Ted Kennedy’s ambiguous legacy

 

For America’s most famous Catholic, morality and politics had little to do with each other.

Today Massachusetts mourns its Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy. At Dunkin Donuts, the flags are flying at half mast. Boston's famously snarled traffic has come to a standstill because of "Kennedy events". The casket of Camelot's last survivor made a final tour of its shrines – Hyannis Port, his family's summer residence, St Stephen's, his mother’s church in Boston’s North End, and Faneuil Hall, where he had announced his unsuccessful bid for the presidential 1980 nomination. The Massachusetts royal family waved through tinted car windows at the crowds. Thousands passed through the Presidential Library at Harvard dedicated to his brother to view the casket and sign the condolences books.

For Boston, it is a Diana moment.

Edward M. Kennedy died of a brain tumour on Tuesday at the age of 77. He had been in the Senate since he was 30 and stayed there for 47 years, the third longest-serving Senator in American history. Some wits quipped that while most politicians grow up and then enter politics, Kennedys enter politics and grow up later.

But Massachusetts voters doted on Ted Kennedy and patiently gave him time to mature. There was his expulsion from Harvard for cheating; there were rumours about drinking and womanizing; there was Chappaquiddick; there was his 1982 divorce, his 1992 remarriage (after an annulment from the Catholic Church). He was a Kennedy – Joe and Rose's son, Jack and Bobby's brother – and nothing stuck. He had a scare in the 1994 election when he faced Mitt Romney -- and won with only 58 percent of the vote. Other politicians can only dream of that kind of support.

But Ted Kennedy was not a seat-warmer. Politicians from both sides of politics praised him as an accomplished lawmaker. With the years, the lion-maned Bostonian became a consummate deal-broker who worked both sides of the aisle to get what he believed in. In 2001 he worked with President George W. Bush to pass the No Child Left Behind Act. He was a liberal, the very Aslan of American liberalism, a consistent champion of government spending to right wrongs and remedy disadvantage. Health care was the cause of his life, although he died without seeing victory for the Democrats' plans to reform it. In the words of President Obama, “He became not only one of the greatest senators of our time, but one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy.”

But one of Ted Kennedy's most important legacies to American politics has hardly been mentioned in the acres of newsprint – how he shaped the debate about faith and politics.

For Ted Kennedy was a Catholic. He had the Massachusetts Catholic vote in his pocket. His mother was a saintly woman. His brother was the first Catholic president. He was married in the Catholic Church, received communion in the Catholic Church, saw a priest before he died, is being buried in the Catholic Church.

But he was a peculiar kind of Catholic. On the one hand, he always supported big-spending social policies for the last, least, lost and most vulnerable. It was his interpretation of Catholic social teaching. On the other hand, he was a strong supporter of abortion and human embryonic stem cell research. There was no ambiguity about this. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood gave Kennedy ratings of 100 percent as a champion of abortion rights. He ignored criticism from the bishops of his Church.

Through his role as the spokesman for America's leading Catholic family, Teddy helped to entrench the feeling that Catholicism is a tribal loyalty, not a divine light shining on religious and human truths. The doctrine of separation of Church and State meant that morality and politics had little to do with each other. In fact, political expediency should trump moral truths.

For politicians anywhere, this is a disastrous starting point for debate. It means that it is impossible for them to argue rationally about moral positions. On the issue of abortion, for instance, the Catholic bishops' opposition was based less on the Bible than on science, which tells us that the foetus is human. On this issue, at least, Kennedy's self-serving rationalisations turned his politics into expediency and his religion into sentimentality.

“I hope for an America where neither 'fundamentalist' nor 'humanist' will be a dirty word, but a fair description of the different ways in which people of goodwill look at life and into their own souls,” he said in an influential 1983 speech at Liberty University before Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. Twenty-six years later, President Obama would make a similar speech at Notre Dame University, gracefully acknowledging differences on abortion, and obstinately refusing to change.

