Prison: The Texas Education Solution?

In Texas, we have a funny way of looking at children who can't read on grade level at the end of third grade.

We decide they're going to jail.

Crazy, you say? I completely agree. But that doesn't make it any less true.

The story has gone viral now, but in case you've missed it, Texas and California are among the states who begin planning the need for more prison cells based on the number of third graders - specifically, third grade boys of color - who are unable to read on grade level at the end of third grade.

You see, statistics show that children who fall into that category - boys of color who can't read on grade level - are more than likely going to wind up in prison.

It's a startling realization; impressive, even. What is NOT IN THE LEAST BIT impressive is the reaction to the statistic. We identify a very specific group of children who are on a path to destruction that will damage society at least as much as  it will the children themselves, and our collective response is to start building new prisons?

Sounds expensive.

It sounds a heck of a lot more expensive than just spending extra time teaching third graders to read!

Setting aside for the moment that many prisons are private corporations, and thus make large donations to public officials who also make decisions about educational programming, let's take a rational look at what should be the obvious solution to this problem.

The estimated cost of housing a prisoner in Texas is roughly $15,000 a year, and that's not couting the cost of building the prison, merely the cost of feeding and clothing a prisoner for a year. That's money taxpayers are shelling out to provide room and board to someone who, 85% of the time, is functionally illiterate.

How many teachers could be hired with that money, considering the average public school teacher in Texas has something like 150 students under their care per semester?

Some simple math reveals that if we gave each reading teacher the money that would otherwise be spent making students future wards of the state, we could pay them something in the neighborhood of $150,000 a year if they only taught 10 students.

How many great teachers would return to the profession for that kind of money?

I know more than a few.

It would be more than a cost saving, of course, because if the program results in preventing crimes before they are committed there is a tremendous savings to society in the forms of crimes that aren't committed.

The other factor is that teaching third graders to read can be REALLY fun! I know. I've done it. Heck, I've taught ninth and tenth graders to read, and from the moment they decode their first word they tend to get hooked. Granted, I didn't teach this ridiculous word recognition method that so many schools use today. I used the good, old fashioned method of teaching sounds first and words second. There's nothing like a Dr. Seuss book to teach words like "cat," "hat," and "mat," and once you have kids excited about The Cat In The Hat the possibilities are endless.

So sign me up. Let's take that $15,000 a year we're spending to house illiterate criminals and put it to work preventing them from become criminals in the first place.

It makes a lot more sense than giving up kids after third grade, passing them through the education system so Rick Perry and his ilk can take campaign donations from private prisons and then use taxpayer money to run them.

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Pro-Life, Or Pro-Quality-Of-Life?

I consider myself to be a pro-life person.

By that I mean I am basically against war, especially since they are usually fought over natural resources instead of human rights violations, which would make more sense. I tend to be a live-and-let-live type of person, understanding that the things that divide most people - religion, power, money - are all somewhat arbitrary, and only hold the value we decide to bestow upon them anyway. Why fight over them?

At the end of the day, we all want basically the same things. Christians, Muslims, Jews, agnostics . . .and everyone in between . . .we all want a roof over our heads, we want sufficient food to sustain us and our families, and we want a certain amount of freedom to live as we please, provided doing so doesn't impinge upon the rights of others to do so, as well.

That, in a nutshell, is what pro-life means to me.

There is, of course, another meaning . . .a political meaning. Most of the time, when you start talking about the concept of being "pro-life," someone automatically assumes you're taking a stand on the abortion issue.

First of all, let me say I don't believe anyone is actually excited about abortion, even those who make their living by administering them. It's viewed as a necessary evil by most mainstream Americans, those who understand that there will always be a case in which the vast majority of people agree that an abortion is appropriate. If the mother's life is in danger, if a rape results in pregnancy . . .there are circumstances in which abortion is the only humane act. My only feeling on the issue is that abortions should be safe, legal, and rare. The decision about having one should be up to the mother, first and foremost, with input from parents, guardians, friends, clergy and doctors also taken into account.

The government should butt out.

And it does.

The only time government gets overtly involved in the abortion issue is during an election year, when they try to make political hay by pandering to the 25% of America that constitutes the "religious right." There is a great deal of money to be made by saying you're going to outlaw abortion, so they say it and they rake it in.

