Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

This American Life broadcast an unintentionally hilarious (if it wasn’t so incredibly sad) segment, Swing Set, about undecided voters in swing states who hate Bush but can’t seem to bring themselves to vote for Kerry.

Ira Glass follows the electoral mood swings of Dr. James Hackett, a medical doctor from rock-ribbed Republican Cincinnati, OH. Hackett, known to his friends as “Gig,” is an affable, intelligent, but clueless undecided voter. He hates Bush and says so clearly. Doesn’t agree with him on the tax cut; doesn’t agree with him on the prosecution of the Iraq War. The only good thing he has to say is that Bush clearly has the courage of his convictions. Glass points out the irony that Hackett agrees with virutally none of Bush’s convictions. Hackett himself understands the inherent contradiction and doesn’t even attempt to explain it away.

Hackett has serious problems with Kerry. He says Kerry is “the most liberal senator.” When Glass asks him to state a particular Kerry “liberal” position with which he disagreed, Hackett replies that he doesn’t know Kerry’s record well enough to say. Later in the interview, when Glass points out a Los Angeles Times article which declares that Kerry is the 10th most liberal senator, Hackett responds incredulously: “then why are they saying he’s the most liberal?” He says this with the most piteous tone as if he’d been betrayed by whoever the “they” is. Of course, he never stops to consider that George Bush and Dick Cheney are the ones who told him this white lie.

Even more incredulously, Hackett looks back nostagically at the Clinton presidency and believes, in retrospect of course since he disliked Clinton while he was president, he was a great president. Glass points out that the reason he likes Clinton so much is that Clinton was a “suck-up.” If a poll told him the majority of the American people believed one way on an issue, then Clinton adopted that position. Didn’t matter if that position went against his own personal views. Clinton was a “suck up” to the American people, while Bush on the other hand takes few positions that Hackett or the majority of the American people agree with. Then Glass goes farther in stating that this is precisely the type of candidate John Kerry is. Unlike Bush, Kerry will take positions based on what most Americans want. Kerry, like Clinton, will conceal his own views on the issues because he wants to “suck up” to you, the American people.

Hackett told Ira that he had a good point. During their various discussions, he admits to Glass that there is little or no logic in his refusal to embrace Kerry. When it comes down to it, Hackett tells Glass that the reason he will vote for Bush and Glass for Kerry is that he has been a life-long Republican and Glass a lifelong Democrat. But in the same breath, Hackett says he is not refusing to vote for Kerry out of party loyalty. Go figure.

If that isn’t a confused, befuddled and hopelessly at-sea voter, I don’t know what is. And if Bush wins the election (God help us, I hope it isn’t so) it will be because of voters like Dr. James Hackett, who know Bush is a disaster but can’t bring themselves to vote for the other guy. And they will get the kind of disastrous government they deserve dragging the rest of us, kicking and screaming, along with them.

My wife is nearly 34 weeks pregnant (unbelievably pregnant!) with twins conceived at the NYU fertility clinic using a donor egg procedure. Two weeks ago, we had a special ultrasound that allows intricate measurements of fetal growth and health.

Our OBGyn, Dr. Robert Levine at Swedish Hospital, told us that it is natural for the one twin to grow at a faster rate in the final weeks before delivery and for the other to lag somewhat. The ultrasound results two weeks ago caused some minor alarm because our boy (whom we’re planning to call Adin Chanan) weighed 3 lbs. 11 oz., while the girl (who we’re planning to name Miriam Rose) weighed 3 lbs. 3 oz. The boy was in the 46th percentile and the girl around the 14th. There was an approximate 13% weight differential. Dr. Levine told us to do another ultrasound in two weeks and that if the differential increased to 20% or if she decreased to the 5th percentile that we might consider delivering early or other precautions to help the little girl.

In the interval, my wife and I gave our girl a pep talk, telling her not to let her brother intimidate her. We told her to make sure she got her own. We probably should’ve played Billie Holiday’s, God Bless the Child: “God bless the child who’s got her own, got her own.”

A few days ago, we went in for the subsequent ultrasound and thankfully all is well. She weighs 4 lbs. 2 oz and he weighs 4 lbs. 10 oz. He is still in the 46th percentile, but she’s risen to the 16th. The weight differential is now 11%. Everyone’s breathing a sign of relief.

Our doctor says that he’d like Janis to get to 38 weeks before delivering (this is considered full term for twins). But the awful symptoms of pregnancy are weighing down upon her heavily. I’m betting on her getting to term, but I sure don’t wish the suffering she’s experiencing on her or anyone.

