Bring Back the Funnies!

No wonder young people don't want to read the newspaper. Projo's comic section has been reduced in size so much that it's almost impossible to read. If it got even one degree smaller, I couldn't see the indivdual strips. I can barely read them now without a lot of concentration.

It's not just the words- it's the pics! They need to be large & in color. Otherwise, what's the point?

When did I begin to read the newspapers? As a kid the "funnies" were part of every newspaper everyday. Now it's once/wk. No wonder young people aren't interested in the paper. The NDN recently has run a decent comic section. More! Is Projo's daily?

It's ironic that newspapers keep mourning their demise & blame everyone & everything but themselves. Many have turned into long ads with an occassional news feature. They've gutted themselves and then speculate as to outside causes. It's much the same with radio & television. Most television & radio stations have turned into ads interspersed with a few features.

ARRRGGGHHHH! We want funnies!

Newspapers on the Decline

Sometimes I just want to scream. Recently Hendrik Hertzberg, a former Jimmy Carter speechwriter & "New Yorker" editor speaking in R.I. commented on how the newspaper industry is falling apart with increasing rapidity. N4N blogger Ian Dennis "asked Hertzberg, how will this affect small-d democracy?

"He responded by saying, 'Bloggers are essentially parasites on the newspaper industry.' While newspaper readership remains high through print and Web sites, Hertzberg noted how the movement of readers to the Internet has undermined the economic model of newspapers (since Web-based advertising is far less profitable)."

"'I suppose something will take its place,' Hertzberg said of newspapers, 'but I don't what it is yet.'"


Well, gee. How long have the Internet & bloggers been around? And we're to blame for the lack of readership & ad revenues? And we don't break news? Au contraire. Newspapers along with legislative changes allowing for big businesses to own multiple media outlets, along with the never-ending search for merges & higher profits along with lousy investments are primarily to blame for their decline. And I won't even begin on the lack of leisure time.

As big corporate media swallowed up radio & t.v. stations, networks, newspapers, & magazines poor business decisions were made. First to go were news departments with staff reporters & researchers. Uhhh, like that's kind of why we used them. Investigational journalism (aka, muckrackers of the "fourth estate") were gone with the wind. Reporters were often straight out of school to keep costs down. Depth, knowledge, and experience were given short-shrift.


Instead we've been subjected to press notices, forums, & entertainment often paraded as "news." Feel-good articles along with high-profile titillation, features, and notices occupy much of what used to be reserved for news. Opinion has given way to all-too few national commenters and the same-old, same-old. Staying "in-the-middle" pretends to be objective & non-partisan but all too often is just the opposite and confusing. Truth isn't always somewhere in the middle.


I have a love-hate relationship with our local paper-of-record- "The Newport Daily News," now that Projo has basically given up on our area. One example is a recent editorial bemoaning the " proposal "that would reduce the state sales tax from 7 percent to 5 percent....This is not genuine tax relief or reform. Instead of playing shell games with our hard-earned money, the state would be better served by taking a cue from the businesses in Rhode Island that are trying to survive by refashioning themselves to be more efficient, more innovative, leaner-and-meaner operations. It is said that in every crisis, there is opportunity. We just hope Rhode Island doesn’t blow this one."


Ahhh, a trifle loose with the facts here. Our state sales tax while it is high at 7% is far more generous in its exemptions than any other state- seventy-nine to be exact. Excluded are clothing & shoes, boats, art, & motion picture purchases, aircraft, and- (ta-dah) newspapers. These are supposed to generate economic benefits to the state and they may well do that, but who knows? Now, I don't like sales' tax either (too regressive). But while the NDN has also bemoaned various cuts made by the lege & guv, it doesn't actually share with us any ideas for increasing revenues.


We can solve our current financial crisis by becoming "leaner and meaner." Yeah, there's the ticket. Wow, whoever would have thought of that idea? Ummm, let's see... how about 6 yrs. ago when Gov. Carcieri promised us "The Big Audit" which would "...go expense by expense through the budget until he [Carcieri] has uncovered every penny of waste and unnecessary expense. He will prepare accurate future estimates for these expenses and programs, so that a true multi year cost picture can be generated. Nobody will leave until as much waste as possible has been squeezed out of each budget."


I guess that's why the newspaper endorsed him for a second term- he just hadn't finished with all that squeezing yet. Thanks for this thoughtful, provocative solution. Government is the problem after all. Hello, haven't you actually been reading anything? Ah, simplistic answers to complex problems. Sometimes bad news is just that- bad news and the cheerful opportunity blah-blah is just so much pablum. I may not be the sharpest pencil in the box, but solving a growing $300 mil deficit with a "straighten up & fly right" solution seems just a bit over-simplified to me.

