there is one! Using these terms in daily business is about professional as wearing a novelty tie or having a wacky ringtone on your phone.

“George Orwell’s advice from 1946 is still worth following: ‘Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.’”

The following terms also received multiple nominations:

24/7
absolutely
address the issue
around (in place of “about”)
awesome
ballpark figure
basically
basis (”on a weekly basis” in place of “weekly” and so on)
bear with me
between a rock and a hard place
blue sky (thinking)
boggles the mind
bottom line
crack troops
diamond geezer
epicentre (used incorrectly)
glass half full (or half empty)
going forward
I hear what you’re saying..
in terms of…
it’s not rocket science
literally
move the goal-posts
ongoing
prioritize
pushing the envelope
singing from the same hymn sheet
the fact ofthe matter is
thinking outside the box
to be honest/to be honest with you/to be perfectly honest
touch base
up to (in place of “about”)
value-added (in general use)

Note that the phrase “political correctness” isn’t on the list. It’s still at the top of my list.

It would seem that there are thousands of people out there who have absolutely nothing better to do with their time than scouring news coverage for new ammunition against their political opponents.

The most recent example of this is the fallout over President Bush’s comments at the 60th annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association. Narrating a slide show that poked fun at members of his administration, including himself, Bush came to three slides that showed himself looking under furniture in the Oval Office. For the first, his spoken caption was, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere.” For the second, he said,”No, no weapons over there,” and for the third, he joked, “Maybe under here?”

The crowd, a group of journalists who are used to having the President poke fun in this way (as has been done through many administrations), laughed uproariously at the situation. No one, at least at the time, in the “liberal media” everyone is so fond of blasting found anything inappropriate in Bush’s remarks.

The next day, John Kerry wasn’t as amused. “If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he’s even more out of touch than we thought.” Continuing with his blasting of the president, “Unfortunately for the president, this is not a joke.” Kerry also quoted Iraq war veteran Brad Owens, who said: “War is the single most serious event that a president or government can carry its people into. This cheapens the sacrifice that American soldiers and their families are dealing with every single day.”

Like clockwork, it was a matter of a few hours before the story started spreading like wildfire across the Blog world…where liberals denounced the President’s humor.

Let’s be serious for a moment, shall we?

Let us suppose that Kerry was at a political rally showing the same picture and made the same comment. What do you suppose the reaction would be? Would all of the Bush bashers who have jumped on this little story not have roared with laughter and applause?

Let us suppose that the situation were completely reversed: a Democratic president was in the Oval Office now and made the exact same joke. Would those same Kerry supporters not have shrugged off the comments as being taken out of the context of an evening designed to parody the current president? And would conservatives not have bent over backwards to spread the word about their political opponent’s “inappropriate behavior?”

Don’t you get tired of all the political mudslinging? Don’t you get tired of all of the spin? When you read such commentaries, aren’t you aware of the fact that you’re reading propaganda, not fact? Do you get annoyed with the fact that you’re not serving voters or the democratic process as much as acting as a slave to the pundit machinery? When you question those who are so full of criticism about their opponent, but those same people won’t answer your questions, doesn’t it concern you?

Don’t you get tired of it all? I know I do.

Here we go again…another legal fight is under way to remove one more religious reference from the lives of everyday Americans. An atheist is suing to have the words “Under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Michael Newdow is the father of a third-grader who he says should not have to stand up, face the flag, put her hand over her heart and “say that her father is wrong.” Newdow says it is not good enough that schoolchildren cannot be forced to say the pledge because it is unreasonable to expect children to opt out of saying it. In other words, his argument seems to be based on the concept of “peer pressure.”

Bush Administration lawyer Theodore Olson argued that the pledge reflects the nation’s religious heritage. The Supreme Court justices could rule that the words are a “benign and ceremonial part of a traditional, patriotic exercise.”

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor asked Newdow of his opinion of other obvious religious references, such as the “In God We Trust” on our currency and the use of the phrase “In the year of our Lord” on legal documents. She also included the opening call to the Supreme Court: “God save the United States and this honorable court.”

Newdow’s response was simple: “Nobody is making his 9-year-old say ”In God We Trust” or singling her out as an oddball if she refuses.”

That remark is patently absurd!

