A new study argues that single parents cost American taxpayers $112 billion, in the form of welfare, education, prison, and other expenses. There's also a pernicious estimate of foregone tax revenue, as if it's unproductive fellow citizens that cost you and me, and not a cabal of Congressmen who spend our money like drunken New York governors at a hooker convention.

A problem with the study, notes an economics professor at Syracuse University, is that a large portion of the men in urban communities have been imprisoned, limiting their earning potential, and hence the positive economic effect of marriage. Other critics note that there is little evidence that marriage programs like those advocated by the backers of this study have any impact. We need better jobs, they argue, and better education.

It seems the hole is much deeper than either left or right is willing to fathom. Does anyone really think that the hundreds of thousands of children born in the worst urban areas without fathers in their lives are deprived of this necessity because these men can't find work? Is it the presence of a job that makes a man live up to his responsibilities? Is it a college degree?

No, it's moral backbone, and there's no program that will implant one where it is absent. And so the cycle is now in a self-fueling frenzy — boys grow up without men to guide them, and girls grow up desperate for male attention, and when they meet, a new crop of neglected children is produced.

Better jobs wouldn't hurt, nor better schools, nor perhaps even programs designed to promote responsible parenting. But this madness will end one life at a time, one man at a time, each willing to set aside his excuses and enter the daily grind that is parenting.

I'm still sorting out, in my own life, what it means to be a man. But I'm certain that you can't be one if you're not willing to care for your children. You can kill the enemy in war, score forty points a game, become CEO of your company — but none of it will make you a man. There are a great many fathers in our country, but significantly fewer men. And given an illegitimacy rate nationwide that is approaching 40 percent, and one closer to 90 percent in the inner cities, this ought to be a topic every pastor covers on a regular basis.

Several of you, like me, have forsaken the news as an irritant, but wrote to tell me that you appreciated my recent rundown of the U.S. presidential campaign. So as a public service, I'd like to offer my latest installment of News by Osmosis:

In election news, Barack Obama was discovered to be a member of the Evangelical Church of Farrakhan, but insists that he only mouthed the words during the hymns. Hillary Clinton's camp has also accused Obama of trying to prevent blacks from voting, due to his fear, no doubt, of the tremendous appeal that a privileged, uptight white woman has for African-American voters.

Clinton, meanwhile, reluctantly revealed that she was a Navy SEAL in Bosnia, where she and her daughter Chelsea took sniper fire while rescuing orphans — regardless of their religion, ethnicity, or sexual persuasion — from danger.

On the Republican side, John McCain has died of old age.

In local politics, New York governor Eliot Spitzer revealed that he's been patronizing hookers, but insisted that this was part of an elaborate sting operation directed against corrupt HMO executives, who are the real enemy here. The scrupulously ethical New York legislature is investigating whether Spitzer used public resources to underwrite his peccadilloes, and why he couldn't use interns like everyone else.

On the economic front, we are in the Great Depression II. From now on we have to call the first one Great Depression I, which means we'll have to change all the history books, which Paul Krugman believes is exactly the kind of stimulus we need to get the economy going. Both Depressions were caused by twelve years of Reaganomics, along with feckless 1960's-era liberal Democratic spending, which is always what happens when Republicans control Congress.

The War on Terror, meanwhile, is a catastrophic failure, and an unmitigated success. Everyone agrees that we should withdraw as soon as possible, so long as we stay the course.

In college sports, four teams are set to play for the NCAA men's national basketball championship in San Antonio. The NCAA wants you to know that all of the student-athletes on these teams are majoring in medicine or engineering, and quite possibly both, and that they are students first and foremost, and that it is these fine student-athletes who are the nation's future leaders. In related news, NCAA schools stand to rake in roughly 100 gazillion dollars this year from media and merchandising revenue, but the NCAA stresses that it wouldn't be fitting to share any of this with the student-athletes, who are, after all, students.

The Olympics, meanwhile, are set to begin in China, which is an open and free country where citizens are encouraged to make their voices heard, so long as they do it quietly and respectfully between the hours of 10:00pm and 10:05pm Beijing time. A few rabble-rousers have tried to disrupt the torch procession, but these are the same people who don't like McDonald's and waterboarding, and given that otherwise we'll be denied thirty-seven straight weeks of tae-kwon-do and ping-pong, they should all just stow it and let the games begin.

In professional baseball, all past players are drug-addled cheaters, but the current crop is squeaky clean.

Your local weather is crappy, with variable crappiness, and possible crap in the very near future. Unless you live in California, in which case the rest of us think you should go straight to hell.

Finally, our ombudsman reports that the major media outlets are unashamedly biased for and against each presidential candidate, which is exactly what we should expect from an unaccountable left-wing cabal of lock-step liberals wholly owned by conservative corporations. Only Fox News can be trusted to give us a fair and balanced argument for an end to universal suffrage and the reinstitution of slavery.

Thank you, and good night.

I've been watching with one eye the travails of Kelvin Sampson, coach of the Indiana men's basketball team. Sampson has been tripped up by the pharisaical system of NCAA rules, which pays close attention to who pays for a player's meals, but scrutinizes less closely whether the player ever receives an education. In Sampson's case, he transgressed rules about when recruits can be telephoned, and when questioned, the NCAA says he lied about it. What fascinates me is that when he was receiving the National Coach of the Year award at Oklahoma in 2002, his team's graduation rate, averaged over four years, was zero. That's right, you had a greater chance of winning the Oklahoma lottery than securing a college degree under Kelvin Sampson.

Even though its own team's graduation rate stood at a respectable 70 percent, Indiana University saw fit to lure Sampson away from Oklahoma, which had no problem with his mockery of the NCAA's widely touted moniker for players, "student athletes," so long as he was winning games.

Despite luring kids to a school they had no hope to graduate from, when they might have received scholarships as well as degrees from smaller schools, Sampson was awarded one of the NCAA's highest honors for a men's basketball coach. But now that he has made too many calls on consecutive second Tuesdays, he's going to be suspended without pay.

Why not fired? Isn't Indiana University's motto, after all, "Light and Truth?"

Yes, but Sampson's team is, you see, 22-4 this season. So they'll slap him on the wrist, and hope it's good enough penance to satisfy the NCAA. At the very worst, they'll fire him later, but only after the NCAA tournament. No need to get crazy with this whole "consequences" thing, after all. It's not like their motto is "Light, Truth, and Consequences." And as the famous Roman once asked, "What is truth, anyway?" That's the enlightened approach to things in today's modern universities.

I still insist that if the NCAA were serious about its "student-athlete" notion, it would require the team with a lower graduation rate to spot the differential to its opponent in games. This would mean that if Davidson met Memphis in the NCAA tournament, it would start the game with a lead of 67 points. And perhaps alongside the won-loss record posted under a coach's face when he's on television, networks could also start posting his graduation rate.

Maybe then more schools would ask not only, How many points can he score? but also, Is this the best place for him to receive an education? If they're really student-athletes, after all, it seems we ought to be asking the latter.

As for Kelvin Sampson, I wouldn't worry about his job future; there's always a Cincinnati or a UNLV — or an Indiana University, if they can get away with it — willing to place a higher imperative on winning than on integrity. Sampson should have no problem finding employment. Too bad we can't say the same for the kids who have been unfortunate enough to play for him.

Update
Looks like Indiana gave Sampson cash to go away, and several of their players are having a hissy fit. Pat Forde has it right:

"Here's my suggestion: Any player who doesn't make the trip to Northwestern is cut. Kelvin Sampson should not be made a martyr for breaking NCAA rules. College players aren't in charge of personnel decisions. Period.

If need be, grab six walk-ons who would donate an organ to play for the Hoosiers and suit them up. Indiana basketball is bigger than the players who walked out."

