Month: August 2008

McCain for the win

So “McCain chooses Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for V.P. ”

I love everything about this pick. Palin has bona fide conservative credentials. She’s smart, pretty (something McCain is sorely lacking), and threatens to take some dissatisfied Hillary supporter votes away from the Democrats.

On top of it all, McCain stole Obama’s thunder after last night’s DNC acceptance speech. This should be a day where all the news sites are talking about Obama. But looking at those sites today, you wouldn’t even know Obama gave his most important speech of the campaign last night. Oba-who?

Some parents don’t get it

And neither does some news writers. A 16-year-old girl was driving and lost control of her vehicle. Her injuries were fatal.

Yesterday’s headline:
Girl in Fatal Wreck Sent Text Message Moments Before Crash

At first glance, it seems this is sad case of not watching the road. The girls mother even says she hopes the accident will make other people think before texting and driving. Yes, a common sense lesson for all of us. But wait, if you read the story, there was an even bigger law violation here.

“Authorities say [the girl] had been driving drunk and was speeding.”

That’s what you call burying the lede. Instead, we get a morality lesson on the dangers of texting and driving. Admittedly, not too smart. But don’t you think the bigger cause of her death was the her driving drunk and speeding?

Football=Marriage?

Last week I posted about the annoying comparison of a football contract to a marriage. The AP continued that yesterday:

Favre retired in March, but then decided he still wanted to play. After a messy divorce with Green Bay, the Packers traded him to New York, where he’s going through his 18th training camp.

Our media culture can’t tell the difference between a sports contract and a marriage. No wonder the institution of marriage is in trouble. I think this comes from an emerging idea that marriage is nothing more than a civil contract to be dissolved when at least one party finds the continuation of the contract to be inconvenient.

So the question, is our society’s outlook of marriage to low, or our view of sports too high?

It’s OK as long as you don’t love her…

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards admitted to having an extramarital affair after months of denials. In admitting to the affair, Edwards told ABC news that he did not love the woman. I’m sure that makes his wife feel much better.

OK, things that don’t make you sympathetic: trying to excuse your adultery by claiming you’re just a cad.

Football isn’t like marriage

This summer’s sports soap opera has finally ended with the Green Bay Packers trading their un-retiring and future hall of fame quarterback Brett Favre to the New York Jets.

Packers president Mark Murphy said, “It’s like a marriage that ends. It happens. Neither party is at fault.”

Now I’m a guy who views Superbowl Sunday as a holiday (albeit a secular one – like Labor Day). But even I do not confuse a business negotiation with a marriage.

Uh, Mr. Murphy? Football is not like marriage. Divorce is never no one’s fault. In marriage, two people take vows. These vows normally involve a lifetime commitment, unlike a football contract. Marriages the end in divorce are because one or both spouses don’t live up to those vows.

Marriage is in trouble when one of the greatest tragedies in society is equated with a football player leaving a team and no one notices.

Update 8/8:
I was watching ESPN “1st and 10” this morning and the host said that Brett Favre was coming off a 16 year divorce in Green Bay and moving into a home with his new wife in New York.

Sigh. No, ESPN. Brett Favre was only employed by the Packers, not married to them. Football is a great past-time and all, but it isn’t fundamental to a society like marriage is.

Not all tax collectors are bad.

I recently came across a discussion of this passage in gospel of Luke:

Luke 18:

10. “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
11. “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: `God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
12. `I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’
13. “But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, `God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’
14. “I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Isn’t it funny how things jump out at you sometimes? Like this one got me wondering about this anonymous tax collector. Jesus had a tax collector in his audience when he taught this parable. Did you ever wonder if the tax collector in this passage was the same tax collector that became an apostle of Jesus, now most commonly known as St. Matthew?