Tired Road Warrior

I’ve quit watching the national and local new shows.  They are just not that informative any more.  They assume I have a 2-minute attention span, the IQ of a 5th grader, and are hooked on celebrity news.  Sometimes it hard to tell the difference between the national nightly news and Entertainment Tonight. 

The national news likes big disasters because they are photogenic and the local news likes fires, shooting, etc. for the same reasons.  Interviewing people in pathetic situations is the latter’s staple.  Both love to give unneeded publicity to people on the fringes who do violent acts.  This publicity encourages future violent malcontents and people with mental problems; it gives them their 15 minutes of fame.  In some respects, the news is responsible for many of the personal tragedies out there because of the publicity that they provide to the instigator(s).

Yesterday I heard about two Internet efforts–one present and one future–that have the capacity to change the news business significantly.  One is a local effort called “Salt TV”.  According to Vince Horiuchi of the SLTrib:  “The new independent local news cooperative, launched in beta version this last week (mid-July 2010), is expected to be fully functional next month.”  It involves an unimpressive list of old news warhorses.

“Salt TV” promises more indepth reporting and a return to old-style journalism.  While I applaud the effort, I wish they had a better list of participants.  I just don’t see Terry Wood providing me a hard-hitting, indepth story, but I hope he suprises me.  The individuals they have signed up are big local names, but none are really noted for their reporting skills.  But even if they only highlight a more positive side of the new, I will be happy; I certainly look forward to seeing stories by Kimberly Perkins.  There has to be more to the news that just drive-by shootings.

The other effort is international and involves using the Internet for the publication of allegedly classified information.  This effort seems particularly noteworthy because it provides more transparency on issues that are potentially important to the public.  The website–wikileaks.org–has recently received a great deal of international publicity for its release of classified US documents concerning the war in Afghanistan.  (This release has been compared to Daniel Elsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers.)  Wikileaks has also received local publicity by publishing parts of the LDS Church Handbook of Instructions (1999).

Accordint to Wikipedia, “Wikileaks is an international organization, based in Sweden, that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensative documents from governments and other organizations, while preserving the anonymity of their sources.  Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press.”  The website has received a number of newsmedia awards for its reports.

In a recent opinion piece in the Sunday SLTrib, a mother described her problems in a store when some children started to mock her disabled child.  When she attempted to correct the offending children, their mother stepped in and aggresively defended them. 

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Time recently listed Will Allen as one their 100 Most Influential (10 May 2010).  His kudos were written by Van Jones (founder of Green for All and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress):

“At one time, the term urban farm sounded like an oxymormon.  No longer.  A new movement is sprouting up in America’s low-income neighborhoods.  Some urban residents, sick of fast food and the scarcity of grocery stores, have decided to grow good food for themselves.

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The first time I went through a LDS Temple was while I was in the Mission Home in SLC.  In those days (60s), they didn’t have the MTC; all missionaries went through a week of training in a dormitory-style building that sat next to the Salt Lake Temple.  On Thursday of that week, we all went through the House of the Lord.  For me, the experience was like being kicked in the stomach.  I was certainly not prepared for the experience.  It was far from the spiritual encounter that I had hoped for.

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I think many LDS Church members would like to believe that historic Church teachings about afro-Americans didn’t impact individual behavior.  These members might want to consider the following:

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Mormons believe that all human beings are the literal children of God, and thus have the divine potential to become like Him.  Some have noted that the doctrine is not broached as frequently today as it used to be.  But it is still discussed.

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The following appeared on msnbc.com on 12 Jul 2010:

“An al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group claimed responsiblity for twin bombings in Uganda that killed 74 people who were watching the World Cup final on TV, saying the militants would carry out attacks “against our enemy” wherever they are.

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The following penned by Laurie N. DiPadova-Stocks appeared in Dialogue (june 2010):

“Bennion (Lowell), drawing on Weber’s (Max) warnings about bureaucracy, devoted his career to the daunting task of helping LDS students reconcile personal integrity and difficulties with any organization, including the Church (Mormon), to which they might be committed.  As he explained in his classes, every organization is characterized by contradictions.  It is simply unavoidable.  A school might embrace the ideal to offer the best educational opportunity to students yet find that it cannot affort to meet that ideal.  The police department might embrace the ideal of swift and timely justice, only to have to conform to the tedious requirements of due process along the way.  The first priority of any organization is to survive and to protect itself from perceived threats, at time emplying operational requirements that can be inconsistent with its own central purpose.

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I’ve always admired the oximoronic idea of “organized chaos” or “creative pandemonium” or “efficient tumult.”  For me, organizations spend way to much time perpetuating their institutional structure and not nearly enough time on their stated mission.  Organizations, as they mature, get increasingly rigid, and less creative.  Maybe they even have life cycles just like all of God’s creatures.  It is difficult for aging institutions to stay vibrant and young, to maintain their creative juices.  They frequently don’t know when to die.

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Pascal’s Wager:  “Since we can’t know wheher God exists–should we believe in Him or not?  If He does exist, He will reward us for our belief; and if He does not exist, we lose nohing for having believed.”

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