Ah, and I just can't resist. How about those political endorsements that you make every two years? How are all those working out for you (including Carcieri)? Do you ever wonder why? "...Most members of our editorial board (never mind our reporting staff) couldn’t tell you with 100 percent accuracy who we endorsed in the last election [probably because they would have to pay to access your reports]. While we are totally immersed in the process in the weeks leading up to the election, once it happens, we move on. We’re too busy on a day-to-day basis to be coordinating story placement accordingly. And believe me, we’ve rued the day we made some endorsements. Looking back, we may not always be right, but just like voters, we make the best decisions we can at the time." (NDN )


You know, if I kept making the same mistakes andnever reviewed why, I might have a tad trouble keeping a job, never mind just plain living. Perhaps the NDN is actually part of the problem? If so, then trying to figure out "why" & changing could be a positive action. You endorsed most of the Middletown Council & less than two weeks later hinted at "recall." Gee, you've already forgotten who you endorsed and why? That doesn't actually inspire much confidence on the readers' part. The same thing when you bemoan the cost of government but offer the same old, same old tired phrases as solutions. Is it surprising then that alternative news sources are turned to? And yes, I have noticed recently that Projo & NDN actually use them now AND give credit. Guess we're not always "parasites" after all. Change is hard.

Perhaps it's time to re-think newspapers & have them take the form of non-profits much like public television. Maybe, just maybe, newspapers are something that we have to support to keep our democracy going. A thought... You see, unlike Pres. Bush, I know that an informed electorate requires a free press- whatever form that may take.

Projo Local Coverage

Dead? It seems like it. Middletown coverage was from Projo's Meaghan Wims who is now adios. Meaghan was an experienced reporter with knowledge of the local scene. Shows how much that is worth. With Projo's cutbacks, the reasons that you actually read it (Local News) seem to be gone.

Bad for all of us. Perhaps good for the local publications.

And yet their prices are up. Go figure.

What's wrong with speaking Spanish?

A few days ago, the Providence Journal ran a story about David C. Richardson, the owner of Rhode Island Refrigeration in Providence, who demanded that a couple of his customers show him their Social Security cards to prove they were in the country legally after he heard them talking to each other in Spanish. Needless to say, this is one of the things that's going to happen when you start demagogueing some issue, like claiming that immigrants are a bunch of diseased criminals: people like Richardson feel justified when they discriminate against immigrants.

I'm aware that there are some people who just get really really really freaked out when they hear strangers conversing in a foreign language. It seems to be a visceral reaction that's beyond their conscious control. I have three words of advice for these people: get over it. You do not have an inalienable right to understand everything that's said around you.

I frankly don't understand why somebody would have a problem with hearing other people speaking a foreign language. I don't mind it at all. In fact, I'd like to have it happen more often. I'd love to have the people around me to switch to some other language when they start talking about their gall bladders or their latest diet. Even the most banal conversations (and most conversations are dreadfully dull) sound magical when they're conducted in some language you don't understand.

So, if you're out shopping or dining with someone and both of you are fluent in some language other than English, I encourage you to speak that language with them. It'll add to the ambience of your location, and it'll annoy people like David C. Richardson.

Projo Editorializes on Romney's Speech

Today's editorial in the Providence Journal reacts to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's nationally televised and widely-hyped speech on religion, "Faith in America".

Mitt Romney, the Projo notes, is facing a strong challenge in Iowa from Mike Huckabee for one overriding reason: Evangelical Protestants, who make up a large percentage of Republican primary voters, are flocking to the latter. Mr. Huckabee is one of them, while Mr. Romney adheres to the Mormon faith, which some view as a heretical cult.

The Projo's editorials are fatally addicted to weasel words (their editorial in support of torture was chock-full of them), and we hit the first one early on: "some" view the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as a heretical cult. Who are these "some"? As blogger and evangelical Christian Fred Clark notes on his blog Slacktivist, "some" is actually every other sect of Christianity.

Hoping to shore up his support with religious conservatives, the Projo continues, Mr. Romney delivered an intriguing speech last Thursday, reigniting the age-old discussion about the link between faith and politics in America. Many drew a comparison with John F. Kennedy’s 1960 address to Protestant ministers, in which he argued that his Roman Catholic faith posed no hindrance to his service as president.

Here we run into weasel word number two: "many" drew a comparison to JFK's speech. Who are these "many"? Basically, Romney's supporters, along with journalists who are too lazy to think for themselves and so mindlessly echo Romney's supporters. To get an idea of where this editorial is coming from, one need only note its description of Romney's speech as "intriguing".