Though not yet an industrial or vacation magnet, we have great hopes for the fine state of Kansas. Newcomers may find themselves perplexed by the local norms and practices of highway driving. Periodically out of the goodness of our own hearts, as well as various court orders and private settlements, the management of this website is obliged to offer a public service announcement. Herewith a guide to highway driving in Kansas:

Kansans drive in the left lane. The right lane is too close to the gravelly shoulder, and remember the fate of those seeds sprinkled on rocky soil? To the left, good Christian, to the left! The full range of speeds are welcome in the saintly left lane, which is to say, anything from five miles over the posted speed limit to twenty miles below. What's that, you say you want to drive six miles over the limit, or perhaps seven?

Dear friend, you are not in New Jersey any more. This is not a NASCAR track, it is the stately highway system of the great state of Kansas, and you would do well to respect our laws. Now pipe down that speed talk and take your place in the long glorious line of gleaming vehicles puttering nobly along the left-hand side.

Just as the humble Disciples harvested grain on the Sabbath, there will be times that you need to avail yourself of the right lane. You will need to exit the highway. But there may be other eager travelers, just like you, wishing to gain access to the highway. People in less civilized communities might consider this a moment of friction, when a car attempting to enter the highway finds another car zipping along in the right lane, square in its path. They might demand that the entering car "yield" to the oncoming traffic.

Not in the fair state of Kansas, friend. What right, after all, does the car in the right lane have to continue at such a great rate of speed, when his poor neighbor needs to avail himself of the road as well? The wide, level plains of Kansas reflect our great democracy of citizens, in that none should be considered greater than another. Therefore, good Christian temporarily in the right lane, it is incumbent upon you to slow down, that your poorer neighbor on the entrance ramp might partake of our glorious highway, and as rapidly as possible bring himself to the speed, no greater or less, of his neighbors.

That's right, highway traveler, we are asking you to brake. Place your right foot on the flat pedal and brake to your heart's content. Brake, that all might share in the great forward progress of mankind!

What's that, you say? The people behind you, all traveling at sixty miles an hour, and perhaps not expecting an abrupt stop to traffic in the middle of a highway? Why, that's what brake lights are for. Even the oldest models have two of them, one for each eye in your rear neighbor's head. Don't trouble yourself about him, because he has brakes of his own, as does the driver behind him. Do your duty and stop for the driver who wants to enter the highway, and all the drivers behind you will be happy to stop as well.

For good measure, the saintly drivers in the left lane may well apply their brakes, too. Many a time I have seen it, a great cloud of witnesses, their brake lights lit like candles in heaven, all welcoming a new entrant to the highway. There is not a friendlier highway etiquette in the entire United States.

Though we all try to do our duty, there are those scofflaws who will choose, by virtue of their unregenerate natures, to pass you on the right. Your duty, good Christian, is to accelerate accordingly. Anything less is undemocratic. Keep with them pace for pace, no matter how fast they go, no matter how red-faced they become, until you draw even with a calm-minded true Kansan in the right lane, and then decrease your speed. This is the Kansas way, it is the fair way, it is the right (which is to say left) way.

On behalf of all Kansas highway drivers, I want to give you, newcomer to our state, a warm and hearty welcome, and kindheartedly admonish you with our unofficial state motto: "What's your hurry?"

From our family to yours, happy travels, and may you arrive no sooner than anyone else.

Go check out this clip of a Canadian publisher lambasting an investigator from the Human Rights Commission, sent to determine whether he has committed a thought crime. Courtesy of Megan McArdle from, of course, The Atlantic.

Update
Tim Sandefur offers some closing comments from the same hearing. And here's a link to the publisher's website. I suspect he now needs to worry about being a marked man, and not just by the Canadian government.

I've come a long way from my days as a graduate student, immersed in thoughts and discussions about politics. Now I avoid political discussions like Michael Moore avoids vegetables. I even let my newspaper subscription lapse, so I could have more time to read what matters.

Political news is unavoidable, however, and so I thought I'd get you to evaluate my osmosis. Here's my ill-informed reading of the status of our national presidential marathon, based on what I've gleaned from airport conversations and the occasional glance at Google news headlines:

On the Democratic side of things, Obama isn't such a bad guy, if we can get him to renounce terrorism and stop-fathering crack babies, which you didn't hear from the Hillary camp. Clinton, meanwhile, is being perhaps a little too feminine on the campaign trail, what with the cleavage and the crying, though his wife remains the shrill, cast-iron harpy we've all come to loathe and fear. John Edwards is dragging his poor sick wife across the country in a quest to improve health care. He stands on principle against any hedge fund of which he's not a partner. The rest of the Democratic field is a collection of sissies, malcontents, and nutjobs.

On the Republican side, meanwhile, Giuliani is a polygamist. No wait, that's McCain. Sorry, I meant Fred Thompson. Mitt Romney? No, he's a hard-working, family-oriented husband of one wife who stands for everything that made America great, except that he's in a Satanic cult. The one-time darling of the Libertarians, Ron Paul, used to own slaves. Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, seems to drive Peggy Noonan apoplectic, which is reason enough to recommend him. Someone just needs to stop him from channeling Herbert Hoover. The rest of the Republican field is a collection of conspiracy theorists, isolationists, and psychopaths.

As for policy positions, as best I can tell, the Democrats want to give most of the southwest U.S. to Mexico, and invite Muslim terrorists to publicly behead everyone making more than a million dollars a year, except for Steven Spielberg and George Soros. Republicans, meanwhile, want to kick anyone with a Mexican-sounding name out of the U.S., and conquer the entire Middle East so that Halliburton will have work after it kills all the porpoises while drilling for oil off the U.S. coast, which will soon be just east of Kansas City, as a result of the Bush-Reagan-Hitler global warming conspiracy.

Both parties are convinced that government is exceptionally skilled at doing things they want more of, and entirely incompetent when it comes to things they don't like. Every candidate is a candidate for change, using the failed ideas of the past, to create a brave new world for the children.

Does that about sum it up?

The CEO of Yahoo got a much-deserved tongue-lashing by Congressional Democrats yesterday, for his company's complicity in the jailing of Chinese dissidents. It's at once fascinating and sickening to see a phalanx of corporate hacks and their attorneys, mumbling coached statements about their obligation to obey the law in a totalitarian state, and their ignorance about what would be done with information they provided, and their sorrow — without admitting guilt, mind you — about what may or may not be happening. "I want to personally apologize for what they are going through," said CEO Yang, which has the ring of personal responsibility, but neatly leaves out any words that actually suggest culpability. It's the classic Washington, D.C. apology, the kind of thing that none of us accept from our children, but which gets modeled for them nonetheless by our nation's corporate and political leadership.

It's a tough bind, to be sure, looking at a juicy multi-billion dollar Chinese market, and being told that your bite at the apple only comes by helping the ruling regime catch and imprison citizens brave enough to speak out against it. I've never had the chance to walk away from that kind of money, so I can't be sure my legs would work so well either. Fortunately, however, the moral standard is higher than my example, and certainly higher than Yahoo's example, and while Congressman Tom Lantos probably has his flaws as well, I couldn't help but cheer when he called Yahoo's executives "moral pygmies."

That captures it so nicely, the smallness necessary to sell human beings, which is what Yahoo did, and then to feign ignorance, and only now, with the heat fully on, to halfway admit something like responsibility, all while refusing any sort of financial relief to the wives of the men they helped imprison. And Yahoo, it seems, is only the tip of the iceberg of corporate complicity in Chinese imprisonment and torture, as Peter Navarro notes in today's Los Angeles Times. While the host of technology companies that Navarro indicts, as well as their technophile apologists, like to argue that doing business in China actually strengthens the infrastructure necessary for eventual freedom, Navarro says the opposite is true:

"The collaborative tools that U.S. corporations provide to spy on, and silence, the Chinese people are far more likely to help prop up a totalitarian regime than topple it."