Perhaps Mr. Newdow was never “picked on” during his entire academic career, but the fact is that children face the possibility of scorn from their fellow classmates countless times during the day. If we’re seriously going to hide behind this as an excuse to remove a reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance, what else must we change in our classroom to prevent someone from facing the ridicule of others? Shall we abolish all grades, so that those who don’t make straight A’s won’t feel like they’re not accomplishing enough? Should we require all schoolchildren to wear uniforms — at parents expense, of course — so that no child will be picked on about their mode of dress? Perhaps we should require that all schoolchildren wear masks as well, so the less-attractive kids won’t feel inadequate when sitting next to kids who look like miniature movie stars-in-the-making.

Ridicule happens in the classroom. It’s not right, it’s not fair, but it is life. When we fight over things like “Under God,” and demand that it be erased, we’re not preventing kids from being picked on. If Mr. Newdow is genuinely concerned about his daughter being the target for poor treatment, I wonder if he has considered how her classmates might treat her knowing the fight her father is waging.

Think about it, people!! We’re losing yet another opportunity for discussion and learning. How sad it is that our schoolchildren aren’t exposed to the notion that not everyone may share the same beliefs about religion and culture. Instead of dealing with the obvious educational experience, in the spirit of protecting one person’s religious freedom to practice no religion at all, we face the possibility of simply sweeping these differences under the rug. In a perfect world, teachers would be able to educate students about diversity issues even with regard to religion. And also in a perfect world, parents would do the same, allowing the children themselves to make up thrie own minds. If our children aren’t allowed exposure of any kind to oher religions, or even to the fact that others exist, how can we expect them to make any informed decision about their own beliefs? If we prevent this, aren’t we forcing our beliefs on them, just as Mr. Newdow is accusing the school system of doing now??

The simple fact being overlooked here is that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is not a religious experience. It is not a prayer. It is an affirmation of one’s loyalty to their country. The words “Under God” are a tribute to the foundation of this country. Our nation was founded in part out of the desire for the very basic freedoms that atheists seem to want everyone else to give up. If the fact that the presence of the phrase “Under God” made the Pledge of Allegiance a show of religion, then your reading of this journal must also be a religious experience since it contains the phrase as well. Anyone else see a logic problem here?

“Imagine you’re the one atheist with 30 Christians,” Newdow told the Court. Ironically, it’s the 30 Christians that are being treated more and more like outcasts these days as all references to the God we believe in are stripped away from daily life. I wonder if the day will come when churches will have to be torn down and rebuilt to look like ordinary buildings without any religious symbols on the outside, so that those who don’t belong to the denomination in question won’t be offended at the site of it.

While I appreciate the fact that the Constitution protects people from being forced to practice a religion they do not believe in, I happen to think that it also protects people from being hindered from the free practice of their religion. Those who insist on defining the Pledge in terms of “practicing religion” can’t have it both ways: as long as they’re not made to “practice religion” with everyone else, how can they logically argue that those who want to do so should be prevented from doing so?

I received a very suspect E-mail from someone who identified himself as a barrister for an American family who had lived in Nigeria for 30 years. The family was killed, the lawyer took control of their estate, sold the belongings as instructed in the will, but hid the money rather than donating it to a Christian charity as the will mandated. It seems the couple, as the poorly written E-mail stated, “had no child until they died.” I assume they had no new children after their deaths, either. Anyway, this lawyer apparently falsified documents and failed to declare the money, hiding it with a Security company that was unaware of what was inside the packages.

But wait! It gets better! This legal eagle found religion, and suddenly decided to follow God’s will (and the family’s) by finding some Christian to receive the $10 Million inheritance. Apparently, I — yes, I!! — happen to have been selected out of all of the Christians in the world. (I’d have actually had better chances at winning that record Powerball jackpot within the past year.)

The E-mail is rife with grammatical errors that indicate no lawyer would have ever written it. And I seriously doubt that any lawyer would freely admit to such illegal activity, born again or not. It’s also worth noting that though the family he represented was American and spent time in Nigeria, the E-mail account he used to send the notification to me comes from an Australian domain. I wonder how many people are dumb enough to believe this preposterous story and actually open the floodgates of personal information!