I’ve uploaded ultrasound images of the twins in the past, but our technician didn’t seem to come up with images that looked good enough to me to print. So no images this time around.

My wife and I suffered from infertility for two years. We turned to egg donation and successfully conceived a son, Jonah, who’s now 3 1/2. Since that first attempt we decided to try again and my wife is expecting twins in early December. I’ve written fairly frequently here about our experiences.

When John Edwards was chosen as John Kerry’s running mate, the New York Times and other publications noted that Ms. Edwards had “used hormone injections” in her efforts to become pregnant with the two children they share. I wrote a post, Elizabeth Edwards and Infertility, declaring that it was highly likely Edwards used egg donation to become pregnant and that I hoped she might speak publicly about her experience on behalf of the millions of Americans who are infertile and have used egg donation to create families of their own.

When I visited the John Edwards blog to mention the post I’d written, I received a torrent of abuse from people saying I had no business invading Edwards privacy, that I was diverting people’s attention from the far more important issue of the election campaign, and even worse personal insults. I understand that there is a tremendous level of ignorance and even hostility toward the infertile in this society. But I was still taken aback by what I read in this forum.

Last week, Suz Redfearn sent me an e mail saying she was writing an article, Did Elizabeth Edwards Use Donor Eggs? for Slate.com on just this subject. She interviewed me and to tell you the truth most of what I said ended up on the “cutting room floor.” I also felt the article’s tone was a bit breathy and breezy considering the gravity and complexity of the issue. But I still feel that Redfearn wrote an important piece that deserves the attention of the everyone, whether infertile or not.

Slate published the article today and there’s been a similar torrent of hostility in the Slate discussion forums against Redfearn for writing the article, and against Slate for publishing it. These commenters are irate in feeling that Elizabeth Edwards’ medical issues are no one’s business but her own. They are irate that someone like Redfearn even feels this is an issue worthy of discussion. Here’s a non-representative sampling of responses:

“Who, has put you in charge of butting your nose into, this womans life. How dare you question this personal part of her life. You should not even care, let alone ask others into this very private choice in this person’s life. SHAME ON YOU.”

“I’m appalled by this piece. It is irrelevant and mean spirited. And I’m disappointed in a publication that I have always found a place for refreshing views. I find it highly questionable that such an article would be published four days before the election about something so personal.”

“Suz has obviously grown up in the climate where corporal punishment was not practised. A pity. Her attitude and convolute mind deserve a big double smack on her derrier.”

“I cannot believe anyone would have the audacity to publish such nonsense. This is truly deplorable and I cannot fathom that 1) the authors of this article are so heartless as to actually put these accusations in print and 2) that Slate allowed them to be published. This shows the authors’ desperate and futile attempt to “make news” and a shameful lack of judgment and credibility. The classless people who wrote this should be utterly humiliated and disgusted with themselves.

A note to the authors: to charge that a mother’s children are not her own is a gruesome crime.”

Not once does Redfearn contend that Edwards’ children are not “her own,” even if she used egg donation to create them. I know. My wife is more the mother of our son than the blessed woman who contributed the eggs to create him. My wife bore him in her womb for nine months. She breastfed him when he was an infant. She has been every bit the mother that any woman would be who used her own egg to create her child.

Where do people come up with these ridiculous imputations. Why are they so ignorant? Why are they so hateful?

Redfearn’s article merely suggested that Edwards, should she choose, could educate the nation about the scourge of infertility. She could do enormous good for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of couples who suffer from it. She could use her bully pulpit to speak of the injustice of the infertile not being able to get health insurance coverage which would enable them to use fertility treatment to conceive. She could speak of the injustice done to the poor woman, desperate to have a child and family, but who cannot afford the enormous expensive of these treatments.

The infertile need someone to speak for them. Chris Reeve willingly served that role for those suffering from spinal injury. Michael J. Fox serves this role for those with multiple schlerosis. Magic Johnson champions those suffering from HIV/AIDS. What’s wrong with asking someone in the public eye to take up the cause and help those suffering with the same condition as them?

I have gone public about infertility and egg donation because I want to do my small share to educate those who don’t suffer from this as my wife and I did. My son knows he is an egg donor baby. We are open with him about this. We want this to be a natural part of his life. I completely do not understand those who either defer telling their children or say they won’t tell them at all. Being an egg donor baby should be no different than having red hair or green eyes. The longer there is silence, ignorance and fear regarding this subject, the more pain and suffering such children may experience as they grow up.