What is idiotic to me is that the same political party is quick to espouse the government making medical decisions for women is also the party of small government - the Republican Party. They are also the party working hardest to make life as miserable as possible for the child in question once it is born.

To me, being concerned about the life of a child goes much further than fretting over whether or not the child will be born. It extends to the health care that child should receive, the education it is able to pursue, the chances of it getting a good job, and even the fitness of the environment it will grow up in. To be pro-life, in my estimation, also means being for a high standard of affordable public health care, a high standard of public education, a strong work force in which a living wage is easily attainable, and clean air and water are readily available.

For some reason, however, there is a stunning disconnect between these concepts in the world of politics.

While Republicans are clambering for money from the mega-churches and right-wing political action committees, they are also taking money from industry that wants to offshore every job that isn't minimum wage, privatize social security and education, and completely erase the Environmental Protection Agency from existence. They want those things so desperately that they will filibuster, block, and otherwise strip down any attempts made by the opposing party to bolster those essential aspects of life.

If you want to find people fighting for a child's lifestyle and not just it's life, you have to turn to the left side of the political spectrum. It's the Democratic Party that constantly (and meekly) fights for the quality of life of our children. They fight for health care, education, jobs, clean air and water, all the while being called "baby killers" by the extremists who seem to stop caring about a baby once it's born.

Can we really afford to stop caring about the life of a child past conception? Is that really the Christian/Muslim/Jewish/HUMAN way?

Of course not.

Next time you feel the need to vote based on a "pro-life" notion, make sure you're thinking beyond birth. Forcing a child to be born, only to rob it of any and all quality of life is surely more inhumane and certainly causes more suffering than a simple (early term, please) abortion. As you stand to applaud a candidate or politician who claims to be pro-life, make sure you stop long enough to ask where he or she stands on health care, education and the environment.

To be concerned with one and not the other is hardly being pro-life.

Now that I think about it, perhaps it's time for a new political label. Instead of saying we're pro-choice, perhaps Democrats should say we're "pro-quality-of-life."

You see, to me, the issue of what's best for a child extends well beyond whether or not they are born. In fact, the birth issue should be the least of our concerns . . .unless, of course, we know the pregnant party personally and are asked for our advice.

Want to protest abortion. Great! Line up at your neighborhood abortion clinic and volunteer to adopt a baby. If you're not willing to take that step, stop wasting your time and money and focus on what we can truly change: the plight of children who are born into an ever more self-serving and self-destructive society.

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Entitlement Generation Killing America?

I vividly remember the first time I heard a college professor explain the facts of life to me. No, I'm not talking about the bird and the bees; rather the facts of life for a college student. Gone were the days of high school, where teachers could be talked into accepting late papers and the expected grade was an "A." Welcome to the playoffs of academia, where a "C" is the standard.

That was great for me, as I'm the kind of person who won't accept the standard. I earned an A in that class, and continued to pile up the A's as I made my way through college. But it was great for me to get that initial reality check and personal challenge. It made me push myself to work harder than I had in high school, where I could sleep myself to an A in any subject outside of math.

Thinking back, however, I can honestly say that I never felt entitled to an A. I earned A's because my parents closely monitored my grades and set A's as the only acceptable outcome, except in math, where I was never interested enough to be great. I knew that I had to work for me grades, and I did so.

Fast-forward some twenty years and the landscape has changed significantly. No Child Left Behind has created a Christmas-like atmosphere in the grade school ranks. Far too often grades have become gifts given at the end of each grading period, rather than a true indication of how much a student has learned and how hard they worked to learn it.

What has changed since I was in grade school to create this atmosphere of gifting, rather than grading? Let's look at a few indicators:

1) A group that has surveyed high school seniors for the past 50 years or so reported that in response to the question (paraphrasing)..."Do you see yourself as unique, special and important?"....only 12% of graduating respondents in the
1950's said YES. In 2005-06,  80% of the respondents answered in the affirmative.

2)  The NY Times recently had an article that pointed out that the public's belief in "personal willpower" has declined markedly over the last several decades. Americans, apparently, are more inclined to conclude (for instance)..."No sense studying harder...I'm just not a good student" rather than spend the necessary time and effort to improve.

3) Americans some 40 or 50 years ago tended to save 10-15% of their income. Currently, Americans spend about 115% of their income and put the overage on their credit card, gladly paying absurd interest rates to avoid having practice discipline or patience.