Shortly after his death, Mr Obama declared that Ted Kennedy's “ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of lives.” Including his own. In particular, when he addresses issues like abortion, stem cell research and same-sex marriage, perhaps the President will be using the dark art of charming without changing which he learned from America's most famous Catholic.

By: Michael Cook is the editor of MercatorNet. He is currently in Boston.

tags : Catholicism, Edward Kennedy, politics, United States

The Democrats after Kennedy

 

What Obama must now do is to articulate a clear, distinct course of policy.

The first time I met him, on a boat trip along the coast in Florida at Easter 1962, just before he was manoeuvred into the Senate by family clout, arguably before he had reached the qualifying age, he and his first wife, Joan, were as beautiful as young gods. They were tanned and toned in seersucker, the very image of the American rich on vacation.

The last time I saw him, at a fundraising lunch in Boston in the late 1990s, he was ravaged - face brick-red, boozer's nose and eye, grossly overweight, but still charged with rare charm and formidable energy. This was the image that characterised his later years, until his death on 25 August 2009 at the age of 77.

In a Newsweek article he wrote after he had been diagnosed with a brain tumour, called "The Cause of My Life", Kennedy listed just some of the medical and psychological disasters he and his family had survived, among them the plane crash that broke his back and several ribs, a son's leg amputated for one cancer, and a daughter treated for another.

He might have mentioned a sister's crippling by a (possibly unnecessary) frontal lobotomy, the death of a brother, a sister-in-law and a nephew in separate plane crashes, and the murder of his two brothers.

His point in the article was that he and his family survived in part because of his congressional insurance, in part because of his family's great wealth. He understood that many other Americans less fortunate than him, were wiped out financially by healthcare costs, or simply died miserably for lack of the money to pay for care. That was why, he was saying, healthcare was, of all his liberal causes, the one that meant most to him, and it is true that in his forty-seven years in the Senate reform of the American healthcare system was his absolute top priority.

By: Godfrey Hodgson was director of the Reuters' Foundation Programme at Oxford University

tags : Edward Kennedy, Obama, United States

All shall be poor

 

How today’s sexual narcissists insist on propagating their dreary values.

A hot new must-read book making the rounds is Frenchwoman Corinne Maier's No Kids: Forty Good Reasons Not To Have Children. Having read her embarrassingly superficial Maclean's interview and perused the jejune list of what constitutes "reasons" for Maier --kids cut into your "fun," kids are "conformists" --I'll pass on actually reading the book. Yet, because it would seem there was both money and celebrity to be gleaned from time Maier might otherwise have idly frittered away in an afternoon nap, I'm tempted to give the idea a whirl myself.

Since wisdom clearly isn't a prerequisite for success in this genre, but a knack for "shocking" hopelessly retrograde traditionalists is, how's this for a book concept: Forty Reasons Women Should Love the Burka (1--No more pesky skin cancer fears! 17 --Size 2 or 14, who's to know, so goodbye dieting! 31 -- You're out of that whole beauty rat race thing! etc.).

Does this parodic riff exaggerate the inanity of Maier's thesis? Just a tad. I wouldn't normally dignify such lifestyle bumf with a column, but it struck me that the hoopla around this silly book falls into a cultural pattern, according to which the media eagerly aggrandize purveyors of utter banality, as long as they are advocating for the abandonment of demonstrably valuable social norms.

The 19th-century Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem commonsensically pointed out what seems obvious to me: "It's no sin to be poor, but it's no great honour either." The problem is, in this age of self-esteem uber alles, in which all must have prizes, being known as "poor" is no longer acceptable to the, er, poor. Or at least not the evolutionary version of poor -- those bent more on their own pleasure than the producing and raising of society's future citizens: you know, the ones paying for Corinne Maier's Parisian nursing-home bed.

Nowadays, our culturally wealthy live and let live: Since the rise of counterculture in the 1960s, we dull normals -- faithful marrieds privileging the natural law and their children's happiness over our own transient self-indulgence -- have for some time eschewed any labelling of alternate lifestyles as sinful. But our cultural poor aren't satisfied to return the favour and let dull normals live their socially productive lives in peace.

