Spanking and Abuse

There are few topics that will set people off like corporal punishment.  Commenting on how a parent raises their child never ends well.  Football player Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings was indicted for whipping his child with a switch, causing bleeding and scarring.  And once more, the practice is front and center of the public’s awareness.  Various experts pontificate on the practice of spanking but make no attempt at an honest discourse.  It is exactly what is needed. 

First of all, Mr. Peterson’s actions needs to be clearly labeled as abuse.  Any time a parent hits a child to the point where there is bleeding or long-lasting scarring or welting, a line has been crossed.  Even when people speak of the good-ole days, seldom did responsible adults carry out discipline like Mr. Peterson.  He will have his day in court and he will have to answer for his actions.  He said that he was disciplined in this way but only an isolated intellect could have matured over the last twenty years without some basic understanding that certain things are no longer tolerated. 

At the same time, discipline of this nature is not always abuse and spanking cannot always be labeled as such.  In my time as a rather rowdy, hyperactive child, I was spanked with a hand, belt, brush and a switch.  However, there were components that separate it from the type of abuse making headlines.  First, my father waited between the offenses and the meting out of punishments.  This takes any anger out of the equation.  Second, he spanked not to punish but to teach.  This approach further prevented going too far with the belt, hand or whatever.  Third, he always explained afterwards why the spanking was done and what lessons needed to be taken from it.  Lastly, it was not done often.  For spanking, like most disciplinary efforts, too much desensitizes the child to the method.   

People who are against corporal punishment never mention – or don’t recognize or understand – the nuances that make up the range of spanking.  To suggest that all spanking is abuse is the height of intellectual laziness.  It is pronounced by people more interested in making a point than defending it with logic and context.  They don’t want the argument so they avoid it by labeling all spanking as abuse.  Who is going to speak on behalf of abuse?  No sensible adult would ergo it robs people of an honest debate.   

To make matters worse are the blubbering talking heads on networks like ESPN.  This past Sunday, Chris Carter, a former NFL player who now serves the network as a football analyst, nearly broke down, yelling that the NFL is being overtaken by spousal abusers and child abusers.  He too clearly is not interested in having debate, hoping his melodramatic, teary diatribe will prevent anyone from responding.  Not to be out done, fellow ESPN anchor Hannah Storm went on a similar emotional rant.  How is an honest conversation to take place when people are interjecting such irrational emotions – an emotional appeal designed to convince people not to respond?  I don’t care what type of opinion people have but be adult enough to have a conversation about it and not an emotional lamentation.   

Mr. Peterson’s actions are abusive but the practice is not necessarily so.  Responsible corporal punishment is just as effective as other forms of discipline – in my opinion and in some cases, more so.  I’m the product of corporal punishment – from my parents, grandparents, neighbors, teachers and principals.  In some people’s effort to denigrate the practice as the last vestiges of a barbarous culture, good and responsible parents are written off as criminal.  I would love to see the debate if those opposed to corporal punishment were interested in having such a conversation.

Why We Need Radio

When I was young, I had a radio on my bed side table.  At night, I would turn it on and listen.  Sometimes, I would tune in to local DJs in the Baltimore area but on some magical nights, my little bed side radio could pull in voices from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York.  I fell asleep to voices reading the news or sports, talking to strange callers or playing music but I had to have a radio on – still do.  Predictions about the end of radio have been constant but radio persists and thrives. 

There were several things that drew me to radio.  One was the power of the voice.  The right voice can draw you in and spin a web you don’t want to leave.  I’m fascinated with voices and there are some I can listen to all day.  Dick Cavett has one of those voices.  He could be reading the ingredients from a milk carton and I would be riveted.  The voice can be a powerful tool and as a teacher, I’m conscious of my voice and how I come across to my students.   

When I worked in radio years ago, I wanted to have a signature voice – something people listened to just because it was me.  At the same time, it couldn’t be fake.  I’m speaking of both the voice and the meaning behind it.  That is what makes the Morning Zoo format that became so popular in the 1980s so appalling.  The fake congeniality and laughter distorted the most honest thing about radio – the voice.  It wasn’t just its fabrication but also the perversion of its honesty. 

The second thing that drew me to the radio was the feeling that the personalities were free – they could do as they pleased and seemed to be having a great deal of fun.  Growing up in Baltimore, I had a plethora of people I gravitated towards in the city.  WIYY or 98 Rock was a mainstay for young people, envious of the DJs who played music all day and goofed off in the process.  Chuck Thompson was the great voice of the Baltimore Orioles and he was, like Dick Cavett, possessing of a voice that could draw my hyperactive self to a stand-still.  His successor, Jon Miller, was just as magical and both projected the sense they had the perfect life and job.    