On the surface these factors may seem unrelated, but I believe there is actually a strong correlation.

As parents we absolutely want our kids to feel unique, special and important. No question about that. My daughter is just six months old, yet I tell her dozens of times a day how special I think she is. When it comes to academics, however, the specialness has to be based upon achievement, not existence. Just showing up for class isn't the basis for a grade. Showing up is a basic requirement, not something to be rewarded.

Combine the No Child Left Behind approach to education, where failure really isn't an option because grades are gift-wrapped, and combine that with a generation that feels they are special just because they exist. It's easy to see how students might start to feel like they can walk on water before they get to college. After all, they've been labeled special or unique without having to work for the label and then handed a grade report that backs up the belief.

Now we can move into our second point of interest. These "special" kids with the "amazing" grades have had no reason to develop a strong work ethic, or fight to overcome weaknesses in pursuit of a grade or significant personal goal. Success is almost a given, often with little or no work.

It's easy to see, then, why these specially-conditioned students would walk out of the hallowed halls of education and expect everything to come easily. There are certainly enough unscrupulous credit card companies who are happy to keep the illusion alive. Just keep on swiping that card and don't worry about the limit . . .they'll increase it for just a few more points of interest.

Not only is it not a surprise that we've created an entire culture of self-important credit junkies, it's actually difficult to see how that wouldn't be the inevitable outcome.

This is not to say, of course, that ALL students are simply looking for a handout, just as we can't say that ALL Americans are in debt up to their ears. There are always the exceptions, those who get the most out of their education experiences and then parlay that into successful careers and lives. It's just that the entitlement group is growing at a much faster rate, and they eventually begin to drag down society as a whole.

The Entitlement set is far more likely to collect unemployment, for example, or to default on a loan that then drives up rates for everyone. They declare bankduptcy, driving up the overall cost of living for everyone. They drive without insurance, they qualify for government programs that provide them with food, healthy care and other basic necessities that end up coming out of the pockets of the successful and the self-determined.

In other words, they sabotage the American economy, and have everything to do with why said economy is on life support.

The solution is incredibly simply, but also highly unlikely to be implemented. The answer is to return to an educational system that rewards true effort, that sets high expectations and only recognizes excellence. Self-worth must again be derived from actual accomplishments, not gift-wrapped gimmes. But in order for these standards to be reset, the very people the low standards benefit must admit there is a problem and insist on solutions.

If they could do that, we wouldn't have the problem in the first place.

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The Republicans' Best and Brightest??

Is this really all the modern Republican Party has to offer?

Ok, full disclosure: I am, essentially a Democrat. It's hard to really take ownership of  a political party these days, as I am a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. I don't agree with spending money just because we own the printing presses, but I also don't think government should be involved in our personal lives. Since there is not a fiscally responsible party in the offing, I will stand on the side of those who stand up for the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

All of that said, I think a healthy debate is a good thing, and I would love to see a strong visionary leader emerge from the right to challenge President Obama next year. Heck, I would love to see a strong visionary leader from the LEFT rise to the forefront and remind the President of the things he stood for when he was running for President. He has been too willing to cave on core principles and too willing to sell out the working class for his wealthy corporate donors. So while I will undoubtedly vote for Obama once again, I would still like to see something of a heated debate taking place about the looming economic collapse that's facing our country.

Apparently, I'm not going to get that. The Republicans don't seem to be up to the task.

Let's briefly review the list of presidential nominees set forth by the GOP:

Donald Trump - I don't believe that Trump was ever truly running for President. His reality show was being threatened with cancellation, and he did his pseudo-campaign simply as a way to drive up interest in that show. His only real platform was the long-dead and moronic Obama birth certificate issue. Despite the fact that President Obama's birth certificate has been available online for months, the President actually took a few minutes to present it live on TV.  Then, saying he had more important things to do, the President ordered the attack that killed Osama bin Laden. That was the end of Trump. I don't know if he saved his show or not. I couldn't care less.

Michele Bachmann - After the President trumped Trump, Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann had her moment in the sun. She probably excited the voters who cast their ballots based on appearance, as she is not an unattractive woman, but the more she talked the more she marginalized herself. Whether it was trying to celebrate Elvis' birthday on the anniversary of his death or claiming that Paul Revere rode through New Hampshire, Bachmann showed herself to be a joke of a candidate, and that was before she said the HPV vaccine caused mental retardation . . .based on the word of some random person who approached her after a campaign speech. Oh, and by the way, her husband can "cure the gay." So long, Ms. Bachmann.