If you’re disturbed by the comments you read above, I hope you’ll visit the Slate.com Medical Examiner forum and add your two cents worth.

UPDATE: As I write this on November 6, 2004, the Edwards family has revealed that Elizabeth Edwards has breast cancer. I want anyone reading this to know that I wish her a speedy and full recovery. I have a friend and a former girlfriend who have had breast cancer. Both have beaten it so far and I’m hopeful that Edwards will be among these lucky ones.

tags donor-egg, elizabeth-edwards-infertility, slate, suz-redfearn

Just when I was thinking how long it’d been since a New York Times article really got me steamed, Michael Marriott served up a doozy (Weaned on Video Games) in yesterday’s Circuits. Here Marriott serves up a love cocktail to the video game industry by touting the wide-open market for games among the 4 year-old set. I kid you not! Not only that, but amidst all the breathy excitement of the author’s prose, he doesn’t ask or allow a single child psychologist or public interest children’s group to comment on the dubious phenomenon of children as young as two (that’s right, one marketing whiz proudly claimed that his game could be played by a 2 year-old!) playing video games.

Here’s what another marketer has to say about the promise of this niche for her industry:

“We have been looking at data that shows that kids at an earlier and earlier age are starting to play video games,” said Julia Fitzgerald, vice president for marketing at VTech Electronics North America. “We wanted to know how we could make this phenomenon work for Mom” - and make it educational.

How does it “work for Mom?” By turning Mom’s babies into zombies during the hours spent in front of the game, thereby serving as a lobotomizing baby sitter?

The author presents the disturbing findings of a study about children’s gaming habits:

A report last fall by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research organization, found that half of all 4- to 6-year-old children have played video games - on hand-held devices, computers or consoles - and one in four played several times a week. Of children 3 or younger, 14 percent have played video games.

That last figure sends chills down my spine.

Pardon me for poking fun at Marriott, but I just have to:

Some game analysts and developers also point out that children are getting older faster.

So let me make sure I understand: our children are losing their childhood to violent cartoons and movies; they’re losing their innocence through the brazenly sexual children’s clothing hyped by the fashion industry…all of this meaning that the video game industry is just following a trend rather than making one? Crap, I say.

Let’s hear from another thoughtful marketer certainly not interested in exploiting toddlers for financial gain:

Daniel Hewitt, public relations manager for the Entertainment Software Association, the trade group that represents computer and video game publishers in the United States, said that playing video games “comes really naturally” to very young children.

Perhap Mr. Hewitt would like to take this to its natural idiot extreme? Maybe cigarette smoking could be similarly introduced to the toddler set. Maybe they’ll take to that “really naturally” as well.

Now, let’s let another marketer put his foot squarely in his mouth without realizing it:

“It’s great for us, introducing kids to video games at a young age,” said Joe Brisbois, a game producer for Sony Computer Entertainment America in Foster City, Calif. “Speaking as a designer, it will push us to create more challenging games for this generation of players that will master the basic skill sets earlier than any other in the past.”

This really starts to remind me of Camel’s attempt to coax young people into smoking with its Joe Camel campaign. The only difference is that cigarette smoking eventually kills these children smokers, while video games only stunt their tender brains.

Besides the question of where this journalist’s professional judgment flew off to, I think there must also be an editor asleep at the wheel here. What editor in his right mind working on an article like this doesn’t ask his reporter to go out and get an alternative view on such a toxic social development?

Maybe you’ll say I’m an old fogey. Perhaps, younger parents (I’m in my early 50s) won’t find anything potentially harmful with Jake or Tina spending hours in front of a video game screen. I know I wasn’t born on video games and don’t use them. But I still think that my point has merit. This simply can’t be good for children whose brain function is so sensitive and tender at such an early age. I can’t imagine that a young child who needs tremendous mental and physical stimulation in their play is going to get much by playing such games.

My son is 3 1/2 and he’s playing with wooden blocks; he’s painting; he’s drawing; he’s dancing down the hall and singing his heart out. But he’s not playing video games.

Sam Mangwana will certainly enter the pantheon of soukous’ greatest vocalists, which already honors Tabu Ley Rochereau and Franco. But unlike his mentors, he embraced a soukous style that imbibed the gentle, rollicking rumba rhythms of the Caribbean (especially Cuba). Perhaps, his affinity for Angolan music and its Portugese inflections also caused Mangwana to embrace European and New World influences. Unlike his soukous predecessors, his arrangements tend toward a softer, more acoustic and less electronic sound.