If the writer of this “apparent” scam happens upon my journal, and your intentions were completely honorable and you do happen to have a $10 Million dollar check waiting for me, then please make it payable to the DJ&T Foundation. That way, you can really live up to your mission of contributing to a worthwhile charity.

Mentions of Nigeria seem to pop up often when it comes to potential scams…so often, in fact, that a website about specific Nigerian scams has been created. You’ll find some interesting ones here.

Meanwhile, if that E-mail seems too good to be true, it probably is!

The Senate has passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and have sent the bill to President Bush, who is expected to sign it into law.

The bill applies only to federal crimes, such as drug trade crimes on federal land. For those cases, the law splits violence against a pregnant woman into two different crimes: violence against the woman herself and violence against her unborn child.

Those who oppose the bill worry that it the legal ramifications of defining an unborn child with the same legal status as the mother will eventually affect abortion law.

I must be missing something here. Imagine that two women — one pregnant and the other infertile — are killed. Would you like to be the one to explain to the family of the infertile woman why her murder wasn’t as bad as the pregnant woman’s? Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for protecting the unborn since they obviously are powerless to protect themselves. But as I see it, once someone commits the first murder, it’s time to stop counting victims and instead punish appropriately. One murder victim is one too many.

Forgive me for being a few days behind the ball on this, but I still think it’s worth a mention.

On Friday, a group of Arab journalists walked out of a press conference being held by Colin Powell to stage a protest to the shooting of five journalists who worked for the Al-Arabiya network.

A reporter and cameraman were killed and three others were wounded when American troops opened fire on their vehicle.

Powell responded with this statement: “I respect the rights and privileges of the journalists who just left to express their feelings. This is something that could never have happened at an earlier time in the history of Iraq and certainly not in the last 30 years.” He went on to say that he regrets any loss of life.

If the journalists had been working for me, after walking out of that press conference, they’d have walked into an unemployment line!

Journalists do not have the right to stage a protest at a press conference. Journalists have the obligation to cover news, not make it. There are right ways and wrong ways to protest, but for the people who dedicate themselves to bringing information to their readers and listeners, to elevate themsleves to the ranks of newsmakers rather than to do their job is unacceptable.

You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I have little sympathy for reporters who are shocked to learn that people who cover the news in war zones are placing themselves in a dangerous situation. As the old saying goes, “They knew the job was dangerous when they took it.” I do not mean disrespect to those killed or wounded: but it seems to me that they knew the risks they were facing and acted with bravery in their search for the truth on behalf of those who turn to them for it. The reporters who walked out seem to think that journalists who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time shouldn’t be at risk. How interesting is it that the journalists who feel that way are from the Arab world, one of the most dangerous places on earth!

While I respect their opinions, and their right to those opinions, they were wrong.

Nielsen Research, the same people who give us television insiders a fit several times a year with TV ratings, have now added the Internet to their area of dominance, and they have released some interesting facts about Internet and the American home. According to their report, almost three-quarters of the nation’s homes with a fixed phone line have internet access…a staggering accomplishment when you consider that the average percentage for cable penetration in US homes is just under 70%.

Oddly enough, women seem to be a little more likely to surf than men: ” Internet penetration for women aged 35 to 54 was 81.7 percent, compared with 80.2 percent for men in the same age group. For the 25 to 34 age group, Internet usage was 77 percent for women and 75.6 percent for men.”

In a separate story, a Gallup Poll reveals that age, not surprisingly, is a factor in Internet usage: only about 17% of people aged 65 or over surf online.

Gallup also revealed that the number one online activity was checking E-mail, and the the number two online activity was searches of news and weather.

I bet you thought online porn had to be in the top two, right?!?

The debate over Gays in the Church recently led to an interesting series of articles in the Richmond Times Dispatch called “Keeping Their Faith.” The articles profiled several Christians who happen to be homosexual. It featured a unique look at the struggles heterosexuals who are in the church have in dealing with homosexuals, and the struggles gay Christians have in dealing with their sexual orientation and religious feelings at the same time.

As you might expect, the series got quite a bit of reviews…and one of them really caught my attention. In a letter to the editor, a local reader wrote:

I should imagine there was once a day when people could think for themselves–when the media’s job was to report the facts, with the exception of the occasional columnist you knew was simply expressing opinion and with whom you could choose to agree or disagree. More and more today, news has become facts with a twist. A little appropriate wording here and there and a writer has sufficiently managed to unnerve any reader who might not be particularly confident enough to stand for something he or she is inclined to believe in.