Newt Gingrich - In the realm of political commentary Newt Gingrich is the gift that keeps on giving. His campaign staff collectively resigned months ago because they felt he was more interested in selling his many books and DVDs than actually mounting a serious presidential campaign, and he has a long history of running for president as a means to raise money . . .apparently to pay off his Tiffany's charge account. Gingrich has rebounded of late, due largely to the lack of voter confidence in any of the other GOP candidates, but it won't last long. His infomercial campaign approach is bad enough, but due to his many personal indiscretions he has absolutely no chance of getting the conservative Christian vote . . .and no Republican can win without that vote.

Rick Perry - Texas governor (and I use that term loosely) Rick Perry emerged on the scene as the Great White Hope of the GOP. Here, finally, was the guy who looked presidential and could bring Obama to his knees. And that image lasted for almost an entire news cycle. A bizarre prayer rally seemed out of place, but his even more bizarre speeches on the campaign trail left many wondering if the man was even sane. We've been wondering that in Texas for years. All he's done for Texas, aside from nearly making us our own country by threatening to secede from the Union, he's spent his time in office gutting public education, funneling state revenue to his already-wealthy corporate donors, and de-fund things like the forest service, police and fire departments and infrastructure. Thankfully, his 15 minutes was over in 10.

Herman Cain - MSNBC's Rachel Maddow calls Herman Cain the "art project" candidate, suggesting he is not a serious candidate, but rather an elaborate prank on Republican voters. Frankly, it's hard to argue that. We're talking about a man who took his tax policy from a video game (Sim City's 999), quotes the Pokemon Movie theme song in a debate, and seems to have sexually harassed every woman he's come into contact with. He also doesn't have a campaign infrastructure, so clearly being President is not his agenda. Still, he was the frontrunner for a little more than a week.

Through it all the man who is destined to be the Republican nominee watches and waits. Mitt Romney may not be a Christian, he may flip-flop all over the place on every major issue, and he may not have much of a personality, but he's is not running an infomercial campaign, he has not been accused of sexual assault, he knows the difference between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and he actually tows the party line on tax policy: take from the poor and give to the rich. That will be more than enough when it comes time for the GOP to select the next man to lose to Obama.

It's interesting to see just how hard the Republicans are working to gain power. Mitch McConnell has said repeatedly that his most important job is to make Obama a one-term president. His colleagues in Congress have taken the filibuster out a whole new door, using it a blistering record number of times since Obama took office. They gained control of the House of Representatives on a platform of creating jobs, but have done nothing but block every job creating bill to be proposed since, while spending the majority of their time trying to draft legislation that prevents poor people from voting and rolls women's rights back a half century.

If you can't beat them, gerrymander them, right Mitch?

Here's a better idea. Why don't you try adopting policies that the American people will go for without using Fox News and Rush Limbaugh to confuse the issues? Why not find your own visionary leader with a clear message and direction for America that doesn't stink of corruption and corporate welfare?

Every political leader needs a challenger, including President Obama. Unfortunately, it seems the GOP is simply not up to the task.

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A Mid-September Nightmare

"The thousand injuries of Fortunado I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge." - Montresor - "The Cask Of Amontillado" - Edgar Allan Poe

I didn't have any idea what time it was, but I definitely knew something was wrong. I woke with a start, awakened by I didn't know what, and instinctively glanced at the glowing alarm clock next to my bed.

3:15 AM

The room was dark, but I soon knew what it was that had awakened me. My wife Jennifer was crossing the room holding our screaming three-month-old boy. I didn't know which of them was yelling louder, but it was clear that something wasn't right.

"He's been throwing up, he's screaming and nothing I do will comfort him or quiet him. It's been three hours!!" Jennifer exclaimed, clearly at her wit's end. Not that it takes much to find the end of one's wits at three AM.

I obviously didn't know what was wrong, but I immediately determined that the first step was to separate screaming mother from screaming child. Kids feed off of the emotions of their parents, and the calmer, if groggier, parent needed to break that cycle. Even at that indecent hour I remembered that from our parenting classes.

