Posts Tagged ‘white house’

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Is Smoking Sinful?

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

Talk about a loaded question.  It’s one about which I’ve often wondered, being a lifelong Christian and an occasional smoker.

Yes, it’s bad for you.  So is eating at McDonald’s.  And if done in moderation, it’s probably even less bad for you than McDonald’s, especially if you’re smoking anything other than unfiltered tobacco cigarettes.

Society has certainly demonized it, and as a borderline libertarian (who voted for Obama — hey, at this point I might as well alienate all of my readers) I tend to come down hard on the other side.  I think secondhand smoke is largely a myth.  I certainly think bars, restaurants and other private businesses should be able to decide for themselves whether to allow smoking on the premises. But that’s all politics and personal freedom, and the Church doesn’t care much for either.

My good friend Pastor Toby Sumpter recently posted about this issue, and I have to say, it’s one of the most thoughtful and balanced perspectives I’ve ever read on the subject.  He primarily addresses the students of his parish and school, but then broadens his argument to include all of us:

If 9 out of 10 of your elders, pastors, and teachers would frown at it, why do it? Aren’t we called to love? And love not only covers multitudes of sins, it looks for ways to die for others. Ordinarily, in our culture, cigarettes are self-serving and the only other people thankful for your indulgence are your friends who also know deep down (or not so deep down) that dad would really not be pleased with this. Is that love?

I’m still not sure what I think.  But it’s a pretty compelling argument: Christianity is about sacrificing for others, not doing what we want and forcing them into acceptance.  St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians: “But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak.” (8:9)  Just as interesting is the question of whether it’s morally wrong for a non-Christian to smoke for similar reasons — his own autonomy versus the pain and distress inflicted on those he loves.  Some people quit lifelong habits out of deference to their parents or spouses, and I’d like to think it’s not just because the nagging wore them down.

Anyone want to jump in with their two cents?  You thought I’d never ask?

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Posted in Faith, Life, Vices | 1 Comment »

Remember the Ladies.

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

So said Abigail Adams in her famous letter to her husband, the President: “Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.”

As husbands are wont to do, he laughed her off, saying, “We know better than to repeal our masculine systems.”

My American Lit class read this the other day, and rather than take it as an opportunity to talk about women’s rights (the obvious answer, and one I am frankly sick of hearing about) I wanted to discuss the honorable tradition of speaking out about a cause, even if it’s nearly hopeless that anything would happen.  I assigned them a brief reflection: write a letter to the President asking him to remember the __________, inserting the name of a group they thought needed an advocate.

Their answers were fascinating.  They wrote about abused children and animals, teenagers (“We get a bad rap — give us a break!”) and the middle class (“Some of us are just trying to make a decent living.”)  They shared their outrage and despair quite willingly.  It was a good discussion.

I didn’t answer the question in front of them; I prefer not to let my opinions influence the direction of their thought, even though we frequently disagree.  But I’m sure you know what I would have said.  Remember the Armenians.  Because you promised to. Because genocide will not go away.  Because I’d really like to prove Hitler wrong.

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Just the Facts, Please

Friday, September 25th, 2009

As advisor of the school newspaper, I have two goals for my students:

1) Be aware of the world around you.

2) Get the facts.  Opinion comes later or, preferably, not at all.  There is more than enough opinion journalism in the world.

One of our first big stories is about the health care debate.  I am gleeful at the prospect of bombarding people with the truth.  I am SO SICK of liberals claiming that this debate is racially charged.  People, use your brains.  Thankfully, our president is still using his:

“Look, I said during the campaign there’s some people who still think through a prism of race when it comes to evaluating me and my candidacy. Absolutely,” Mr. Obama told NBC News. “Sometimes they vote for me for that reason; sometimes they vote against me for that reason.”

But he said that the matter was really “an argument that’s gone on for the history of this republic. And that is, what’s the right role of government?”