However, in something only radio can do, I could pull in stations beyond my burgh.  My immature teenage mind was taken by the Greaseman in Washington, D.C.  In other locales, Scott Ferrall in Pittsburgh and Don Imus in New York came through my radio and drew me in.  Ferrall on the Bench is and was one of the more pioneering baffling radio shows because certainly his voice had to be faked but it wasn’t.  Don Imus was the anti-Stern – irreverent but smarter.  Stern never fascinated me like the curmudgeon Imus.  As Mr. Imus’ show changed from “shock jock” antics to a more political and social satire, it fell in line with my political maturation and I was hooked.  When he landed on television, I watched but it was not the same as radio.  Of course, one of my other political teachers was the irreverent conservative radio giant, Rush Limbaugh.   

When one combines the radio qualities of the voice and the freedom of the medium, one comes to the third reason I was always drawn to radio – the use of my imagination.  As a teacher, I see that our students are not nearly as imaginative as they once were because they are not asked to be.  With radio, in trying to visualize the DJ’s antics and the broadcast of sports, imagination is key to truly understanding what is happening.  I still prefer baseball on the radio.  When they say the voice paints the picture, that picture develops in your mind.  Oriole broadcaster Chuck Thompson helped me “see” what was happening on the field.   

 

The point is that radio, often declared dead, has maintained a force in modern media and there is a reason for that tenacity.  My hope is that it is not just older people like me keeping radio alive.  It is a medium of the spoken word – not the image.  That alone places it in stark contrast with most modern media.  The spoken word requires thought – if not from the people on the radio then those listening.  It is the most intimate form of media and requires the most from the receiver.  That alone makes radio deserving of a future.

Question of Scottish Independence

In 1995, the Canadian province of Quebec and the political party Bloc Québécois put on a referendum to separate from Canada.  This was in the aftermath of the Bloc Québécois’ electoral success in parliamentary elections a couple of years earlier.  It was a mixture of indignation and unrealistic thinking that pushed the party toward independence and when the vote was tallied, they lost by less than one percent.  A month from now, following success in recent parliamentary elections, the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) seeks to separate from the United Kingdom.  Once more, a mixture of historical indignation and blinding optimism is powering this move. 

Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond leads a raucous but determined effort to revive the efforts of old that played out under the guidance of Robert the Bruce and was fertilized by Scottish blood on the fields in Bannockburn.  However, things are different and the issues are not quite about idealistic notions of independence and the green glens of Scotland but rather the sides are splitting over mundane economic issues such as oil and currency.  Mr. Salmond extolls the vitality of the Scottish economy but fails to paint the picture of the context of the British economy.

Oil from the North Sea is at the heart of Scottish vitality and could make the difference between Scottish success and failure.  British Prime Minister David Cameron says that the success of oil and gas from the North Sea has been bolstered by the weight of the kingdom as a whole.  Meanwhile, opponents to the SNP question the wisdom of putting all your eggs in a basket that will no longer be viable in the not-so-distant future.  Mr. Cameron has taken the fight to Mr. Salmond’s territory with recent cabinet meetings in Scotland (something about which the SNP mocked) and a reinvigorated attack by unionists in the Scottish parliament.  The opponents may be on to something but what is Mr. Salmond’s plan if London plays hardball regarding access to North Sea resources? 

On another front, the question of currency has emerged.  Mr. Salmond has said that the Scots would remain on the pound but British political parties predict that such a move will never happen and the Treasury has warned of such a scenario.  Unionists in the Scottish parliament and British observers have asked what Mr. Salmond’s pound-less plan is.  He has not been able to provide an answer but the movement soldiers on.  Much like experts on the Bible, you have various opinions and depending on what side you are on, you can find an expert that validates your approach.  However, without the pound, where does that leave Scotland?  It seems unlikely that the Scottish economy, absent of the economic support from the rest of the kingdom and the international security of the pound, would be able to maintain its current vibrancy.   

The Scottish independence referendum also calls in many other questions ranging from immigration to the European Union to its relationship with London going forward.  Quebec realized it did not have a viable chance outside the Canadian confederation.  Other movements such as Flanders’ attempt to separate from Belgium or Catalonia’s desire to separate from Spain suffer from the same issue.  Of recent attempts, only the Kurds have a decent chance to exist and prosper outside its current geopolitical status.  For Scotland, it has enjoyed increased autonomy as part of a devolutionary movement over the last decades.  At the moment, it has the best of both worlds.  It would be a shame if a “yes” vote ruined each of them.      