Unlike Marxists, the evolutionary poor don't want the wealthy to share their wealth. They just won't stop pestering them to concede that it is as desirable -- what am I saying? more desirable -- to be poor than to be rich, a theory the rich are disinclined to endorse for excellent reasons.

A case in point: In a long feature article in the July/August issue of Atlantic magazine, by regular columnist Sandra Tsing Loh, "Let's Call the Whole thing Off," one of America's top journalists exploits the failure of her own 20-year marriage (two young kids) as a self-esteem-boosting springboard to the argument that traditional marriage is no longer a good thing for anyone: "Isn't the idea of a lifelong marriage obsolete?" (a question she never asked when happily married).

Adducing validation of her thesis in the disintegration of several friends' marriages, as well as a few cherry-picked theorists urging radical family re-engineering, Loh eventually arrives at "some modest proposals" that include: "marriage as a splitting-the-mortgage-arrangement"; or "some sort of French arrangement" with a gourmet cook or handyman for a husband "and the occasional fun-loving boyfriend the kids never see."

Above all, Loh cautions all women to "avoid marriage" and with it the pain that accompanies "something as demonstrably fleeting as love." Deep stuff, eh?

Why couldn't Loh just divorce and shut up about it? Because she felt lousy. Infidelity (hers) and divorce felt like failure. Her self-esteem took a hit. That didn't compute with a lifetime of assurance that self-esteem is an automatic entitlement, rather than the fruit of earned achievement. Fortunately, as an intellectual with a social podium, she knew just how to get it back: Publicly announce that henceforth marriage failure is actually ... success!

Sholem Aleichem would scratch his head in puzzlement at the modern syllogism Maier and Loh represent: All are entitled to self-esteem; Having children cramped my style/my marriage flopped: Eureka! All must stop having children/must not marry!

Non-reproductive sexuality-pride, infidelity-pride, divorce-pride, anti-children pride: In this topsy-turvy politically correct world, the media have glommed onto the mantra that poor is rich, even if it's only the exhibitionistic, the immature, the egotistical and the narcissistic who keep repeating it.

By: Barbara Kay is a columnist for Canada’s National Post, in which this article was first published.

tags : marriage, narcissism, parenthood

Decline of traditional media

Should the threat to traditional media from the internet really be a cause for concern?

The new social media -- blogging, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube are current faves -- revolutionising the publishing world, for better and worse. Let's look at both the better and the worse in perspective.

The current tsunami of personal choices in communication is slowly draining the profit from mainstream media. These media traditionally depend on huge audiences who all live in one region and mostly want the same things (the football scores, the crossword, the TV Guide, etc.). But that is all available now on the Internet, all around the world, all the time.

One outcome is a death watch on many newspapers, including famous ones like the Boston Globe. As journalist Paul Gillin noted recently: "The newspaper model scales up very well, but it scales down very badly. It costs a newspaper nearly as much to deliver 25,000 copies as it does to deliver 50,000 copies. Readership has been in decline for 30 years and the decline shows no signs of abating. Meanwhile, new competition has sprung up online with a vastly superior cost structure and an interactive format that appeals to the new generation of readers."

Traditional electronic media are not doing any better. As James Lewin observes in "Television audience plummeting as viewers move online" (May 19, 2008), mainstream broadcasters "will have to come to terms with YouTube, video podcasts and other Internet media or they’ll face the same fate as newspapers."

Radio audiences have likewise tanked. Overall, the recent decline of traditional media is remarkable.

Some conservative writers insist that mainstream media's failure is due to its liberal bias. But conservatives have charged that for decades -- to no effect. Another charge is that TV is declining because it is increasingly gross or trivial. True enough, but TV's popularity was unaffected for decades by its experiments with edgy taste.