Wall Street analysts, meanwhile, are wagering that with yesterday's blistering hearings, the worst of this "episode," as such profound moral lapses are labeled in our nation's financial and political capitals, is behind Yahoo. I hope not. While some members of Congress are sponsoring a bill that would make it illegal for U.S. technology companies to assist in the abuses that Yahoo and others willingly abet, we can be almost certain the final form will do more harm than good, so subject as such laws are to partisan manipulation and pocket-lining. At a more personal level, we can all do a few things on our own, however. For one, if you are using Yahoo for your email provider, stop. There are plenty of other free email providers. For another, set up a filter in your email to block anyone with a Yahoo address from emailing you, along with an auto-response that explains why they are being blocked. Annoying, yes, but imagine the network effects if a thousand people took the time to do this, influencing others to do so, who influenced others, and so on. It's not inconceivable that a "tipping point" could be reached, at which the majority of Yahoo users switch providers because their emails are getting blocked. I'll bet that would wipe the smiles off some faces mighty quick.

I recently read Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village. It's probably better to say that I scanned it, or perhaps that I read through it, because only the most narrow of partisans would restrain himself from speed-reading to the end of sentences like this:

At a time when democracy depends so much on our finding common ground, and when so many adults are unsure about how to bridge societal divides, there seems to be one idea on which most people agree: we need to find ways to offer our children a vision of affirmative living that can be applied in their daily actions and interactions

I know many of you have your reasons for voting against Hillary, and now I have mine.

Still, if nothing else we should applaud the woman for enduring sentence after sentence like this, because I assume she was conscious and sober when she wrote it. I'm not sure if anyone else deserves that praise, however, because if the lack of acknowledgements are to be believed, she wrote the entire thing without any research assistance or ghost writing whatsoever.

I didn't pay the book much mind when it first came out, other than to roll my eyes at the way it was predictably savaged by conservatives, and lauded by liberals, and subsequently ignored — to everyone's benefit, I can now assure you. It's interesting, to me at least, to consider it now, after seeing this woman's evolution from cookie-maker to Iron Lady to investment genius to aggrieved wife to distinguished Senator from New York. I'm struck, for example, at her enthusiasm for a myriad of small programs for every social ailment: reading programs for at-risk kids, nutritional initiatives from the USDA, programs to match parents with daycare providers — there is no problem so small that Hillary Clinton cannot solve it for you. It's always striking to me how people who have spent their entire lives observing firsthand how poorly bureaucracies perform can have so much faith in their ability to intervene at the micro-level to ensure that everyone is safe and well-read and happy.

Then there is the iron in her tone when she labels those who disagree with her "extremists." It's a peculiar logic that goes: Homeschooler = Rush Limbaugh = Timothy McVeigh. Anyone who thinks the Daily Kos was the first vehicle to popularize the Left's mindless, hateful response to mindless Right-wing hatefulness isn't giving Hillary Clinton her due.

The quote that stuck with me, however, was this rumination:

The networks of relationships we form and depend on are our modern-day villages, but they reach well beyond city limits. Many of them necessarily involve the whole nation. They are the basis for our "civil society," a term social scientists use to describe the way we work together for common purposes.

I don't think there is a more succinct way to get the truth absolutely backwards. We mostly pursue different purposes, self-interested humans that we are, and it is rules and laws and culture that channel our pursuits into actions that either do not harm or in fact assist others in the pursuit of their individual aims. Were we a society of ants serving a queen, Hillary's curious notion of civil society might be more apt, but we are not. Not yet, anyway.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that I was reminded why I've largely forsaken politics for good prose. But I certainly hope it's true, all this business about the pen being mightier than the sword.

Alert reader Lori sent me this telling picture from a home listing. Apparently HBO is more entertaining than God.

The University of California at Berkeley is looking to hire its first Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion, and I think it's about darn time. I'm heartened to know that with this renewed focus on recruiting students and faculty from underrepresented groups, Berkeley's agents will soon be scouring Iowa for devout homeschooled virgin boys. Young men returning from service in Iraq, likewise, may find a warmer reception than they would have received in years past. And no doubt many young parents, as well as retired executives, will soon be submitting their applications to the more equitable and inclusive Cal-Berkeley. Observant pro-war Jews, aspiring Christian filmmakers, chaste young pro-life activists — all are welcome under Berkeley's big tent, right?

I mean, surely this isn't a guise to continue the insular practice of recruiting from a narrow slice of the American political, geographic, religious, and social strata, is it? Is there a possibility that, for all the rhetoric, this represents a continuation of Berkeley's Orwellian effort to produce a student body in lock-step agreement with the warmed-over intellectual tripe that has dominated its social science and liberal arts departments for the past half-century?

Say it ain't so.

Anyone who believes Wal-Mart is the scourge of modern civilization would do well to read yesterday's front-page Wall Street Journal article about its operations in Mexico, which are opposed by anti-globalization (pro-poverty) groups like the Orwellian-named Global Exchange, but which have proven to be a spectacular boon to the poor people who shop and work there. It put me in mind of Bruce Yandle's term, "bootleggers and Baptists", which he coined for the odd coalitions that emerge to protect the status quo. Dry counties satisfy the moral sensibilities of some religious folk, and fatten the bank accounts of bootleggers, and so the two effectively unite in an unholy coalition.

Take the recent effort to require pornographic Internet sites to adopt a ".xxx" suffix, for example. Primary opposition came from the porn purveyors, on the one hand, and Christian groups on the other. More publicized was the cynical coalition forged by the likes of former Christian Right wunderkind Ralph Reed, who moralized about the evils of gambling while pocketing laundered cash from Indian tribes who want to preserve their gambling monopolies.

Wal-Mart faces a similar battle in Mexico, where socialists unite with shop owners and local monopolists in a thuggish front to prevent poor Mexicans from paying less for their food. Fortunately, many Mexicans are proving to have more sense than some intellectuals north of the border, as the WSJ makes clear:

"When Wal-Mart was building a store in Juchitan in 2005, local shopkeepers and leftist groups tried to rouse popular sentiment against the American invader. The efforts failed, and by the end of opening day sales were so strong 'the place looked like it had been looted,' says Max Jimenez, the store's 31-year-old manager."

Unfortunately, some groups that claim to work for democracy don't trust people to decide for themselves, any more than Global Exchange believes in, well, global exchange. Hopefully for the poor of Mexico, however, democracy will out, because as the deputy mayor of Juchitan explains, "The ones who have benefited the most are the poorest. I hope another one comes."

Me too. I hope they get Wal-Marts and Targets and Walgreens, despite the best efforts of self-styled global activists who haven't an inkling of what it must be like to go without diapers or medicine, or to pay the local boss twice the going rate for corn meal.

Among the legions of meaningless, buzzwordy corporate communications, CareerBuilder's corporate culture statement has got to be one of the silliest:

"The values and vision of CareerBuilder.com are infused into the every day working environment. Our surroundings transcend that of a traditional corporate framework and offer a rare oasis that fosters both individual and team achievement.

"The CareerBuilder.com atmosphere is supercharged with zeal, and an enthusiasm for success and attainable goals. Our corporate culture is carefully tempered with the professionalism, positivism and camaraderie that one would expect from an industry leader. Our rapid growth is the result of a dynamic workforce, coupled with careful and calculated planning.

"The expeditious pace with which we accomplish our goals presents our team members with the exciting opportunity to learn new skills, create innovations and build upon our swift progress, which has become the benchmark of our success!"

Values, achievement, growth, dynamic, innovations, benchmark. . . can you think of a buzzword that didn't make the CareerBuilder cut?