Journalism has been taken over by mindless media moguls who seek nothing more than to make the world march in lock-step along with their beliefs, thereby making their chosen way of life more than considerably easy to live. Just say something in the form of fact rather than opinion and one can convince many people of many things. Running stories indicting Christians who hold to the view that homosexuality is wrong, or political cartoons mocking a Hollywood star as an egocentric deity for expressing his spiritual beliefs on screen, are just a few examples of manipulation in print.

People who believe that morals are fundamental to existence are treated to a plethora of examples in which they are not only delusional, but bigots and hate-mongers. Unfortunately, many publications have followed in this dark and destructive path by claiming it is a means of reconciliation and renewal. Look around at the world we live in today, violent and amoral as it is, and tell me if it’s working.

Well, the news media’s job is to report the facts. But to run a series of stories on a controversial issue that happens to be told from the point of view of those in the “less popular” or “more controversial” side of the issue does not mean that the news media who runs the story is promoting anything other than the facts. The media is simply reporting a new angle on the same story. There is always more than one side of the story, right, folks? I wonder how the writer would feel if homosexuality was the norm and heterosexuality was considered the “abnormal” way of life: would she mind if a newspaper ran a series on the debate over what is and isn’t normal if it was based on her point of view then?

And the fact that there are those who are so unsure of their point of view that a single news story can sway it one way or the other speaks volumes about the power of hearing the other side of the story. Very few things in our world are completely black or white. If a news item inspires someone to think about their views after hearing the views of others, isn’t this a form of social dialog? Don’t we, when we find ourselves in this situation, temporarily suspend our skepticism, our prejudices and our intolerances so that we can consider alternatives? Whether we ultimately shift our views or decide that our original views were the correct ones, haven’t we bettered our own position in the process?

The problem with today’s news consumers — and it isn’t their fault, really — is that there are so many demands on their time. News customers do not want “just the facts.” They want the facts presented in a way that makes them pay attention long enough to get them. This is what inspires new and different ways to tell the same story. And since when is “humanizing” a story a bad thing? If you hear a news story about your state government approving a rate increase for a local utility, what “facts” do you want to see: the black and white numbers that show the flat percentage rate of increase, or a quick look at the average dollar amount that a typical family might face? Careful, now: if you answer the latter, you’re expecting the media to put the “facts” into some kind of perspective!

I happen to find it sad that there are so many people in this country who are unwilling to listen to other people’s point of view. As a Christian, I find it particularly disturbing that a fellow Christian would encourage the banishment of such alternative views in news coverage. That, to me, isn’t upholding some kind of ethical standard, it’s censorship. When you only tell one side of the story, it isn’t journalism, it’s propaganda. And once you open the door to that, how do you know when your view on some other issue happens to be the view that gets silenced?

Blame the ills of society on the media if you like, dear readers. I’ll not share that view with you. I blame many of society’s ills on society itself. If we were willing to break bread with people who are different, learn more about them and at least try to understand what makes us different from each other, I suspect we wouldn’t have near the cultural war going on these days.

To understand someone else’s beliefs does not by definition require you to accept or agree with them…it merely requires you to open your mind long enough to consider them.

Here’s another gift for Liberals this political year: “Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism coordinator, accuses the Bush administration of failing to recognize the al-Qaida threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and then manipulating America into war with Iraq with dangerous consequences.” (The full story, as long as AOL keeps it online, is here.)

He’s telling his story to 60 Minutes two days before he is scheduled to testify before a federal panel reviewing the attacks. Clarke is quoted as acknowledging that “there’s a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too.” This generous admission of his own compliance hasn’t stopped him from writing a book about the entire situation in which he denounces the current administration for ignoring the threat of terrorism.

“I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism,” Clark said. “He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something.”

The simple fact is that we all ignored the threat of terrorism. The attacks of 9/11 were not the first terrorist acts committed in this country. But how many of us even thought about the threat on September 10, 2001? How many of us walked around thinking about the security measures designed to protect us? How many of us would have given anyone who suggested such dangers the time of day until we saw the threat become real in our living rooms on the following morning?