Amid the screaming I took little Luke from my wife's arms and headed for the door. In an effort to put some space between the upset parties I headed for the stairs, though as I made my way downstairs my wife continued to follow me, and also continued to yell at our son. Now she was yelling at me, as well.

Meanwhile I started softly talking to Luke, telling him everything was OK, even singing little songs very softly in his ear. He began to relax, the crying coming in fits and starts now instead of a constant stream. As I felt his body relax I continued to try to put distance between him and his seemingly-delirious mother.

To no avail.

"Where are you going?" she demanded as I walked through the kitchen. "You can't just give him a bottle!"

I knew that. She told me he'd been throwing up, and while I didn't know for sure if that was true, I didn't think adding milk to his tummy was the best thing in the middle of all this chaos. I kept talking to Luke and kept walking away from his mother.

"What are you doing?? Where are you going??"

She kept screaming questions at me, and I kept quietly talking to Luke, who amazingly was continuing to calm down and relax even as his mother yelled mere feet away from him.

After taking a loop through the kitchen and laundry room and back into the loving room, I sat down on the couch. Cradling Luke in my arms I did what I had begun to do any time he got fussy - I wrapped him up in his favorite blanket, gave him his binkie, and cuddled him into my chest, trying to shield him from his ranting mother as much as anything else.

"You can't just cuddle him and expect that to work," she raged on, now standing over me. "You can't just give him his binkie and expect everything to be OK."

At this point, I was starting to get annoyed.

"Could you please just give us 10 minutes?" I asked, in a voice barely above a whisper. "Go up stairs and leave us alone for 10 minutes. If he's still upset you can tell me my method doesn't work and try something else. You woke me up because whatever you were doing wasn't working, so why don't you let me try this?"

"Don't tell me I'm a bad mother!" she screamed. "Don't tell me how to be a parent. You don't know what you're doing and you should give him to me right now!"

She reached for Luke, but I put my entire upper body between the two, making sure she couldn't access him in any way.

"Please just give us 10 minutes," I repeated, still speaking very softly.

"Don't tell me what to do!!!" she raged. "I'll do whatever I want with my baby. You better give him to me right now. What you're doing isn't working . . ."

I motioned, and it stopped her cold. While she went on and on I had looked down to notice that Luke was asleep. Sound asleep.

"He's asleep, Jennifer," I said gently. "Maybe I'm onto something here."

Instead of being relieved that our poor, screaming infant was finally at ease, Luke's falling asleep seemed to make her even madder.

"You better get that binkie out of his mouth," she demanded, still almost screaming. "Take it out right now. And move him upstairs. He can't sleep on the couch!"

I looked her square in the eye and said quietly but firmly: "I'm not taking the binkie out of his mouth and I'm not moving him one inch. You said he's been screaming for three hours (which I knew to be an exaggeration), now he's finally quiet and you want me to wake him back up? That's not fair to Luke, and I don't mind sitting up with him to make sure he doesn't choke on the binkie or anything else."

"well, I have to get ready for work pretty soon and I have to turn lights on. He's going to wake up if you don't move him."

In my mind I did the math. It was now something like 3:30AM and she would normally have gotten up some time around 6 or 6:30 to get ready for work.

Before my sleep-muddled brain could come up with a calm, rational response to that little bit of irrationality she was off, turning on lights all over the place and making as much noise as possible. She turned on the light in the bathroom near the couch, then turned on all the kitchen lights on the other side of the room. She turned the water in the kitchen sink on full blast, started opening and closing cabinet doors . .

And through it all Luke was still asleep on my lap. He was sleeping like . . .well . . .a baby!

With my attention now fully on my baby I didn't see my wife come up behind us and reach down to snatch the binkie from his mouth. Amazing, even THAT didn't wake him up. He slept on as she dug through the diaper bag and grabbed his travel binkie. She then stormed upstairs, and I didn't have to be clairvoyant to know she was adding the nursery binkie to her collection. She had all three and was most likely hiding them.

She'd show me. If I was able to comfort our baby using a binkie she would hide them all.

Makes sense, right?

And I would have to drive a whole 5 minutes to the store where there were hundreds more of them waiting to be purchased.

Finally alone, though with water running and every downstairs light turned on, I had a moment to just relax and breathe. I looked down at my sleeping baby and knew that the two of us were in this together, for better or for worse. He needed me to protect me from episodes like this, and it was my clear responsibility to do so.