Clark has a different take on Romney's speech: "The speech includes some decent stretches, but it was not, primarily, a courageous plea for religious tolerance and mutual respect. It was, instead, primarily an obsequious bit of sucking up by an outsider hoping to curry favor with the in crowd by parroting their condemnation of other outsiders."

The Projo writes: Perhaps because he needs the votes of religious conservatives, Mr. Romney stressed the links between freedom, tolerance and faith in God as the very stuff of America.

Clark put it this way: "Romney repeatedly says in his speech that his topic is religious liberty and his own faith. Given that, it's not surprising that he would argue that "freedom" and "religion" are compatible or complementary. But he goes beyond that, arguing that each requires the other -- that religion is necessary for freedom and that freedom is necessary for religion." Both of these assertions, Clark points out, are wrong. Religion does not require freedom. In fact, religion can thrive in the complete absence of freedom, as the early history of Christianity itself demonstrates. Even worse is the other half of Romney's much-noted soundbite, the assertion that freedom requires religion.

"If freedom requires religion," says Clark, "then the a-religious and irreligious, the non-religious and un-religious are the enemies of freedom. Romney believes, in other words, that atheism is incompatible with freedom. Whatever it is he means by 'religious liberty,' he does not believe it can safely be applied to atheists . . . . Whatever else that claim means, it seems to imply that freedom requires the right kind of religion. Having already established, in the case of atheists, that individuals are neither competent nor entitled to decide for themselves what they should or should not believe, it thus falls to the government to make this decision. 'Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom' implies that the government must protect religion's right to freedom by determining which believers have the right kind of religion (the kind that freedom requires) and which believers have the wrong kind of religion (the kind that threatens freedom by exercising it)."

There’s something to that, says the Projo.

No, there isn't. See above.

The Declaration of Independence declares that the “Creator” endows each person with the rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness — a way of saying that these are rights no person or government can legitimately take away.

The Declaration also refers to "Nature's God", which was, as conservative evolutionist Larry Arnhart notes, a concept of "God as First Cause" which was "most clearly manifested in the lawful order of nature." In other words, the Creator mentioned in the Declaration was an abstract noun denoting a universe governed by a set of understandable laws. This is not Mitt Romney's God. The Projo is also very careful to avoid pointing out that the Constitution, the fundamental basis of our country's government, doesn't mention God at all.

John Adams argued that religious faith shapes moral character, and is essential in people who govern themselves.

John Adams also observed, "Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been upon the point of breaking out, 'This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!'"

George Washington constantly referred to the role of a caring God in the creation of America, as when he resigned his military power after the Revolution: “I consider it an indispensable duty to close . . . by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God and those who have the superintendence of them, to his holy keeping.”

And as Brooke Allen pointed out, "It is interesting to note that the Father of our Country spoke no words of a religious nature on his deathbed, although fully aware that he was dying, and did not ask for a man of God to be present; his last act was to take his own pulse, the consummate gesture of a creature of the age of scientific rationalism."

Of course, a number of the Founders seemed to be Deists and may not have believed in the divinity of Jesus.

Bang! Weasel word number three: "seemed". There is no "seemed" about it. As Brooke goes to considerable pains to point out, a number of the Founders, such as Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, were definitely deists, and others such as John Adams, James Madison, and, yes, George Washington, leaned toward deism.

The Bill of Rights, which they appended to the Consitution, thankfully, laid out that Congress may not create a state religion, or hinder Americans from practicing the religion of their choice (or none at all). This system has worked brilliantly to protect religious pluralism here and tamp down religious hatreds.

Until relatively recently, few understood the separation of church and state to mean that all references to God must be banished from the public square. Indeed, such a government-enforced ban — even if it were practicable in a country with so many religious believers — would itself reflect intolerance. This is some of what Mr. Romney was saying.

No, this is not "some of what Mr. Romney was saying". As noted above, Mr. Romney was saying that "freedom requires religion", that unless you are a member of the right religion, you aren't entitled to freedom.

Mr. Romney seemed wrongheaded in arguing no one should ask him about his faith. Certainly, questions about a candidate’s religion, and how that has shaped his or her thinking, are reasonable.

And here we have another weaselly "seemed". And, ironically, Romney is right when he argues that no one should ask him about his faith, and the Projo is wrong when it says that it's reasonable to ask questions about a candidate's religion. The only relevant question about a candidate's religion is whether he believes that the government should be used to impose that religion on other people. And Romney blew that question by answering "yes".

Still, prejudice against people because of their private religious beliefs — in politics or anywhere else — is wrong. Fortunately, Americans increasingly seem to understand that.

Except for the fundamentalist Christians who were the actual targets of Romney's speech. They are perfectly happy to discriminate against people because of their private religious beliefs, especially if their private religious belief is that they don't have any. And Romney, in his speech, was assuring them that he agreed with them.