There's also a subtle allusion to America's original hippie movement, as well as an outright appropriation of pernicious scientism, in the guise of, well, cheerfulness. Pretty ambitious for a corporate vision statement, wouldn't you say?

It also reveals a trend I've noticed in more and more of these things, which is a penchant for neo-Hegelian dialectics ("individual and team achievement"; dynamic "coupled with careful and calculated planning"). At least Hegel, for all his insanity, felt compelled to synthesize his opposites to achieve some higher-level notion; CareerBuilder just slings them together, as if all oxymorons are by their very nature statements of transcendent wisdom.

Nothing, however, beats the last sentence, which is like a fireworks crescendo of meaningless peppiness. "The benchmark of our success"? What does that mean? Perhaps in transcending "the traditional corporate framework," CareerBuilder has also transcended traditional written English.

If you look at a lot of these (and I have had the misfortune of doing so), you start to marvel at the amount of brainpower that goes into crafting statements that mean absolutely nothing to anyone. Honestly, who reads the average corporate vision statement and believes that it even describes aspirations, let alone reality? And yet fleets of professionals churn them out, and companies put them on plaques and memos and websites, and the rest of us engage in far too little mockery and eye-rolling. That, at least, can end here.

The recent revelation that high school seniors are less competent now than a decade ago probably won't be met with the outrage it deserves, in light of considerable increases in per pupil spending during that period. Public schools are like congressmen, in the sense that most of us agree they are a lousy bunch, but tend to be pretty pleased with our own.

I recently crushed the dreams of about 400 high school students. I was asked to give them career advice, and so I told them to stop believing that they can achieve anything they want simply by wanting it. "I Believe I Can Fly" may be an uplifting song, but it's a stupid life philosophy. You can't fly. If you study about ten times harder, and have an ounce of common sense, and work really long hours, then perhaps you can build yourself a plane, and then you can fly. Otherwise, get used to walking.

It was not altogether well-received. I think they are used to being told that they will achieve their dreams, as if dream-achievement is some kind of massive entitlement program, and one is enrolled in it simply by aching for things.

I asked these students how many have a MySpace account. Most of the hands flew up. "Facebook?" I asked. More hands. I got the same response when I asked who had an Xbox, or a Playstation, or a Wii (don't ask).

This came to mind when I saw the latest news about NAEP scores, revealing that while high-school students are getting better grades and taking more advanced-placement courses, they are decidedly less proficient at the fundamentals of math and reading. On a hunch, I checked into statistics on teen Internet use. The Pew Charitable Trust's research is the most comprehensive I could find, and their data only go back to 2000, but the results are striking. Eighty-seven percent of teens report regular Internet use. While Al Gore (along with public school IT administrators) may tell himself these kids are downloading Frost poems and physics problems, I suspect otherwise.

Eighty-one percent, however, report that they regularly play games online. And most prefer instant messaging to "old-fashioned" emails, which is unsurprising. One can be partially literate and still text-message, after all. Email probably feels too much like composition.

It's not the technology that I'm suggesting might deserve blame, mind you, but the stupid things that our ignorant children, under our incompetent tutelage, choose to do with it. Consider that the average teen in the Pew study reported spending about 18 hours a week in some form of social activity with other teens, either in person or online. Another Pew study found, for example, that the majority of American teens are active on one or more social networking sites. Add to this the reality that nearly half of U.S. high-school seniors work 20 or more hours per week during the school year (very likely with other unskilled people), and the picture becomes clearer: a large portion of high-school seniors spend nearly 40 hours a week interacting primarily with other ignorant individuals. It's almost as if we've made the study of stupidity a full-time job for them.

Then, to remedy this, we stick our kids for six hours a day in front of teachers who largely lack a coherent pedagogy, and many of whom can't meet the very standards we expect them to help our children achieve. And we wonder why children don't have the basic skills to write — or even comprehend — an essay. Clearly, the government isn't spending enough on education, right?

But don't believe the data if you're not inclined, just listen to teenagers talk. I don't mean your own teens, who I am sure are brilliant, but other people's teenagers. Go to the mall and just listen. People knock homeschoolers for not exposing their children to "socialization," but maybe it's a good thing. Being socialized into a society of idiots is not exactly great preparation for life success.

We have allowed our children to spawn their own personalized societies, worshipping as we do at the altar of individuality and personal space (the very name of the most popular social networking site reflects it: MySpace). To be sure, teenage years are a tribal time, when the overriding desire is to belong. They are called to their species like bees to honey. But this is precisely why we have to channel this impulse; given his druthers, the average teenager would like nothing more than to spend every scrap of time with other teenagers. But that's not a model for learning, or for maturation; it's Lord of the Flies.

The social impulse is a good thing, but as families disintegrate, and churches become less community than fleeting social club, we seem to offer our children little in this regard. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that they cling to each other like shivering animals. In this respect and many others, these national tests that we are so enamored of administering to our children are really more telling about our own performance.

I read somewhere that we know a boy is becoming a man when he seeks the company of men over boys. If that's a true standard, then we are lodging our boys in perpetual childhood (girls as well), extending past high school and into college. If you live near a university, take a walk on campus during lunch on a school day. Ask yourself whether you see young men and women in training, or boys and girls on extended vacation. In fact, something nobody seems to have mentioned yet, given the jarring news that high schoolers are doing poorer even as they take more college prep courses, is that maybe this is preparing them for college, given the sorry state to which so many universities have sunk.

But perhaps picking a fight with higher education, in the same post where I pick on high schoolers and their teachers and their parents and the rest of us who let news like this roll off our backs without changing our behavior one bit, is, well, just one fight too many.

Which is what I excel at, you know.

One of the wickedly enjoyable things Henry Mintzberg does in his Managers Not MBAs is mock the way Harvard Business School case studies and business press accounts portray the chief executive as Superman. This CEO "built a new division from scratch," while that CEO "developed and advanced profitable new strategies" — single-handedly, one would think. It put me in mind of a study I saw years ago, showing that when publicly traded companies have good years, their annual reports are filled with claims of how their deliberate actions led to the better results, while in bad years they blame market conditions and other external factors.

Mintzberg observes that the descriptions of CEOs — often encouraged by the CEOs themselves — follows a similar pattern. This came to mind when I was going through some old files yesterday, and ran across this quote by Novartis's chief, Daniel Vasella, after his company re-acquired (at a hefty premium) rights to a drug they had abandoned, only to see it developed by a small start-up:

"The fact that we are where we are is the best proof that they were wrong."

The "we," of course, is Novartis. "They," meanwhile, refers to other people at Novartis (not Vasella, mind you). It's those other people, you see, who frittered the opportunity away.

A slip of the tongue? Maybe so. With Mintzberg's book still on my mind, however, I dug up Vasella's approved biography and learned that he "strengthened Novartis's research capacity" and "implemented strong pioneering initiatives." Elsewhere I discovered that he "co-authored" a book about his courageous efforts to develop and produce a breakthrough cancer treatment.

Busy guy. Yet with all this hands-on strengthening and implementing and developing, it's someone else's fault when Novartis lets a profitable new drug slip away.

Something I always liked about UNC basketball coach Dean Smith is that when his team won, he deflected all the credit to his players. When the team lost, however, he always used the word "we." Useful advice for a manager at any level — maybe even for a superstar CEO.

Recently I came across this quote from Voltaire: "Anything too stupid to be said is sung." It puts me in mind of the insipid John Mayer song, "Waiting on the World to Change," which has been nominated (naturally) for a Grammy. The song begins:

"me and all my friends
we're all misunderstood
they say we stand for nothing and
there's no way we ever could
now we see everything that's going wrong
with the world and those who lead it
we just feel like we don't have the means
to rise above and beat it"

So the essence of the song is that Mayer and his pals will sit on their overindulged fannies and wait for the world to change, in between stanzas asserting their superior moral sense and keen twenty-something ability to see through the obfuscation into how things really are.