How many more would there be?

This was an unusual, but not unheard of episode. I don't know all of the background behind Jennifer's upbringing, but I know enough to understand that it wasn't ideal. Her mother is bi-polar, her brother is bi-polar, and Jennifer most certainly is, as well. She still carries many of the monsters from her youth around with her.

Normally these manifest in ways that are, taken individually, fairly innocuous. She murmurs profanity under her breath, though loud enough for me to hear, and almost always directed at me. She decides (randomly, it seems) that I don't think she's good enough at something, then tears into me for daring to think such a thing . . .though I never thought it to begin with. She turns conversations into arguments that certainly didn't need to be. She evokes other "experts" and openly lies in her own defense when she perceives that she might be wrong about something. She can't be wrong, and she has to have the last word. If it turns out that she IS wrong, she just argues all the louder and gets even angrier.

These are the "thousand injuries" I imagine when I read the words of one of my favorite authors. I don't know what Edgar Allen Poe was going through when he was inspired to write "The Cask of Amontillado," but I can certainly imagine it must have been something miserable. Someone was really being a monster (hence, "Montresor"), or being so bad as to bring a monster out of Poe himself.

How many injuries does one bear before they become insults? How long before one starts to think about learning masonry and leading the monster to a nitre-laced underground catacomb?

These are the questions that often preoccupy me . . .especially in the middle of a mid-September manic nightmare.

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The War On Halloween?

Every year right about the end of the Thanksgiving holidays we start to hear the rhetoric heat up surrounding what language we use to talk about that next all-important retail event on the December calendar. If someone says "Happy Holidays," they are said to be anti-religion, and if someone says "Merry Christmas" the argument is that they aren't being politically correct.

Welcome to the front lines of what church-going folk often call the "War On Christmas."

But what about Halloween? Don't we have a similar battle going on over the language of this writer's favorite holiday?

When I was a kid it was perfectly safe for me and my friends to wander the streets of our suburban Houston subdivision to our hearts' content, collecting candy until our bags were full and we just couldn't carry any more. The biggest threat was that we might get some of that weird home-made candy from the oriental homes, but the idea that someone might kidnap one of us was just not part of that era's reality.

Nowadays families often choose to take their kids to a safer environment, often that of their church. More and more churches across the country are beginning to have their own Halloween parties and trick-or-treat activities, but for some reason they're often afraid to call it a "Halloween" party. They want to call it a "Fall Festival," as they feel that the word "Halloween" is in some way anti-religious.

Really?

I realize that much of religious dogma is based squarely on superstition, but aren't we taking this Halloween thing a bit too far? Are we really worried that witches and ghosts will make off with our children if we call the holiday by it's rightful name. Do we really BELIEVE in goblins and ghouls???

Again, turning the clock back some 30 years to my youth, October 31st was always called "Halloween." My parents went crazy, decorating the whole house, buying costumes, taking me to haunted houses . . .the whole nine yards. For my part, I absolutely LOVED it . . .and it is still by far my favorite holiday to this day. I mean, I love Christmas (or whatever we're calling it this year), but there's nothing like that chilly night spooky delights to really get my motor running. Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Orlando is just about my favorite event in the universe. As a kid I probably fantasized that the obligatory Halloween haunts were real, but I always knew - in the back of my mind - that it was all make-believe.

You know, like Santa Claus and the reindeer?

How paranoid and downright boring has our society become that we have to try and change the name of holidays to preserve some person's idea of what's politically correct? Who wants to be politically correct, anyway? Who's STUPID idea was THAT??

And so I wish everyone a Happy Halloween . . .and hope to god you're taking your kids trick-or-treating, even if it's at some church that's afraid of the name of the holiday. I promise - your kids will never know anything about Halloween except that it's a fun time to dress up in costumes and get free candy unless you decide to pull out the Encyclopedia Brittanica - oops - I guess that's Wikipedia now - and have them research the old customs of "All Hallows Eve."

But why spoil a good holiday and great parties with old, out of date dogma?

Like so many things, the only evil that comes with Halloween is the evil in our minds. There is absolutely nothing inherently bad about Halloween, and pretending there is will only perpetuate old myths and superstitions that are best left in the distant past.

It will also deprive your children of a wonderfully fun and frightful good time!