Let's look more closely at the structure of the system to better understand current steep declines. Due to the low cost of modern media technology, no clear distinction now exists between a mainstream medium and a non-mainstream one, based on either number of viewers or production cost. Today, anyone can put up a video at YouTube at virtually no cost. Popular videos get hundreds of thousands of views. Podcasting and videocasting are also cheap. A blog can be started for free, within minutes, at Blogger. It may get 10 viewers or 10,000, depending on the level of popular interest. But the viewers control that, not the providers.

The key change is that the traditional media professional is no longer a gatekeeper who can systematically admit or deny information. Consumers program their own print, TV, or radio, and download what they want to their personal devices. They are their own editors, their own filmmakers, their own disc jockeys.

Does that mean more bias or less? It's hard to say, given that consumers now manage their own level of bias. So they can hear much more biased news -- or much less. And, as Podcasting News observes, "Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development."

Understandably, traditional media professionals, alarmed by these developments, have constructed a doctrine of "localism" and, in some cases, called for government to bail them out. That probably won't help, just as it wouldn't have helped if the media professionals had called for a government "bailed out" of newspapers when they were threatened by radio, or of radio when it was threatened by TV. Video really did (sort of) kill the radio star, but the radio star certainly won't be revived by government grants.

Still, the news is not all bad. Yes, new media do sometimes kill old media. For example, no one seriously uses pigeon post to send messages today. But few ever thought birdmail was a great system, just the only one available at the time. However, radio did not kill print, and TV did not kill radio. Nor will the Internet kill older media; it will simply change news delivery. Sometimes in a minor way, but sometimes radically.

Media that work, whether radio, TV, newspapers, books, blogs, or any other, thrive when there is a true need. Today's challenge is to persuade the consumer to look at alternatives to their own programming decisions.

By: Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

tags : culture wars, internet, public opinion, social networking

Abstinence, yes, but what about marriage?

The abstinence-until-marriage movement in the United States has been a positive and courageous response to the sexual revolution. As the basis for sex education it has met with determined opposition because of adult scepticism, and probably dislike of the very idea of abstinence. Now a sociologist who is also an Evangelical Christian is suggesting another reason for reviewing the way Christians promote abstinence.

…[A]fter years of studying the sexual behavior and family decision-making of young Americans, I've come to the conclusion that Christians have made much ado about sex but are becoming slow and lax about marriage—that more significant, enduring witness to Christ's sacrificial love for his bride. Americans are taking flight from marriage. We are marrying later, if at all, and having fewer children.

Professor Mark Regnerus, chairman of the sociology department at the University of Texas, specialises in the study of romantic relationship formation. He sets out his case for earlier marriage in the August issue of Christianity Today. There are pragmatic reasons, such as compelling evidence that marriage provides the optimal conditions for child-rearing and increases the wealth and independence of the individuals involved. But there is also the evidence that most people, Christians included, find the temptation to begin a sexual relationship irresistible. Regnerus argues that it defies nature for those aiming at marriage to postpone it beyond the early 20s and remain chaste:

Evangelicals tend to marry slightly earlier than other Americans, but not by much. Many of them plan to marry in their mid-20s.Yet waiting for sex until then feels far too long to most of them. And I am suggesting that when people wait until their mid-to-late 20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex. It's battling our Creator's reproductive designs. The data don't lie. Our sexual behavior patterns—the kind I documented in 2007 in Forbidden Fruit—give us away. Very few wait long for sex. Meanwhile, women's fertility is more or less fixed, yet Americans are increasingly ignoring it during their 20s, only to beg and pray to reclaim it in their 30s and 40s.

Delay, he says, suits men better than women; it means they can delay growing up, and this produces an increasing mismatch in maturity between men and women, making marriage more difficult to achieve. The difficulty is compounded by “Christian practical ethics about marriage” that have evolved into “a nebulous hodgepodge of pragmatic norms and romantic imperatives, few of which resemble anything biblical”.

Regnerus is not advocating teenage marriages, which, on the whole, are not successful, and he reviews the reasons for this. But he is advocating for marriage to be seen as a formative institution in which a couple mature together, rather than the “capstone” that completes a relationship where everything else has been put in place.