One widely cited reviewer claims that none of Mayer's contemporaries "has come up with anything resembling a worthwhile anti-war anthem that is as good and speaks for their generation as much," which seems tantamount to calling Joe Biden the most honorable member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — an occasion more for weeping than praise.

Aside from being a hack writer, John Mayer is a big flaming wuss. This is his idea of a protest anthem? "Ooh, nobody will listen to us, so we're going to sit here and whine about it." It's a pathetic comparison to songs like "Four Dead in Ohio" (Gotta get down to it/Soldiers are cutting us down...How can you run when you know?), "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore," and "We Shall Overcome." Heck, even The Clash's "The Call Up" (It's up to you not to heed the call up/ I don't wanna die!) has more gravitas.

I suppose we should be thankful that people with bad ideas feel compelled to wallow in their impotence. The only thing more nauseating, after all, than the thought of millions of whelps grooving along to this claptrap would be to watch Mayer lead them in a protest march, cell phones and chai lattes tightly gripped in angry little fists of pique, a sea of fashionistas indignantly stamping their feet and agitating for some vague change that hopefully includes low-cost student loans and free music downloads.

So yes, John boy, keep waiting for the world to change. Play your self-indulgent ditties and leave the changing of things to the real men and women. It makes one long for the days when instrumentals were popular, and musicians were viewed more like servants than prophets.

Those of you who take The Wall Street Journal probably caught Wednesday's story about the efforts of Abbott Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company, to sell more of a very lucrative AIDS drug. The challenge for Abbott was that one of their lower-margin drugs was widely used in conjunction with a competitor's drug, in lieu of a more expensive Abbott uber-drug. The Journal obtained documents revealing some of the strategies Abbott considered for reducing use of its lower-margin drug.

I'll say up front that I'm not someone who thinks drug companies make too much money -- quite the contrary, it's precisely in critical fields like medicine that we want to see large profits, so that more brains and resources are attracted to them. So I have no problem with a company trying to make a buck, or a billion bucks.

According to memos obtained by the Journal, however, Abbott executives considered ideas like taking the lower-margin drug off the market and telling people that they had to do so in order to ship it to poor countries in Africa. Another alternative was to convert the pill form to a syrup that they described as tasting "like someone else's vomit."

Caught out by the press, Abbott did the usual corporate spin, claiming that the executives were "just brainstorming."

Apparently, lying is a plausible enough option at Abbott Laboratories that its executives feel comfortable considering it as a possible action item. That's what Abbott admits, in effect.

I'm not sure how one cuts out such a cancer once it has permeated an organization's culture. And if anyone doubts that Abbott's culture is threatened by a lack of integrity, consider the coda to this tale: after settling on a strategy of raising the price of its lower-margin drug by 400%, Abbott tried to counter outcries by posting on its website misleading data about the drug's cost compared to alternatives. The FDA later ordered it to take the misleading information down.

To be fair, one never knows, when reading a newspaper account, whether all the relevant facts are being presented. What seems clear, however, is that Abbott executives considered telling a disgusting lie about helping poor people in Africa, and that they see no problem contemplating such a lie.

People like this are a far greater enemy to markets and liberty than anyone in the hapless Democratic party, because they reinforce stereotypes of corporate executives as unprincipled brigands. They should be ashamed of themselves. Unfortunately, that's probably unlikely.

Imagine that you wanted to foster among the public and the press the impression that Christians are ignorant, mean-spirited buffoons. How might you go about it, were you a clever person? Rather than attack Christians directly, you might instead find yourself a puffed-up, theologically ignorant preacher, and give him a nationally televised cable program focused on current events. Maybe you'd even have him run for president a few times, so everyone could enjoy his ill-considered ruminations, delivered in the smarmy, self-righteous tones of a Hollywood actor doing an over-the-top impression of a Christian. You might invent, in other words, Pat Robertson.

Now the right reverend Robertson delivers us his 2007 prediction, straight, he says, from the lips of the Almighty: a terrorist attack on U.S. soil that will yield "mass killing." Scary indeed. The problem is, Robertson often gets it wrong. In 2006 he predicted that storms and "possibly" a tsunami would batter the U.S. coasts. In 2005 he prophesied Social Security reform. (I am not making this up.) "I have a relatively good track record," Robertson says, but "sometimes I miss."

This is a fascinating admission, for those of us who bother to read the Bible, because it turns out that the good Lord anticipated the likes of Robertson. To wit, Deuteronomy 18:21-22: "You may say to yourselves, 'How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD ?' If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him."

Unfortunately for Pat, the Bible also calls for false prophets to be put to death. Robertson, you might recall, is a bit harsh toward those he perceives to be outside God's favor. He famously claimed that Ariel Sharon's stroke was a punishment from God, that Hurricane Katrina was God's judgment (raising the question: are Hugh Hefner's live-in girlfriends evidence of God's blessing?), and that tinpot dictator Hugo Chavez ought to be assassinated.

I wonder how he might respond to the news of his own Old Testament-mandated execution for being a false prophet. Fortunately, true Christian teaching asks us to extend grace and mercy even toward those who deny it to others.

Still, it would be nice if he would pay a little more attention to the book of Job: "Men listened to me expectantly, waiting in silence for my counsel." If only.

Word to the wise, formulated during my morning jog: it's probably not a good idea to give your daughter a vanity plate, or any type of gear for that matter, that says: "Princess."

Because she just may start to believe it.

Do you want your daughter to be the princess of your heart? Absolutely. Do you want her to be the princess of the home, or neighborhood, or school? Absolutely not.

My experience with teenaged girls is that the ones raised to believe they are princesses behave much more like Cinderella's sisters than like Cinderella. And we all know how that story ends.

Funny how we tend to identify with the hero or heroine of a fairy tale, when we usually have much more in common with one of the secondary characters. I'm sure there's a lesson about life in that, or at the very least, a lesson about how to read a fairy tale.

I'm just as guilty as the next, though when I watch "Tombstone" I identify much more with Doc Holliday than Wyatt Earp. Perhaps it's a sense of doom, or the daily growing consciousness of my sins, or simply the fact that were I a cowboy, I'd like to be the kind who could put six holes in you before you could draw.

Still, it's a fantasy nonetheless, because never do I imagine myself in the role of one of the bad guys, or even worse, one of the impotent townsfolk. But most of us are exactly that, no?

How staggering the gap between our self-perceptions and our realities. How lovely that we are loved regardless.

So, back to the princesses, or more specifically, to their fathers. Men, turn off the television, put down the golf clubs, and use your heads. The kinds of boys who will come sniffing around your narcissistic little Barbie are not the sort who usually grow into men. And yet there one of them will be one day, sitting in your living room every Thanksgiving and Christmas, trying in vain to do the impossible task of keeping your little princess happy.

Notes to self:

1) Explain to my boys the difference between a princess and a lady.
2) Pray my grown knights remember that the damsels worth rescuing aren't already sitting on a throne made by daddy.
3) Work more evil princess characters into my homemade bedtime stories.

There. And all that from a single license plate. I should get out less.

Since today is the day we sons and daughters of unwanted immigrants offer thanks that the Almighty did not see fit to give those who got here before us gunpowder and military organization, it seems a fitting time to reply to the numerous responses to my post a couple of weeks ago, about the opposition of this nation's largest self-styled Christian radio network to illegal and -- I'll argue below -- legal immigration.

Several of you had very thoughtful replies, and I'll do my best to treat them thoughtfully. Reading your comments several times, I've noticed a few themes, the predominant of which is this:

There's a difference between illegal and legal immigration. It's the former we're concerned about, because it's not fair to legal immigrants, it taxes our health care system and schools and law enforcement, it threatens our wages and standard of living, and it's dangerous and difficult for the illegals themselves to get here and then survive. What's more, the Bible tells us to obey the law.

