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?

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.

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.

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!

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.

There are some cool things about summer, like:

• The beach. And, fine, the pool is an acceptable substitute.
• Cold beer and grilled bratwurst. By the light of a lantern in the evening.  When you don’t have to get up early and teach the next day.
• Friends. Yes, I know you can have friends anytime, but we don’t get a chance to socialize much during the school year.  And I’ve eaten more steak in the last month than in the whole school year prior.  Most recently in a Guinness-curry-chocolate sauce, which was most swoon-worthy thanks to Jim.
• Sudden drenching rainstorms. I’ve loved these since before I stopped being afraid of them.

And there are some dumb things about summer, like:

• Mosquitoes.
• Summer camp (I’m not referring to a week or two in a cabin with spiders, canoes and campfires, building character.  I’m referring to the obsessive to-the-moment schedules of many kids, who go to so many specialized camps they hardly have a day to themselves.)
• A non-agrarian society which doesn’t really need summers off anymore.
• A dumber population. Sorry, it’s true: look around, and you’ll see we are far below the standard in Asia and Europe.  By contrast, a test at Jersey City High school in 1885 contained the following questions.

Find the product of 3 + 4x + 5×2 -6×3 and 4 – 5x – 6×2.

Write a sentence containing a noun used as an attribute, a verb in the perfect tense potential mood, and a proper adjective.

Name three events of 1777. Which was the most important and why?

(Here’s the killer: it was a test for admission to high school.  So the kids taking the test were 8th graders.  I’m a high school math and English teacher, and I don’t think I could answer any of those questions! Taken from The Bell Curve.)

Bottom line: I think summer school is a great idea.  Shorter terms, maybe four per year, with holidays between.  Yes, and we should also adopt the British system of calling vacation “holiday.”  It sounds so much classier.

I watched every major speech Obama gave during his long, slow rise to power, but I didn’t see any of them live.  I just never happened to be free then, or near a TV (we don’t own one.)  Today I was planning to go to my parents’ to watch; but when I checked the NYTimes website, it had a live feed that was quite clear and streamed through with very few hiccups.  It also had the advantage of being QUIET.  The only things I heard are things I would have heard if I had actually been there: cheering, music, polite applause, and of course the words of those on the stage.  I can only imagine how annoying it must have been to have commentators rattling off statistics about Michelle’s dress and Cheney’s medication levels.

As a registered Republican and someone who identifies more with the Libertarian Party than just about any other, I thought I would take a moment to defend my vote, which I cast proudly for our new President.

My reasons, in order from least to greatest, are below:

• Protest. I voted for Bush twice.  I felt he and the Republican party behaved completely contrary to the principles of CONSERVatism.  They didn’t conserve anything — money, resources or energy.  They spent just as wastefully as Democrats do.  So, I figured, a Democrat couldn’t possibly be worse!  And I enjoyed thinking about my name in the category of “Republicans who voted for Obama.”  I sincerely hope my party takes the next eight years to regroup and emerges stronger and more conservative than ever, and if they do, my vote will be back in their camp.

• The speech. He gave many great ones, but I’m speaking of the speech he gave after all that nonsense about Jeremiah Wright.  I was moved to tears several times, and for me, it was the antidote to the night I walked out of “Crash,” also in tears, and thought, “Our country will never move past racism.  Never.”  To hear him speak honestly and frankly about the demons in his past, on both sides of the black-white divide and beyond, was freeing, and from that moment I began to believe that with his help, we could actually heal and move forward.

• My bishop. I was in an agony of indecision for several weeks after Obama won the nomination.  Could I really cast a vote for someone who was more pro-abortion than any candidate in history?  In the end, though, my bishop settled the question for me when he reminded us all that there is no perfect candidate, nor no “right” candidate for Christians, and that we should choose whomever we thought would be the better leader for our country.

• Jed Bartlet. My friend Terry refers to The West Wing as “soft porn for liberals.” Set in the Clinton era, it told of a president who couldn’t have resembled Clinton less: principled, devout, loyal to his family and in love with his wife, cool-headed but prone to righteous indignation at only the most appropriate times.  My sister owns all 7 seasons on DVD, and as she finished one I’d borrow it and stay up all night watching the fast-paced dialogue move through crisis after crisis.  After Season 1, I started telling my friends that if Jed Bartlet ever ran for president, I’d vote for him.  Although I disagreed with him on just about every policy, I reasoned, he was a good man.  That would be enough.  A good man could do a lot.

I didn’t go downtown today because, to be honest, I feared for my life between the weather and the crowds.  But now, I really wish I had gone.  At least I was one of the 8 million people who were there in spirit, basking in the cool glow of computer screens.