The response to Regnerus’ ideas, from both Christians and secularists, has been mainly in the range of sceptical to hostile. In April he wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post on the same subject and got 296 mostly negative online comments. The 240 comments posted on Christianity Today were not altogether favourable either.

But his ideas are well worth pondering and discussing.

  Article by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: abstinence, Christianity, marriage.

Rag trade withdraws sexy baby clothes

It is almost beyond belief what some companies will try to get away with in the line of exploiting children. Australian clothing group Cotton On has withdrawn baby clothes with slogans which include “I'm a tits man", "The condom broke", and “I'm living proof my mum is easy" after they caused an uproar in Australia and New Zealand.

The company shed crocodile tears of repentance:

"The Cotton On Group is an organisation that respects family, social and moral values and ... would like to announce that the issue has been taken seriously and in agreeance [sic], willingly extends an apology to those who have been affected by the slogans," the company said.

Why would they produce anything so vile to start with if that were true?

The sexualization of babies brings a broader trend to a new low. Suggestive T-shirts for older children have been around for some years, a 2008 Little Losers line featuring slogans such as : “Miss B**ch”, “Miss Wasted” and “Miss Floozy”, and for boys “Mr Well-Hung”, “Mr Pimp”, “Mr A**hole” and “Mr Drunk”.

Here is another example (see our previous post on art galleries) of “adult” material intruding on children. Where adults claim the right to play with filth, the dirt will inevitably rub off on children.

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: fashion, pornography, sexualisation of children.

Are girls risking death now to avoid cervical cancer?

 

The vaccine promoted as a safeguard for girls against developing cervical cancer later in life has been linked with at least 20 deaths in the United States and hundreds of other serious adverse reactions. This is prevention, if you like, but not the sort most parents envisage.

The vaccine has been given to more than seven million girls and young women in the US, a large number of them 11- and 12-year-old schoolgirls, the New York Times reports.

Some 12,424 reports of adverse events were made to a voluntary government database. Of those, 6.2 per cent (772) were considered serious, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The most common serious complications were fainting and an increased risk for potentially fatal blood clots, possibly related to oral contraceptive use and obesity. There were 32 reports of death, but only 20 could be verified. Among those, other causes are implicated (diabetes, drug abuse, Lou Gehrig’s disease, flu and others) and it is not at all clear what are the risks of Gardasil for any individual girl.

The majority of the reports were filed by Merck and company, manufacturer of Gardasil, but most failed to provide enough information for further investigation, say the study authors. However, they are confident in recommending that people get the vaccine, which, they say, seems to be as safe as other vaccines.

Merck is also upbeat, saying that the study “confirms the very favourable safety profile we’ve seen in our extensive clinical trials”. Mind you, this is the company that wooed professional groups with grant money for educational programmes to promote the vaccine.

But an accompanying editorial in JAMA questioned whether any level of risk is acceptable for vaccination when there is an alternative way of preventing cervical cancer:

“There are not a huge number of side effects here, that’s fairly certain,” said the editorial writer, Dr. Charlotte Haug, an infectious disease expert from Norway, about the vaccine. “But you are giving this to perfectly healthy young girls, so even a rare thing may be too much of a risk.

“I wouldn’t accept much risk of side effects at all in an 11-year-old girl, because if she gets screened when she’s older, she’ll never get cervical cancer,” Dr. Haug said in an interview. “You don’t have to die from cervical cancer if you have access to health care.”

The other point is that you probably don’t have to die from cervical cancer if you avoid contracting the sexually transmitted disease -- human papillomavirus -- that is the precursor in the vast majority of cases. But HPV is now so widespread that there is no telling who has it.

Then again, should this really be a dilemma that parents and their young daughters have to face? Wouldn’t a truly rational response to the prevalence of HPV and other STDs be to redouble efforts to encourage chastity among young people?

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: cervical cancer, Gardasil, HPV,