Here's a quick test for everyone who hangs his hat on that last sentence: what do you say we eliminate all immigration limits except for people suspected of criminal intent? The wily debater will want to obfuscate on that last bit, so let's stipulate that we have a special machine that allows us to determine with 100% validity whether someone intends to sell drugs to schoolchildren or detonate a bomb.

So, who's in favor of letting them all in, once our good Christian consciences are assuaged that this is no longer a matter of the law being broken?

Hello?

Very well. So what this really turns on for most of us is the economic cost and the concomitant danger to our culture and very lives of allowing boatloads of very different, very poor people to lodge on our shores. These are reasonable concerns, but let me suggest to you that the Almighty God and Creator is not concerned with your standard of living. To think otherwise is the height of narcissism, when you consider the poverty and oppression under which his people have lived throughout history. Do you think any of them mattered less to him, or that the crux of history was the day your white forefathers declared themselves outside the control of the governing authorities in England and set us down a path to 401-K's and flat-screen televisions?

To be sure, every good blessing is from above, but don't be deceived into thinking that your full larder and wallet are God's ends.

I have children, and I love being fat and happy, and I want them to be safe. Every parent wants this. But understand that when you argue against immigration because of the costs and dangers it entails, you are no longer arguing from Christian precepts, you are arguing from self-interest. I'm as self-interested as they come, heck, I was actually rooting for Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, but I don't tell myself this has anything to do with my understanding of God.

My issue with AFR on this matter is precisely that -- they bill themselves as a radio network bringing news and analysis from a Christian perspective, focusing on the issues Christians care about as Christians, the implication being that these are issues that emerge as important when we apply Christian precepts to our thinking. Now, if they'll change their slogan to "the radio network for middle-class American Christians who want to see the nation's GDP keep growing," at least we'll have some truth in advertising. But this leads to a second objection voiced by several of you:

Economics and politics do matter to God. The Bible itself addresses politics and economics. Do you honestly think he doesn't care whether people violate his laws, or whether we do anything about it? Would you have us believe that he doesn't care whether we protest abortion, for example?

In one sense, economics and politics describe our wranglings with man and nature over the distribution of resources and power. It is the struggling, the tempests in teapots, to which I addressed myself. Do you think it is on your walks around the abortion clinic that God pins his hopes for salvation of innocents? Is it on the capital gains tax that he depends for the weary and heavy-laden to be lifted?

Christ did not even view slavery as relevant to his purpose. Why do you believe he wrings his hands now over whether California will let two men get married? He already knows what will happen, being the Omega as well as the Alpha, and he knows how long he will tolerate every abomination, including the abominations that lie at the core of every man's heart, mine as well as your own. In that sense -- the only sense that will concern us once we've turned first to dust and then to glory or horror -- we see that economics and politics do not matter.

This is important to confront, because it gets at the roots of what often is our real concern. It is not affronts to God that offend us nearly so much as affronts to our sensibilities and net worth. Why do Christians get animated over homosexuality? Is it solely because God has called it an abomination? Then where are our efforts to stamp out gossip (rampant in our very churches!), disrespect to parents, and the lying that is almost sport among our political and business classes? We single out some sins because they offend us first. Rather than seeking to be on the side of God, we bring him to our side, as if he were the created thing.

Likewise, how many Christians block the entrances to abortion clinics, where innocent blood is shed? How many Christians instead give money to the Republican party, a collection of self-interested climbers morally and functionally almost indistinguishable from their opponents, the Republican party which, by the way, avoids doing anything meaningful about abortion?

Whose interests, really, are we protecting when most of us engage in politics?

Had you met Christ on the dusty roads of Palestine, or when you meet him now -- not as we confine him in liturgies and Wal-Mart bestsellers, but in the dark nights of our souls -- we are overjoyed and humbled and terrified to learn that our standing, our power, our very sustenance, is secondary to knowing and obeying. Ask John the Baptist. Ask the Samaritan woman at the well. She with the dry throat, simply seeking a bucket of cool water, and here is this uncomely stranger, from a tribe that disdains her own, and he tells her this water is nearly nothing, that it is the spring of living water she should seek. She came seeking a brief respite to thirst, and he told her there is a far deeper thirst, unquenchable except through the word, the door, the truth. Look this Christ in the eye and tell him about the importance of economics and politics. Survey his bleeding brow and explain how politicians -- men you and I have voted for -- have employed his name, and what, by their actions, they have deemed the most important things.

Now all this is not to say that Christians aren't called to politics, which would make no more sense than to declare that Christians can't be called to music, or teaching, or farming, or being juggling hot-dog stand vendors in downtown Des Moines. Just understand that there is no general call to politics, nor to the accumulation of personal wealth, nor to safety. We are enjoined to obey the governing authorities, not applaud them, not support them, not join them and work on their campaigns. Likewise, we are called to support our families, not give them all the delights available to men.

None of what I've said means you can't do these things, but I am suggesting that you examine your heart first. Are you investing your emotions and energy in politics to preserve your standard of living, or because you feel the sweet grace and pleasure of God poured out on you when you do it? The latter is calling, the former is dressing God up in a tweed suit and giving him campaign flyers.

And that is an abomination.

Now that I've preached far more than I intended, we come to a final objection, my favorite. In its simplest form it is this:

Do you live this way? Do you give to everyone in need, until you have no more to give? Do you let strangers into your home?

Dear friends and strangers, if I am your standard, you are doomed. I am weak and cowardly and sinful to the core. If you can only hear truth from one who is perfect, then look to the Gospels, to the letters in red, trusting that what you hold in your hands is God-breathed, and see for yourself the answers to your questions.

Find the passages where he has enjoined you to turn away aliens when admitting them would damage your finances. Commit to memory his sermons about the necessity of tempering mercy with economic practicality. While you're there, tell he who fed the multitudes that there isn't enough bread to go around. Explain to him that loving one's fellow man must stop where suffering increases. Seek him out atop Calvary and lay out the facts of this world, ask him to be reasonable, to show restraint.

On this day we give thanks, and I have found my prayer: Thank you, brother Christ, that you showed no restraint when we were the aliens, that you were not reasonable when we were far off, that suffering did not deter you when we had no hope and were without God in the world. Thank you that we live in such a place of prosperity and peace that we can actually believe that preserving this blink in the eye of history takes precedence over your calling. And please forgive us when we confuse gifts with entitlements, means with ends, and come to view our comfortable lives as your purpose.

While driving to work yesterday morning I hit a rarely-used button on my radio, one set to a mainstream Christian station where one in ten songs is not, for my tastes, awful. Every once in a while I try them out, and every once in a while they aren't playing a dreadful song.

The news was on; they are part of the American Family Radio network, which itself is part of the American Family Association. They offer "today's news from a Christian perspective," which can be translated as: "news a white middle-to-upper-income American Christian probably wants to hear, delivered by a Republican."

The news item was about a crack-down on illegal immigration. The reporter stressed words like illegal and sneak (as in, "people who sneak into the country"). A clip from a national anti-immigration figure was provided. The point was clear: finally, someone is doing something about those darned immigrants.

Good Christians, apparently, are glad that someone is stopping these grubby people from coming to our shores; it's a news item Christians care about. It's more likely the case that many wealthy white financial supporters of AFR are pleased with such a news item, and well, we've got to pay the bills to keep bringing you the modern music version of Air Supply meets Muzak.

Now, there are economic and policy arguments worth considering on both sides of the immigration issue. But here's the dangerous pressing matter, the thing that if you plan to sit your behind in a church pew today or tomorrow you really just cannot avoid: economics and politics don't matter to God.