FDR, one of the greatest Democratic presidents in history was accused after the fact of ignoring a threat against Pearl Harbor because he knew that if it was bombed, it would mobilize the country against the Axis Powers in World War II. America wasn’t really ready to enter the war before the war came to our soil. That’s this country’s nature: we don’t want to send our sons and daughters off to war until we see the threat in a personal way. I’m not saying that we’re right to feel that way…it’s just that many Americans do feel that way.

Clarke also seems to take exception to the fact that President Bush wanted to know whether Iraq was involved. Isn’t that a logical question to ask? Shouldn’t any of America’s enemies be considered prime suspects? And for the son of a former President who went to war against a particular nation, is it so much of a stretch that the son might consider that nation a particularly obvious threat? The question, at least to me, doesn’t seem so outrageous.

And once again, in a story that belongs in the “Convenient Timing” file, a top advisor comes out with a “tell-all” book about what’s wrong in Washington two-and-a-half years after the fact leading up to a Presidential election! Where were these charges a year ago? Where were these charges two years ago? Why didn’t we hear this story a month after the attack? I tend to automatically question any stories that seem so perfectly timed…but maybe that’s just me.

Meet Rusty, an unfortunate little guy who is a featured pet at a local animal shelter. I call him unfortunate not because he is missing a leg, a fact that is easy to miss at first (most of us look at the face first rather than counting feet); but because he does not have a home to call his own.

Rusty is a gentle dog, sweet, loving and laid back. He likes to be petted, and will even get up and move closer if he thinks he might get an extra few seconds of love for the effort. (The shelter, incidentally, isn’t sure about what happened to him: it seems that Rusty and another dog were thrown over a fence into the shelter’s property and found the next morning…the amputation had already been done and the wound healed…so the speculation is that he might have been hit by a car when young.)

Watching him interact with two little girls who fell in love with him on the spot, I marvelled at how this dog doesn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that he’s missing a leg. He hops around a bit because of the missing leg, but he doesn’t pout over it. Unlike many people facing some kind of trauma in their lives, Rusty doesn’t wallow in self-pity. Rusty’s just a dog, of course, but when it comes to common sense and the ability to see past life’s little unfairnesses and worry about the really important things, he’s doing better than many of his human counterparts.

I can’t count the number of times in the past few days of reading other people’s journals that I’ve come across snide comments from liberals that include references to President Bush and the “stolen” election of 2000!

Are we still harping on this?!?

Come on, people!! Get over it!! I appreciate the fact that those who are convinced that their man should have won would have been disappointed, frustrated, even angry about it. But this was FOUR YEARS AGO!!

To sit back and spend your time living in the past or speculating on what “might have been” solves no problem…it’s not productive…and it’s not helpful in your efforts to turn people to the Democratic candidate because it only sounds like you’re spouting sour grapes.

Focus on what’s important: the next election!! No matter who you support, the 2000 vote is history!!

It’s a little ironic that the Internet, the ultimate achievement of the information age, which has caused old-fashioned printed Encyclopedias and Dictionaries to become almost obsolete, is simultaneously allowing us to ignore all the great amounts of information just a few clicks away in order to become so lazy with language that you have to spend time deciphering an online conversation.

There are plenty of examples of stupid abbreviations that take as long for the reader to figure out as it would take for the writer to spell out. How many of you know what WAEF stands for? No, I’m not referring to some broadcast station, though considering my profession, it would be a good guess!

“WAEF” stands for “When all else fails.” Of the four words, when spelled out, the longest is just five letters. Is that too much to ask for a writer to make sure that he’s understood??

Here are a few other of the abbreviations that I’m ready to see retired in favor of ENGLISH:

POTS: Pounding on table, shreiking. (For the same number of letters you could just say, “Damn”)
PJTER: Computer. (Can anyone explain that one to me?)
GMTA: Great minds think alike. (Great minds are connected to hands capable of typing.)
ROTFLMAO: Rolling on the floor laughing my a** off. (They won’t type out a phrase, but they’ll spend twenty minutes typing out this abbreviation?)

The most annoying of them is PROLLY, which, as I’m sure you know, stands for “PROBABLY.” I don’t know where PROLLY came from, but I’m ready to ship it back!