The president said the contentious health care debate, which came on the heels of extraordinary government involvement in bailing out banks and automobile companies, had led to a broader discussion about the role of government in society.

“I think that what’s driving passions right now is that health care has become a proxy for a broader set of issues about how much government should be involved in our economy,” Mr. Obama told CBS News. “Even though we’re having a passionate disagreement here, we can be civil to each other, and we can try to express ourselves acknowledging that we’re all patriots, we’re all Americans and not assume the absolute worst in people’s motives.”

He is so . . . refreshingly . . . SANE.  And I’m not sure whether I agree with the health plan he’s touting, but I sure respect him for telling it like it is (here and elsewhere!)

Likewise, I am SO SICK of conservatives throwing around terms they don’t know about.  If I had my way, people would get cited on the spot for passing on information they haven’t verified.  Intelligent people are not exempt, either.  A professional acquaintance recently warned me about cell phone telemarketers. My school’s principal believed the hype about godless Pepsi cans.

Get. The. Facts.  Or keep your opinion to yourself.  That’s my policy.

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The Speech

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

You knew it was coming . . .

For those of you who are living in the “dens and caves of the earth,” the President made a speech today addressing schoolchildren everywhere.  Here is the whole thing in three quick soundbites:

“At the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home — none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school.  That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher or cutting class or dropping out of school.  There is no excuse for not trying.“

Amen.

“The truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject that you study.  You won’t click with every teacher that you have.  Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right at this minute, and you won’t necessarily succeed in everything the first time you try it.  That’s okay.  Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who have had the most failures.”

Preach it!

“If you get into trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker; it means you need to try harder to act right.  If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid; it just means you need to spend more time studying.  No one’s born being good at all things; you become good at things through hard work.“

THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about.  No excuses.  This was the most parent-like speech I’ve ever heard him give, and I mean it in a good way.  Yes, there were a lot of cliches, but we’ve been awfully heavy on cliches from the other side (You’re Perfect Just the Way You Are and other taglines of complacency) for a long time.  It’s good to hear someone advocate for hard work and struggle.

It’s almost hard to believe that there were parents out there (lots of them; many of them at our school) who wanted permission for their kids to AVOID watching this address.  No, please, whatever you do, don’t let my children listen to the President!  They might learn something about bipartisanship or self-sacrifice!  Yikes.

My only criticism was political: I thought he was about to mention the Suzuki Triangle (teacher, parent, student) but he stretched it into a quadrilateral with the addition of the government as a fourth corner.  I definitely don’t agree with this, but I am a recovering Republican, and it was only for a moment that I rolled my eyes before continuing to listen to and enjoy what was overwhelmingly a positive and (dare I say it?) conservative set of remarks.

Score one for tough teachers everywhere!

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You Don’t Have To Take My Word For It.

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Today marks the end of an era.  The last episode of Reading Rainbow will air:

The show’s run is ending, Grant explains, because no one — not the station, not PBS, not the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — will put up the several hundred thousand dollars needed to renew the show’s broadcast rights.

The article goes on to blame the Bush administration (this is NPR, after all) for establishing such an attitude.  Personally, I think the NEA should have been disbanded years ago, and it’s absurd to continue the program in the face of the current economic stress.  Furthermore, it should not be television’s job to teach kids to read (or even to love reading, as the article claims.) That’s the domain of people like me.

Political invective aside, however, I have to say that the demise of the show makes me sad.  My family didn’t have cable TV until I was 13 (I remember this because they got cable WHILE I was away at summer camp.  The injustice!)  So I grew up on public television programming, for the most part.  Reading Rainbow was one of our favorites, and I doubt that anyone my age, even the ones who grew up with cable, wouldn’t be able to sing the theme song if prompted.  Remember?  “Butterfly in the skyyyyyyyy . . . ”

And now you have something to sing for the rest of the day.

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Posted in Current Events, Literature, Methods | 1 Comment »

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