Christians have a fundamental calling, and that is to find our lost brothers and sisters. We will not conquer this world for Jesus, and frankly, he doesn't need our help. We will not stop gay marriage and institute a God-approved (the Republican version, of course) tax rate. We will not keep people from philandering, gambling, masturbating, and wearing clothes that fit too tight, and if you think Christ wants you to fix these problems, then you are dreadfully, soul-shakingly mistaken.

"Tend my lambs." Not "stop people from being naughty." No "get the government off the back of the small businessman." Not a hint of "protect gun rights and the death penalty."

And certainly not "keep out the immigrants."

To the contrary, we received the Great Commission, and don't tell me that was just for the Disciples, because to believe that is to be hopelessly misguided about your place on this earth. We are to be a light to the hopeless and lost, be it in our own families, neighborhoods, churches (yes, there are plenty of hopeless and lost people there), and businesses, or overseas, amidst the unwashed, non-Republican masses.

Most of us don't do overseas missions work. Nor do we support such work, except for the few dimes from our paltry (on average) financial support for churches that makes its way to actual evangelism. But here we have this wonderful blessing of living in a country so prosperous that millions of people, many of them with no understanding of Christ, desperately want to come to us, and what is the response of the largest Christian radio network in America?

Keep 'em out.

1) Asserting that Wyatt Earp is a better movie than Tombstone.
2) Allowing your twelve year-old daughter to wear a tight, belly-exposing t-shirt that says “Built to Grind.”
3) French politicians.
4) German politicians.
5) Most politicians.
6) Equating George W. Bush with Adolph Hitler.
7) Anyone in the midst of a college education financed by his parents who has anything but warm things to say about said parents.
8) Childless people with vocal opinions about childrearing.
9) Lifelong Christians with no grace for sinners.
10) Not holding open the door for the person behind you.
11) Waiting until the last possible minute to merge.
12) Not letting people merge before the last possible minute.
13) Mistaking energy and boredom for Attention Deficit Disorder.
14) Citing Michael Moore as an authority on anything other than fried foods and self-promotion.
15) Advocating gun control from the safety of a gated community protected by private security.
16) Ordering a Big Mac, large fries, and a Diet Coke.

I'm sure there are others, no?

This week's Chronicle of Higher Education has an article entitled "Singular Mistreatment," about the trials and tribulations of unmarried faculty in academe. It's such a hard life, you know, making an average of $66,000 for nine months of work. The article is filled with the usual complaints of single people: we pick up the slack for the married people, why can't I have health care for my cats since we give health care to children, etc.

One of the people interviewed is Benita Blessing, a history professor at Ohio University. She complains about the number of baby showers and engagement parties for people in her department:

"I received a very prestigious fellowship from the National Academy of Education, and I got a couple of words of congratulations in the hallway. But no one bothered to throw me a party."

I'm thinking when Benita finally does tie the knot (no parties, please!), her suitor may do well to look up the term "high maintenance."

Some who make their money by practicing medicine (and let's get the incentives clear at the beginning, shall we?) believe the use of ultrasound devices by people with insufficient medical degrees should be stopped. The specter of giddy expectant parents ogling a four-dimensional image of their bundle of joy in utero under the smiling guidance of a mere technician is more than the blue-bloods can bear. This is medical technology, after all. Would we want these proletarians doing their own brain surgery?

In steps the FDA, making noise about regulating the practice. The danger, as a National Public Radio reporter explains, is that an ultrasound "releases energy into the body, and heats tissue."

Next on the physician/FDA cartel watch-list: hot cocoa, wool pullovers, and the sun.

Underlying this debate is the fact that ultrasounds are an enormously effective abortion deterrent. Pro-life advocates across the U.S. have established clinics next door to abortion shops, where mothers considering abortion are offered counseling, adoption and welfare services, housing, and frequently, ultrasounds. Very rarely will a mother, once she has seen for herself that the "cluster of tissue" notion is a lie, choose to abort.

Pro-abortion groups are hoping that the medical profession and FDA win this battle, because it will drastically drive up the cost of offering ultrasounds. There is at least a hint of collusion, as is evidenced by the intonations of Lawrence Platt, former head of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine. He warns against the "misuse of technology" and the dangers of employing it to "sway one's decision and impact someone's rights." I don't think he's referring to the rights of the unborn child.

The practice is also dangerous, Platt continues, because sometimes an ultrasound will reveal abnormalities in the child, and this can be traumatic for the parents. It's best, he says, that such a revelation take place with a physician at one's side.

Right, because you can't throw a stick at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association without hitting a compassionate doctor. Of course I don't really believe this is the case, but don't let my skepticism stop you from testing the hypothesis yourself.

I receive at seemingly random intervals an email from Writer's Market. The latest informs that a new online magazine called Betty is seeking submissions. The email references its own Market Watch publication, which quotes someone from Betty, who explains that the new zine's target audience is "the real woman...not the homemaker, but the educated, independent, serious woman and girl."

The real woman. Not the woman who sacrifices a career because she believes she can do more good in the world by raising and teaching her children herself. So what if she has wrestled for years with the challenges, for example, of raising her children in adherence to her faith? That doesn't compare with hustling to get appointed Executive Mid-Manager in MegaCorporation ABC, after all. Get real, mom. You are merely managing the moral, physical, and intellectual development of human beings; it's not like you are putting together PowerPoint slides comparing the costs of competing stationary vendors.

Not that the homemaker could do something like that, because she is, implies Betty, uneducated. Educated women, you see, don't stay home. How do we know? Because the sweethearts at Betty, along with their pseudo-intellectual ilk who infest the coastal cities, look around themselves and see educated women working. None of these smart women would dream of staying home with the kids. Ipso facto, educated women don't stoop to such an enterprise.

It is remarkable that the same people who can sit through an anthropology class and nod with reverence at the pagan bloodletting practices of Central African animists can evince such intolerance at the life choices of their fellow citizens. Surely it has occurred to them that there are homemakers who are educated and serious, whose lives are real?

No, it probably has not, because they don't know any beyond perhaps their mothers, and if I had a dime for every feminist I've met who holds her own mother in contempt I would be able to afford a big advertisement in Betty that says: "Stretch marks: the sign of a REAL woman."

So we are reduced to argument from personal experience. The problem with using anecdotes to make sweeping claims is that they are easily refuted by contradictory anecdotes. For example, in my personal network the wisest women all happen to be mothers who stay (or stayed) home with their children. They are also the most serious; they are staking out a life that is at odds with popular culture and the received wisdom of the Ivory Tower. Does this prove that educated, serious, real women always choose the life of mother and homemaker? Of course not, any more than the absence of real homemakers from the parochial Betty network is evidence that such don't exist. I'd be happy to introduce the Betty chicks to some real women who work in the home, if they could stand to leave the gripping reality of their decorated offices and cappuccino machines long enough to venture out into the vast stretches of imaginary America that don't mimic Murphy Brown.

I'm sure there are some activities more serious than training up one's own flesh and blood. Condoleeza Rice's job comes to mind. And Mother Theresa. Say, do any of the sweetie-pies at Betty work in national security fields, or devote their time and health to the poor?

I'm betting not so much. No, I suspect the Betty lovey-doves are ninety-percent single, childless freelance writers who sporadically emit educated, serious scribblings about the importance of remaining educated and serious by avoiding childbirth and childrearing. To do otherwise would not be to keep it real.

I could write more, but soon I must return home to my wife with two degrees who has been flitting about the house all day, reveling in the unserious fantasy-land that is raising two little boys. It's good I make enough money for her to stay at home. Otherwise she might have to enter the cruel, difficult, real world of memos, corporate expense accounts, and pantyhose. I'm so glad I can shelter the little lamb.

So Germany's Chancellor has announced that he will use "all my power" to disarm Iraq without going to war.

