Thursday, September 23, 2010
TRIVIALIZING THE SIGNIFICANT
We have had a number of hot media “flaps” lately. Some come and go, and others stay longer. These would best be classified as tempests in teapots were it not for the relationship they have with an issue or principle of significance to us.
Let us take first the building of the mosque and the burning of the Quran in the pyrrhic news of the recent past. These were made out to be related, although not properly so. However, they are similar in that each involves an insensitive action contemplated which is within a constitutional freedom.
While it is their right to build a mosque near “ground zero,” it is callously insensitive for Muslims to pursue this in view of the natural reactions of many Americans. The Florida reverend might be within his rights of “free speech” in burning the Quran, regarded as holy by Muslims, but this was a hate-based action, both unwise and repugnant.
Both involve the trivialization of basic freedoms of speech and religion.
In Oklahoma, there has been a brooha over the substitution of “sooners” for “brave” in the national anthem at football games. This might ordinarily be regarded as a manifestation of arrogant redneck adolescence not atypical of O.U. sports fans, and acceptable because they are the sooners and they win football games. At the same time it is a continuation of our pattern of disrespecting the sacrosanct in America. With the Banner, it began with outrageous rendition by Jose Feliciano three or four decades ago, and it has progressed downward.
Oklahoma University sport fans are trivializing something significant to Americans.
Now, about the provocatively clad blonde pseudo-reporter in the men’s pro football locker room getting a few hoots and hollers. Most of us would still say that it makes no common sense to have women in men’s athletic locker rooms while they are undressing, showering, and re-dressing in various degrees of nudity. But because women reporters complained about being excluded while men were not, the equal rights rule prevailed. Of course, they should have just kept all reporters out, even if the press complained.
Nevertheless, this pretty, sensually clad woman is provocatively trivializing a significant principle of women’s rights.
Perhaps the most serious, but least recognized, example of trivializing the significant has been the disrespect shown for high governmental office by selecting grossly unqualified, vacuous persons as candidates. No office has been disrespected more often than that of vice-president, most recently by John McCain in selection of Sarah Palin. What was he thinking? What were those voters thinking?
Voters continue to make a mockery of the high office of senator, as shown by the characteristics of at least five party nominees for that office currently. What serious, well-informed, intelligent person can possibly imagine those vacuous tea party candidates from Nevada, Delaware, Kentucky, or Alaska as meriting election to this nation’s senate? If the republican party espouses and supports these, then they dishonor the office and this country.
This brings to mind the ill-conceived practice of higher education governing boards bringing in politicians, bankers, lawyers, or business people with little or no work experience in academia to run our colleges and universities. This disrespects the high office of college president, and it is disrespectful of all who work in academia and strive to advance in their collegiate careers.
Putting its leadership in the hands of amateurs trivializes academics and education as a distinctive professional endeavor.
New data shows that Oklahoma is one of the national leaders in the percentage of its 15 – 19 year old girls who are pregnant. This should be a big media and political issue, but it is not. Instead, our state politicians’ issues in this vital sector center on efforts to prevent young girls from receiving real sex education and counseling (not religiously-inspired abstinence), to restrict their access to contraceptives or “day after” medication, and to prevent their access to pregnancy termination.
In all instances, these involve the unwelcome interference of government into the private lives and freedoms of girls and women, thus trivializing their human rights and forcing them to bear unwanted babies. What kind of an enlightened nation is this?
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Let us take first the building of the mosque and the burning of the Quran in the pyrrhic news of the recent past. These were made out to be related, although not properly so. However, they are similar in that each involves an insensitive action contemplated which is within a constitutional freedom.
While it is their right to build a mosque near “ground zero,” it is callously insensitive for Muslims to pursue this in view of the natural reactions of many Americans. The Florida reverend might be within his rights of “free speech” in burning the Quran, regarded as holy by Muslims, but this was a hate-based action, both unwise and repugnant.
Both involve the trivialization of basic freedoms of speech and religion.
In Oklahoma, there has been a brooha over the substitution of “sooners” for “brave” in the national anthem at football games. This might ordinarily be regarded as a manifestation of arrogant redneck adolescence not atypical of O.U. sports fans, and acceptable because they are the sooners and they win football games. At the same time it is a continuation of our pattern of disrespecting the sacrosanct in America. With the Banner, it began with outrageous rendition by Jose Feliciano three or four decades ago, and it has progressed downward.
Oklahoma University sport fans are trivializing something significant to Americans.
Now, about the provocatively clad blonde pseudo-reporter in the men’s pro football locker room getting a few hoots and hollers. Most of us would still say that it makes no common sense to have women in men’s athletic locker rooms while they are undressing, showering, and re-dressing in various degrees of nudity. But because women reporters complained about being excluded while men were not, the equal rights rule prevailed. Of course, they should have just kept all reporters out, even if the press complained.
Nevertheless, this pretty, sensually clad woman is provocatively trivializing a significant principle of women’s rights.
Perhaps the most serious, but least recognized, example of trivializing the significant has been the disrespect shown for high governmental office by selecting grossly unqualified, vacuous persons as candidates. No office has been disrespected more often than that of vice-president, most recently by John McCain in selection of Sarah Palin. What was he thinking? What were those voters thinking?
Voters continue to make a mockery of the high office of senator, as shown by the characteristics of at least five party nominees for that office currently. What serious, well-informed, intelligent person can possibly imagine those vacuous tea party candidates from Nevada, Delaware, Kentucky, or Alaska as meriting election to this nation’s senate? If the republican party espouses and supports these, then they dishonor the office and this country.
This brings to mind the ill-conceived practice of higher education governing boards bringing in politicians, bankers, lawyers, or business people with little or no work experience in academia to run our colleges and universities. This disrespects the high office of college president, and it is disrespectful of all who work in academia and strive to advance in their collegiate careers.
Putting its leadership in the hands of amateurs trivializes academics and education as a distinctive professional endeavor.
New data shows that Oklahoma is one of the national leaders in the percentage of its 15 – 19 year old girls who are pregnant. This should be a big media and political issue, but it is not. Instead, our state politicians’ issues in this vital sector center on efforts to prevent young girls from receiving real sex education and counseling (not religiously-inspired abstinence), to restrict their access to contraceptives or “day after” medication, and to prevent their access to pregnancy termination.
In all instances, these involve the unwelcome interference of government into the private lives and freedoms of girls and women, thus trivializing their human rights and forcing them to bear unwanted babies. What kind of an enlightened nation is this?
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