 

 

War on Intellectualism?

As a country, we’ve always had difficulties with those who profess to know more than us.  It began with the British and to be frank, the British have been holding it over us for centuries.  What we did, collectively in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries, we took pride in the opposite.  We were a bit crude, we were loud and we thumbed our noses at the pretensions held by others.  Yet, there was still value on necessary knowledge – skills that could create or build.  It would seem we are hitting new lows and it will be difficult to re-emerge from our self-induced stupor.   

Probably the most obvious, lowest hanging fruit that I can bang away at is television and advertisement.  This time of year is always distressing for me.  It is not that I’m returning to work soon but I’m bombarded with commercials that tell kids that the most important part of returning to school is that they have the right clothes, the right technology and in general, appear the coolest.  On one hand, what else are they going to say but the emphasis is all consuming and teachers know that of which I speak – the first days of school and the first days after Christmas vacation are de facto fashion shows.  “Books?  Don’t sweat it, kid.  You’ll get further by looking better.” 

Of course, television programs consistently set new lows in depravity and stupidity.  It might be strange to hear but in other countries, as we once did, they have programs where people calmly discuss important political and social issues.  It is mature discussions on the events of the day or with the guest for the evening.  Today, the last refuge for such programming is PBS and even there, such discussion-oriented programming is rather thin on the ground.  The programs you would normally expect the most of but get the least from are news shows.  As I’ve mentioned before, I often watch the news wondering where the adults are.  Screaming and emotionalism are a far cry from what once watched even a decade ago.  As for reality programming, I don’t have enough space to address that issue.

 

Speaking of the aforementioned arena of education, we have the prominence of standardize testing.  Today, it is more important that you know an increasingly narrowed field of information – only what will be on the test.  From an early age, our students are taught that a large swath of information is not important because it will not be assessed.  From the earliest grades, we are teaching our students that the curiosity with which they entered school does not serve them well.  Only a passing test grade will land you into a good school and ergo a good career.  Yet, school officials on the national and state levels scratch their heads and profess dismay at increasingly worsening scores on international testing.  They’ve drunk the Kool-Aid and cannot think beyond their boxes.   

Lastly (only for the sake of this article), technology has emphasized that convenience is valued over substance.  Technology today, despite its proponents who champion educational apps and computer programs as its benefits, has done more to shorten our attention span and gnaw away at our intellectual stamina.  Additionally, for all the “enriching” aspects of technology, I don’t see people using it.  I see people pre-occupied with Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets.  As a teacher, I’ve seen the degradation and it is disheartening and baffling.  Over the last couple of decades, we have treasured our students’ ability to emote and not think and we are paying for that misdirection. 

I hope the state of things is not as bad as I’m portraying.  I’ve come across students from time to time who buck the trend.  What makes it seem so dire is the prevalence of mass media and popular culture.  I find myself wondering if there is some network or programmer who would be willing to buck the trend and appeal to the country’s intellect.  Is there a celebrity who will do more for intellectual pursuits that posing for the “Read” posters found in libraries throughout the country?  It is fine to not put on airs or to lampoon pretentiousness but we must still value the mind and intellect.  If not, the great experiment might not last much longer. 

Hamas' Cynical Plan

Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish.  It is the child of hope and the home of the brave.  It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success.  It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.

            President John F. Kennedy 

This past week, Permanent Observer of Palestine to the U.N. Riyad Mansour spoke of the recent troubles between his state and Israel.  He spoke of Israel breaking the recently agreed upon cease-fire and castigated the Jewish state for the massacre of Palestinians.  Interviewer Charlie Rose asked about the actions of Hamas, breaking the truce with thousands of rockets leading to the Israeli response.  Mr. Mansour, speaking with either shocking naïveté or willful obliviousness, said that Hamas does not represent the Abbas government and therefore, does not represent a violation of the cease-fire.  The U.N. Observer’s verbiage is characteristic of an unbalanced and cynical approach in the worsening climate of the Middle East. 

Since the Oslo Accord in 1993, Israel has been pushed into one agreement after another in which it sacrifices and Palestine does not.  Israel has ceded territory, has agreed to a needed two-state solution and nine years ago, it demolished a slew of Israeli settlements throughout Gaza and the West Bank to secure a possible peace.  It has entered into negotiations with the Abbas government who has shown, at times in the recent crisis, remarkable courage in speaking out against Hamas and those who support the terrorist group.  Yet, Hamas lies just outside the light of diplomacy and refuses to budge.  