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The 24 Hour News Fallacy

Once upon a time TV actually went off the air at night. I'm barely old enough to remember the nightly playing of the National Anthem and the pattern  and annoying buzz that would follow and remain the only thing on TV until the next day's broadcasts began at some early hour the next morning.

TV news used to be something that happened a few times a day, with much of America getting their news right before dinner or perhaps right before bed. I can recall there being the 6 O'clock News and the 11 O'clock news, and that was just about it.

And then, on June 1st 1980, a guy named Ted Turner launched something he call the Cable News Network . . .CNN . . .and changed the news forever. Not, I would argue, for the better.

It sounds like a great idea, right? Why not have entire TV and radio networks devoted to round-the-clock news coverage? That's a holy cow, can't-miss concept, right?

I'm sure it seemed so at the beginning, but now we're more than three decades into the era of 24-hour news channels and it's harder than ever to actually find any news amongst the infotainment that now passes for an information exchange.

Essentially, there is probably about an hour's worth of news that even the most broadminded person would find interesting on a given day. So what do the networks do for the other 23 hours? Some of that is taken up with repetition, of course, but repetition alone does not a viable network make.

During a political season . . .and all seasons seem like political seasons now . . .these news shows spend a lot of time parsing words. It must be a real nightmare to be a political figure, as every time you speak you know there are teams of news analysts looking for some little thing to pull out of whatever you said and make a story out of it. Get one nuance of an issue wrong or misspeak in the slightest and you're the laughing stock of the country. It's even easier when we see candidates like the ones being fielded by the Republican party for the 2012 presidential campaign. A duller bunch of candidates have rarely been assembled as often as these drones, and the news cycle is just waiting for the latest round of stupidity and buffoonery to flow.

Another popular method of making a 5-minute news day last hours is by having viewers "Tweet" their comments about a particular story and then showing those "Tweets" on the air. This is a new pet peeve of mine. I don't turn on the news to find out what some country bumpkin in Montana thinks about a key issue. If I want to know what a non-journalist thinks about an issue I'll log in to Facebook. If I'm going to watch news, can I please see highly-trained journalists uncover facts about whatever story they're telling?

Oh . . .wait . . .we don't seem to have highly-trained journalists any more. What we have (especially on FIXed News is pseudo-celebrities, chosen for their looks and their willingness to tote the party line.

Whatever happened to the follow-up question? You know, Michele Bachmann turns away the results of thousands of cases to tell her viewing audience that "some lady" approached her after a rally and told her that the HPV vaccine gave her kid mental retardation. The reporter never asked the obvious follow-up question: "Are you prepared to take the word of some random person who approached you after a rally (and then could never be found) over the word of scientists, doctors, and patients who have successfully used the vaccine to no ill effect?"

Of course not. There was no follow-up question because it was more fun for the 24-hour news shows to spend the next few news cycles making fun of Bachmann for being an idiot . . .or in the case of FOX, spreading false information about a vaccine that helps prevent cervical cancer.

Bachmann was called out eventually, once her statement had run its course and there was another news cycle to fill. Asked why she would say something so obviously not true, Bachmann stated:

"I have no idea. I am not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, I'm not a physician. All I was doing is reporting what this woman told me at the debate."

Yeah, and a student once told me an alien beamed his homework up to a spaceship. I didn't call CNN and report that aliens were taking over public schools . . .I dismissed the comment as nonsense.

Welcome to the world of 24 hours news channels. Nothing is too stupid to become a story, and no source is too accessible to actually be utilized in an attempt to fact-check a crazy story before running with it. Besides, why fact-check a story immediately when you can run the inaccurate story today and then run the correction after that cycle has runs its course?

Journalistic integrity has long since been sacrificed at the altar of the 24-hour news cycle.

What's the solution?

I think many of you have probably already chosen the method I prefer, which is simply turning those 24-hour channels off. I don't watch CNN, I certainly don't watch FAUX news (which misleads very intentionally) and I watch only one show on MSNBC - Rachel Maddow. I tend to look to NPR and the BBC for actual news . . .the kind that doesn't come so laced with opinion that it's hard to even find the nugget of a story that was there to begin with.

Ultimately, though, if we want the channels that use the word "news" in their names to actually report something close to factual news, we have to get their attention and demand a higher standard.

Perhaps a massive Twitter campaign would work, since they seem to love those Twitter feeds.

Then again, turning them off works pretty well, too.

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