I’m in my 30’s, but not too young to distinctly remember Prayer in school. We’d start each morning with the Pledge of Allegiance, and in the middle of the day, before marching single-file to the cafeteria, we’d say a quick prayer as we washed our hands with dampened paper towels handed out by whichever student was assigned to towel duty that day.

I also distinctly remember that one of the students, a Jehovah’s Witness, didn’t participate in either event. She sat silently and patiently, and waited while we did this routine every day. No one made fun of her. She once told me that she never felt bad about not taking part because that was simply her beliefs being exercised. Only on the second or third day of school did anyone say anything about her lack of participation, and at that point, one of our teachers politely explained that her beliefs didn’t allow her to participate. That was good enough for us: we never said another thing about it.

At some point, it was decided for Christians that they were wrong for doing what they’d grown up doing all these years. Suddenly, the rights of those who didn’t want to participate took priority over the rights of those who did. This change occurred, as it has been explained to me, because the non-religious and those of different religions have their rights violated to be subjected to the practice of a different religion. This strikes me as strange.

The Bible tells us that it’s better to retreat to a closet and pray in private than to pray in a public form just to be seen praying in public. In other words, if your prayer isn’t sincere, you’re being a hypocrite and God doesn’t hear your prayer. If you read between the lines here, it means that prayer is only a valid religious tool when it is done in a sincere manner by the individual. So those kids who were more focused on scoping out the best spot on the playground and not concentrating on the words weren’t really praying because they weren’t focusing their attention on God. The non-religious in the room who didn’t believe anyway weren’t praying, either. Those of a different religion likewise can’t have been participating in the prayer if the words weren’t believed.

So if this is true, where does this put us? Well, it can be argued that being present in a room in which a prayer is occuring doesn’t automatically mean that you’re praying or being even remotely religious. Likewise, attending a funeral or wedding that occurs inside a church of a different faith doesn’t suddenly make you a convert.

I once attended a funeral of a Jewish woman. At the door, ushers handed out yarmulkes, those black skullcaps worn in Synagouge. Embarassingly unfamiliar with Jewish custom, I whispered that I belonged to a different faith and asked if it was all right to wear the cap. Why did I bother to ask? Because I didn’t want to offend people of that religion that was different from mine. The usher explained that it was simply a show of respect to the family’s church. Guess what? I wore it without hesitation.

When I left the funeral, I was no more Jewish than I had been when I arrived. I wore the yarmulke out of respect to the other religion. I didn’t threaten to sue anyone because they were infringing on my right to practice a non-Jewish religion. The thought never even occurred to me!

Some athiests tend to be fairly vocal about having to be subjected to someone else’s religious practices. But if being present while others pray doesn’t make the athiest religous, why is this a problem?

If prayer has been removed from the classroom and from school-supported events in an effort to be fair to non-Christians, who aren’t being influenced by the prayer anyway, what’s next? Shall we tear down churches so that non-Christians don’t have to be subjected to that form of public reminder? Where does it stop?

I find it ironic that we seem to want to consider athiests a religious group when it comes to defining what’s fair and what isn’t. Athiests don’t believe in God, and think religion is a waste of time. How can non-religion be a religion? And how can an athiest truly be offended when others choose to practice their own faith? If athiests “know” that there is no God, watching others pray should be a source of amusement, not a source of offense.

It’s those who refuse to acknowledge there is a God who are “winning” here because they’re the only ones who aren’t having to make an adjustment here. Those of us who were taught from our earliest years that prayer, respect and reverence were good things are now suddenly being told that everything we learned all those years should be forgotten. Anyone else see a problem with this?

Is a “moment of silence” really the answer? It gives those of us who don’t mind praying the opportunity to do so. But if prayer is only possible when someone willingly participates, then it seems to me that we are more likely forcing the non-religious among us to participate in something psuedo-religious, since everyone has to be silent.

Obviously, it comes down to a matter of how you personally define such things. But where do we draw the line between appeasing non-Christians who apparently don’t want to be reminded that Christianity even exists, and appeasing Christians who simply want to be able to practice their religion the way they’ve been brought up to do so?

Who wins? Who loses? And where does the compromise have to go to serve everyone?