Hamas has pursued a policy that calls for the destruction of Israel by inviting its fire and using ordinary Palestinians as shields.  Despite Mr. Mansour’s blithe understanding and acceptance of Hamas, the terrorist group has fired its many rockets out of homes, schools, mosques and areas that would ensure, in the retaliation, what Charles Krauthammer called the telegenic death of hundreds of innocent civilians.  The deaths of innocents televised are callously used as part of a public relations campaign that has won support throughout the world.  Morality does not matter, only the end result.  Hamas fires away at Israel while some throughout the world justify the means used.  I guess terrorism works.  

For all those who chastise and criticize Israel for its actions, it fails to offer an alternative.  Some have suggested at other times that Israel needs to negotiate.  To what end?  To lose more land or invite more rockets?  Other observers have correctly assessed that since Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank ended nearly a decade ago and Palestine has been able to pave its own path, vital economic and political institutions, needed infrastructure and stability has been absent.  Despite the fact that Israel gives the Palestinian state millions of dollars a year in aid and supplies, a periodically well-intentioned Mahmoud Abbas and the powerless Palestinian civilians have been in the grips of Hamas.  The terrorist organization has repeatedly sought to undermine any efforts of peace.  They want the destruction of Israel and if it can’t happen militarily, they will do so by cynically placing its own “constituents” in the line of fire to convince the world that Israel is in the wrong. 

Israel, to its credit, has failed to dove-tail into the culture of death and martyrdom that is being embraced in Gaza.  Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, referring to the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has come out to say that Israel will not glorify the Jews responsible for the reaction to the death of three Israeli teenagers.  Those who killed that young Palestinian man will not be hailed as heroes, will not have public squares named after them and will not be taught to young Israeli children.  All of which has happened in Palestine.   

It is difficult to say how Palestine and the ordinary citizen will be able to take control again of its future and its faith.  Thankfully, if recent international news coverage holds true, there has been a more even-handed reporting of the recent violence with a hard look being cast upon Hamas.  Israel has little open to them in the way of options.  Hamas is counting on that and hoping that the old formula will work once more.  Perhaps, people are starting to see the position with which Israel has wrestled over the last couple of decades.  If Hamas can be shown for what it is, it might bring the region closer to peace.  Sadly, I don’t expect to see it any time soon.

An Eagle Rising?

In 2000, there was much excitement in Mexico over the election of the first non-PRI candidate in nearly a century with the inauguration of Vincente Fox.  Mr. Fox came into office promising sweeping reforms and an attempt to roll back institutional corruption and graft that had held the Mexican economy and people back.  Felipe Caldorón, the former mayor of Mexico City, said many of the same things.  In 2012, PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto was swept into office with again, promises of reform.  However, with Mr. Peña, the world press has focused and sees a bright future for Mexico.  The question is whether Mr. Peña can succeed where his well-meaning predecessors failed. 

Several fronts need to be tackled, simultaneously, if Mexico hopes to realize its potential as a society and as an economy.  Mr. Peña has help that can prove instrumental.  One, he is the head of the leading party in the country but also enjoys support for his reforms from the party of his two predecessors, the Reform Party or PAN.  However, not all of his fellow PRI compadres will go along because some of Mr. Peña’s efforts and plans include checking the influence of the powerful unions.  Some PRI politicians are not going to take on that battle.  Still, Mr. Peña has the chance to make some changes by addressing three key areas – the economy, corruption and migration.   

Economically, while there are some parts of Mexico that are doing well, others are lagging dramatically behind.  No one party can lay claim to an economic plan that will save Mexico therefore, a new approach will need to be developed nationally, if not locally.  Nationally, the north is developing at a nice pace with GDP per person at some of the highest levels in the country (Nuevo León, $16,000; Coahuila, $11,100).  Outliers to this statistic include Quintana Roo on the Yucatán at $10,600 and the hub of money in the Federal District ($19,200).  Most of the country, including the bone-crushing poverty in the south in states like Chiapas ($3,600) and Oaxaca ($4,100) and those hovering around mediocrity such as Tabasco ($5,900) and Michoacán ($5,500), are in desperate need of increase investment and more business-friendly measures.  The only way this can happen is to loosen the power of the unions. 

The unions, along with politicians and the police, is a source of corruption and graft.  There can be no “business-friendly” atmosphere unless the level of crookedness and red tape can somehow be reduced.  It is not just the big corruption but the everyday, almost mundane levels of graft that is crippling Mexico.  In a study reported by Economist, Mexican households spend approximately $2.5b (32b pesos) annually on bribes for things ranging from “public” services to primary school.  For many international businesses, to go into Mexico is to accept a level of corruption that is seldom seen.  Of course, the same Mexicans who are paying these bribes cannot or will not express their outrage – many feeling that the problem is too big.   