Perhaps ending the flow of arms, technology, and terrorist support from his own country would be a nice start.

The French, meanwhile, have threatened to block any U.N. Security Council resolution on the use of armed force against Iraq. Shouldn't the country that built the Maginot Line be forbidden from offering military advice? Don't they have some version of the kid's table at Thanksgiving, where all the French delegates can sit when the U.N. talks serious business?

I try to avoid hearing what actors have to say about politics. Stupid (e.g., Ed Asner) or evil (e.g., Vanessa Redgrave) views ruin my ability to enjoy an actor's work. By chance I turned on Charlie Rose last night. He was interviewing Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Elijah Wood, who plays Frodo in the films, and Viggo Mortensen, who plays Aragorn.

Oh, how I wish I had gone to bed early. Viggo had made himself a little t-shirt for the interview. It said, "No more blood for oil."

This, I am sad to say, was the best part of his appearance, at least the part that I saw before turning off the television in disgust. Viggo is upset that some people are comparing the U.S., in its war on terror, to the forces of good in the movie. According to him, it is actually the reverse: the U.S. is Sarumon, its rapacious (his word) government unleashing forces of destruction on innocent civilians huddled at Helm's Deep.

In short, Viggo is a bloody idiot.

More wisdom from Viggo: the upcoming war against Iraq is a diversion, to distract people from the "fact" that the U.S. has been bombing civilians in Afghanistan for a year, and has killed more innocents than were killed in the Trade Center attacks. It is also a vendetta spawned by Bush's father.

In case you are tuning in late, the point is that Viggo is a bloody idiot.

The entertaining element in this interview, which was supposed to be about the movie, was imagining the reactions of the movie's marketers. Let's put it this way: I'm betting the pucker factor was pretty high. Depending on what kind of press this gets, two days into the opening of the second movie in the trilogy, the pucker factor could go higher.

"You were supposed to talk about the movie, pretty boy, not your paranoid personal politics. Who are you, freaking Ed Begley, Jr. all of a sudden?" I'm sure right now the marketers are meeting with the PR flaks, to figure out how best to position themselves if this hits the fan. And let's hope that it does.

Not, mind you, because Viggo's insipid views matter. What should be most insulting to American fans of the wonderful movies is that Viggo felt he should speak out in order to set us all straight on what the movie does and does not mean. Deep-thinking Viggo, who by his own admission didn't even open the first Tolkien book until he was on his way to filming. He learned some lines and play-acted some fight scenes, so now he's an expert on the symbolism of good and evil, and their interconnections with global politics.

This isn't surprising, to be sure, Hollywood is chock full of stupid people with ridiculous, trendy little views. The worst part of this spectacle, however, was that Viggo trotted out the "I'm just trying to be an independent voice" line. "Nobody questions U.S. policy, or asks why we need to kill all of these innocent civilians," he exclaimed.

So here's what will happen next. If this gets much press, Viggo will say that oppressive conservatives are trying to silence him and others who agree with him. This is a tactic of the self-pitying, irrational Left. Sling out ridiculous accusations, exclaim that you are really just trying to inject truth into the debate, and then run hiding at the first sign of critique.

Viggo couldn't even withstand the gentlest of questioning from Rose ("What would you have done differently after 9/11," Rose asked. "Well, I wouldn't have killed all those innocent people in Afghanistan," was the evasive answer). There's no way he can maintain his assertions in the face of a detailed rebuttal. Not that people like him ever have any intention of doing so. Instead, they equate rebuttal with efforts to crush their rare flower of an opinion.

The second movie, by the way, is well worth seeing, especially the battle scenes. You might find yourself rooting a little for the Orcs, however. Imagine what an insufferable little kingdom this Aragorn would build for himself. Tolkien's work is art, and it is beautiful in its portrayal of the eternal battles in and around man. It is a pity Viggo Mortensen isn't more worthy of the tale.

UPDATE:
Oh, it just keeps getting better. this thread is just one of many on the Charlie Rose website. A sample from one of Viggo Mortensen's fans:

"Viggo Mortensen demonstrated admirable courage in wearing his homade (sic) "no more blood for oil tee shirt on Charlie�s show. I thought he handled himself very well under the inquisition that Charlie presented regarding the meaning it represented."

And another fan:

"I also applaud to Viggo for his T-shirt and Charlie for letting him discuss it. This kind of intelligent discussion is so lacking in main stream TV these days. It might have been a digression from the discussion of the movie, but I loved the spontaneity and that Charlies allowed the digression.

Now if Charlie would bring Noam Chomsky for an hour discussion."

Noam Chomsky. Oh. Dear. God.

I'm thinking of a scene from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, when Aragorn and Gimli leap into a crowd of orcs and send bodies flying left and right. This close-minded little cabal on the Rose website suggests a similar opportunity...

Update
Comments are closed. Now all of you just . . . go away. Scoot. Be gone. Enjoy yourselves on someone else's website.

Jimmy Carter has finally got himself a Nobel Peace Prize. His record includes involvement in the Egypt-Israel peace agreement (although Sadat may disagree about the peacefulness of the outcome), the outstanding Habitat for Humanity, and several health-related endeavors in the Third World. His record also includes averting U.S. action against North Korea in 1994 by getting them to accept money, food, and increased nuclear capacity in return for pretending not to develop nuclear and chemical weapons.

Appeasement of murderers in return for false promises has been his modus operandi for years in fact, culminating in a shameful -- if not treasonous -- effort to unmake the first President Bush's Gulf War Coalition even as American forces entered harm's way. This sort of behavior led some to speculate that his peace-at-all-costs approach had as its end a Nobel Prize rather than true peace, which is to say, peace that lasts longer than the echoes of his shoes linger in a tyrant's marble corridors.

This speculation is a bit mean-spirited; my own belief is that Carter really has possessed good intentions all along. He is a Christian, though one who seems to think the nature of men has changed since the Bible was compiled, and whose forgiveness never seemed to go beyond tyrants and Democrats (his long-standing grudge against members of the Reagan Administration for reversing his entire foreign and military policy regime is well-known).

But he means well. When combined with ignorance of economics and boundless optimism about the powers of bureaucracy, this makes for a sorry U.S. President -- as Carter well proved. But in ample supply, and when combined with tireless effort, it can earn one a Nobel Peace Prize. There have certainly been less deserving recipients.

Labor Day. A day we don't work. A fitting way to celebrate the holiday, if you think about it. Check out AFL-CIO president John Sweeney's bio, for example -- the guy hasn't worked a day in his life. What exactly does one do as a "research assistant with the Ladies Garment Workers," anyway? And how bad does your resume have to be to warrant this sad confession?

That's right, I'm bringing out the smack. A few people have had it coming, and today I'm bringing it. Like Rosie O'Donnell. Is it just me, or does Rosie's latest hairdo make her look like Bob's Big Boy?.

And the whole coming out of the closet thing. There's this myth that admitting one's homosexuality can harm one's entertainment career. I call it the Ellen DeGeneres fallacy. Ellen is a martyr for the cause of bad comedy writing, not homosexuality. So now Rosie has stepped out of that oversized glass closet she was in. This is supposed to be brave. Maybe so. What's really brave is that haircut she's sporting.

And what's with this "women's wisdom" kick the entertainment world has been on for the last few years? "Ya-Ya Sisterhood," "American Quilt," "The View," you see the pattern. Every summer, another chick bonding flick. Every fall, another talk show featuring some snarky new gal. We're all extremely wise beyond our years, we're bold, we're beautiful, we have active sex lives. Yay us.

Well, the whole thing is starting to tick me off. If Anna Quindlen, Barbara Walters, and the gals from "The Sopranos" are the best brains womankind has to offer, then we'd better rethink the Nineteenth Amendment. For