Born in Kinshasa in 1945 of Angolan parents, his father was a shopkeeper and his mother sang at a social club for Angolan women. He attended a boarding school run by Salvation Army missionaries and sang in the school’s choir. Almost by accident, he met Tabu Ley on the street one day and before long he joined Tabu Ley’s Africa Fiesta. After singing with Tabu Ley for ten years, he branched out and performed with Franco and other prominent Kinshasa bands. In the 1970s, he moved to the Ivory Coast and teamed up with the musicians who later went on to form another seminal African ensemble, Les Quatres Etoiles. Because of his musical “wanderings,” he is known as La Pigeon Voyageur.

Leopardmannen.no characterizes Mangwana’s topical interests in his lyrics as:

He usually sings about love, in songs where he tells a particular story. But his lyrics also have political tendencies. Songs like “Canta Mocambique”, “Soweto” and “Zimbabwe” pay tribute to the struggle against colonialism. A true Pan African, Mangwana’s dream is “an Africa without guns, where democracy will not be submitted to the rise and fall of the dollar.”

Mangwana’s Fati Mata (hear it) is one of the fine compositions on Rumba Music. It begins with Mangwana’s slow, mellifluous melodic line (as one would expect in a traditional soukous introduction). But instead of charging full speed ahead into a blindingly fast and joyful soukous guitar frolic, the song maintains its sweet, lilting tempo adding a touch of that spicy rumba rhythm for which he is so well-known. All told, this is pure joy, pure soul and pure love.

WARNING: This mp3 blog exists to spread the wonder and genius that is traditional music. It does NOT exist to enhance your private mp3 collection. So by all means come, listen, enjoy, then follow the links to buy the music. If you come, listen, download, then leave—you’re violating the spirit behind this blog and doing nothing to support the artists featured here. And if you link to my mp3 file at your own site, then you’re stealing my bandwidth and being pretty uncool. So please don’t do it.

The Bush Administration and the U.S. military have been as good in protecting the looted weapons cache at Al Qaqa'a and tracking down its whereabouts as they've been in tracking down Osama bin Laden--which is to say, not good at all. When little Georgie explains to his teacher why he doesn't have his homework, his response undoubtedly will be: "Sadaam ate it."1996 photo of weapons bunker at Al Qaqaa (credit: NYT) John Kerry correctly has taken on Bush for this failure:"Mr. President, you don't honor our troops or protect them better by putting them in greater danger ...

Jim Rutenberg has an interesting article in today's New York Times (Web Offers Hefty Voice to Critics of Mainstream Journalists) about the torrid heat that journalists face from political joggers who dispute their reportage. Rutenberg begins by saying:Practicing cheap and dirty politics, playing fast and loose with the facts and even lying: Accusations like these, and worse, have been slung nonstop this year. The accused in this case are not the candidates, but the mainstream news media. And the accusers are an ever-growing army of Internet writers, many of them partisans, who reach hundreds of thousands of people a day. Journalists covering the campaign believe the intent is often to bully them into caving to a particular point of view. ...

Gasparyan playing the ancient duduk (credit: Michael Brook Breakdown)In 1998, Djivan Gasparyan and Michael Brook collaborated on an amazing album of Armenian duduk music, Black Rock. For those who've been sleeping under rocks for a decade or so, Michael Brook is the virtuoso guitarist and record producer who earlier created two phenomenal albums with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. In these collaborations, Brook brings an ur-contemporary musical sensibility while at the same time extending extraordinary courtesy to the musical genre and tradition from which his co-collaborator springs. In the case of Gasparyan, Brook brings forward the throaty, mournful sound of ...

My answer is a decided, even shouted "NO!" The impetus for this post is Mark Glaser's Open Season: News Sites Add Outside Links, Free Content in the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review. In this article, Glazer trumpets the promising developments in some online news sources' making their sites more accessbile to readers, bloggers and web surfers. One media outlet featured in this story sparked my interest: the New York Times, which I subscribe to here in Seattle; and which provides much of the impetus for my posts on politics and culture....

As if we needed any more proof, an October 23rd AP article (U.S. makes inroads vs. Iraq insurgents) and the latest news of the deadly massacre of 50 Iraqi recruits (Inquiry Into Ambush Opens; Iraqi Forces Feared Infiltrated) prove the utter folly and hubris of current American policy in Iraq. The first story appears to be one of those "feel good" pieces aimed to show that the U.S. is making slow, but steady progress in its war against the Iraqi insurgents. Denis Gray's article features a handsome Harvard-educated African-American colonel who served as military aide to Bill Clinton, Col. Dana Pittard....