Only by increasing the economy throughout the country, only by reducing corruption from the highest levels to that directly impacting each Mexican family, can there be any hope of curbing or regulating more effectively the migration issue.  It is true that recent emigration levels have dropped significantly but only because the economy of the U.S. is so uncertain.  The most recent Pew Research study show there are roughly 12m people in the U.S. who were born in Mexico.  Consider the talent and the intellect that is leaving the country - and in many cases, not returning.  Additionally, the cavalcade of children making their way into the U.S. highlights Mexico’s issue with immigration across its southern border.  Included in this tale are those who are entering the U.S. under the orders and threats of drug cartels.  The Mexican government, in recent years, has made progress against such forces but to suggest that the threat has reduced would be a fallacy. 

Several years ago, I visited Mexico City.  What I saw is a hard working population that is fighting uphill to make it to the end of the day.  Regularly, they see a government that does not seem to work while they pay their Danegeld each day with little to no long-term benefit.  Mr. Peña has a tough road to travel but he has the resources, both in the land and the people, to make Mexico the envy of the developing world.  A great many things need to fall in place but if political courage can rise with public outrage and indignation, the major problems of Mexico today could well be studied in the history books tomorrow.

Fear and Anxiety in the U.S.

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.
            Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

Recently, I was thinking of the role that fear plays in our society.  When you ask people why they do what they do, eventually, fear creeps into the conversation.  Given how often people speak of fear, my next thought was what were the consequences of this thinking and obsessing about fear.  For millennium, philosophers and writers have considered this point.  Even though we live in one of the safest periods in U.S. history, our fear has inversely grown to absurd and mystifying proportions.  Its consequences to us and our way of life could be damaging and irreversible.  

When I speak of fear, I don’t speak of the fear of things from without.  We have traditionally been an isolationist country (some say we are returning to that) but such fears have tangible qualities that make the fear more understandable, more concrete.  When I speak of fear, I mean to say the fear around us.  I speak of the fear to act, the fear to explore, the fear implanted into us by politicians and the media.  What does this dread do to us?  How does our society change with consistent, pervasive fear?  More interestingly, why are we so fearful? 

A friend once told me that when a worrier has nothing to worry about, they turn on themselves.  We are a people who have vanquished our enemies and cured our diseases.  While terrorism lurks in the distance, it has not taken the place of the threat of the Soviet Union and communist world domination.  So, with the fears from without shrinking, we have decided that the real threat lies in our neighbors and our environment.  Lurking gunmen or pedophiles or the threat of being alone has spurred our fears.  To make matters worse, politicians make hay of these fears and industries sell our fear back to us.  Consequently, we are prodded and prompted to continually look around us and our anxiety grows and we became more irrational.   

So, how does it change our society?  It first makes us wary of the mundane and the innocent.  I want to go on a hike without my cell phone.  My wife, as sold to her by cell phone companies who extolled its products based on emergencies, tells me I must bring it because what if something happens and I’m trapped.  Parents worry about having their kids walk to school or down to the corner for some groceries because of lurking molesters waiting for the careless parent who sent their innocent child in harm’s way.  Obsessive-compulsive mothers follow their children around with anti-bacterial lotion, bathing them in it every five minutes or so.  A potential entrepreneur is scared to take the leap to own her own business because of regular news reports saying small businesses are collapsing each day.   

The fear makes us timid, it turns us inward and eventually, it could impact our way of life.  The more frighten we become, the less choices we make – the more we depend on the government to make those decisions.  The more we empower government, the more we lose our voice.  In general, we pass on our fears to our children and the cycle continues.  As an expectant parent, I worry about the parts of me that are not good and passing it on to our future daughter.  She should be aware but not scared.  Yet, our children are.  When we find ourselves surrendering to our fear, we have to ask what it is doing to us.  We have to ask questions about the decisions we make and whether there is truly anything about which to be concern.   

The Danish existentialist Søren Kierkegaard once said, “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”  Our fear is robbing us of a chance to experience.  Yes, bad things happen but living in constant vigilance against the worst case scenarios is no protection.  We each have a fate and it makes little difference if we spend our lives worrying about it.  Instead, as Kierkegaard said, we have to spend our lives embracing and soaking in that which is around us.  Perhaps, we will be happier.  It might be enough to not be so miserable and anxious.