Friday, January 11, 2019
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Kome-Pond 2018 Family Newsletter
2018 Compound family Greetings!
We (Bob and Penney) went to Ottawa in June for their wedding and rented a large Air BnB near their home, big enough for us and our Cape Breton family, Kimmy, Colin, and their daughter Carolyn Mcpherson. Senator Marilou Mcphedran kindly invited Penney and some Ottawa women friends for lunch in the Parliamentary dining room.
Our granddaughter Carolyn just turned 13. She’s artistic and creative, like her mother. After the wedding, Colin had to go home but Kimmy and Carolyn came on to Calgary with us. They stayed another two weeks. Kimmy’s friend Sandy arrived at the same time and stayed with us too.
We’re relieved that Kimmy and Carolyn came through a car crash in mid-December with only scrapes and bruises and apparently no serious injuries. The car's air bags deployed, and it "looked like an accordian" Kim said, so they have to replace it.
Although they weren’t able to attend Graham and Megan’s wedding, Sanford and Alex met us for coffee in Edmonton recently. They both look well. Sanford looks healthy and apparently he’s doing well in his new job for the federal government. Alex kindly came along as driver and concerned partner. We think of him as a son-in-law. In this 2014 photo, they were helping Carolyn with a school project that tested how far "Flat Carolyn" could go.
San Miguel de Allende
Artists, musicians, and many Canadian writers flock to San Miguel to pursue their work and to discuss it with one another, among its pink granite 16th century cobblestone streets and narrow flagstone sidewalks. Toller Cranston lived and painted there for years after he retired from figure skating.
Each block has one long adobe wall, Moorish style, dotted with narrow doors that could open into shops or Mexican fast food or homes. Leading up to Dia des Muertes, giant puppets appear on the street, to thrill tourists by pretending to topple over on them.
Our BnB’s tiny arched door, with a small oval ceramic tile that says, “Casa de Suenos,” led to a short hallway and then opened up into a courtyard with flowers and hummingbirds. We liked the spacious and well equipped rooms and all-tile bathrooms. Each room had its own outdoor patio and since we were the only guests for a while, we used all three of them. We also had the run of downstairs, with a huge kitchen and sheltered outdoor sitting room in the courtyard.
Our host Chipper Roth arranged our face painter for Day of the Dead – science fiction writer Elizabeth Eve King. The streets, windows, porches, and stores of SMA are full of big tall French marigolds during the last week in October. So are the altars in homes, shops, galleries, and graveyards. Each altar holds photos of all the multigenerational family’s departed, along with symbols of their favorite nourishment and pastimes, usually candy sheep, chickens, llamas, and pigs as well as painted sugar skulls, all churned out by home industries. Children make sugar skulls as school crafts. Marigold petals are the paving stones in the path between this world and the afterlife. The whole city of 130,000 celebrates this pre-Columbian ritual. Skulls and skeletons are everywhere, on walls, on
Since we were painted, and in costume, we joined the street parade up Ancha San Antonio to the 16th century Parroquia beside Benito Juarez Square, where people milled around to mariachi music, admiring and photographing the best costumes. A woman dressed as a bride grabbed Bob in his tux-like black suit and posed beside him, saying, "Take our picture!" The crowd headed out early though, to light 12-hour candles on their graveyard altars, to guide their loved ones home.
At home in Calgary, we're slowly downsizing our big house in University Heights, between Foothills Hospital and the University of Calgary, and now surrounded by construction. Our usual days at home are filled with bridge and darts, and volunteer work for Bob. Penney has professional work as well -- an almost weekly blog in rabble.ca -- and three exercise classes a week.
Our darling doxie, Nibs, is going on 10, with help from our wonderful chiropractor. Nibs is very smart for a small dog, and has a huge vocabulary. I said, "I heard a noise in the garage," when we were outside, and he went over and looked in the garage. He loves food, cuddling, travel, stuffies, puzzle toys, and treats. Oh, and dressing up.
We wish you a wonderful 2019! We'd love to hear your news! Happy New Year!
Friday, June 30, 2017
Media literacy as an act of faith
Media literacy as an act of faith
Sunday Service Unitarian Church of Calgary July 2 2017
Board member greets audience
Chalice lighting: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why they call it, the present.
Opening:
Welcome, and thanks for coming. Today I’m going to talk about how to evaluate the political and meta-political overtones in the news media that surround us, especially the online media. I think Unitarians should be interested in this topic because our fifth principle affirms the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. Democracy is only possible with an informed public, and that’s the news media’s job.
By the end of this talk, I hope you will have some tools to evaluate whatever you read or watch, to help choose some reliable outlets and assess any new outlets you encounter.
By “reliable”, I mean a news outlet that cites its sources, confirms its facts at least two ways, declares its bias and maintains its integrity. As a woman, I’m all too aware of media biases. I’ve spent most of my career challenging them. While I’m not sure that any news source can be “objective” or “neutral,” I AM sure it can be honest and transparent.
My point is that we as readers and as voters should choose our media sources as carefully as we choose our food sources. I think most Unitarians prefer local, whole foods to nourish their bodies, instead of fast food or frozen TV dinners. In the same way, we should be careful to choose news outlets that emphasize facts, with perhaps a bit of social justice analysis.
Who am I to offer such advice? I’ve been a free-lance journalist for 46 years. I’ve published six books with major publishers, I wrote a national column for 12 years and a Calgary Herald column for four years. I’ve been listed in the Canadian Who’s Who for my work since 1988, and in Wikipedia since 2006. In 1992, the Governor-General sent me a medal with a certificate for my “significant contribution to compatriots, community and Canada.” Since 2002, I've been writing the On The Other Hand blog for rabble.ca . I try to publish on Friday.
As a journalist, I’m here to persuade you that an educated, informed and engaged electorate is the bedrock of democracy. That’s kind of a truism in my business. While drafting the US Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson famously said that if he had to choose between a government and no newspapers, or newspapers and no government, he would choose newspapers without government.
More recently – 2014 – a scholar named Lisa Muller wrote a paper for the London School of Economics, looking at how news media affect elections in 47 countries. She concluded that, “As it happens, countries with a higher degree of media performance show higher levels of political participation and less corruption. They also tend to have a more lively civil society, and elected representatives seem to reflect the preferences of citizens more adequately....”
So let’s say that the media are at least potentially valuable to all of us. Since we’re all constantly exposed to major media, everybody feels qualified to be a critic. But an outsider may not see all the forces operating against effective reporting, starting with the fact that major news media workforce has shrunk drastically in the last two decades.
Reporter Jan Wong calculated that Canada lost half its newsroom staff from 2006 - 2011, falling from 10,000 jobs to 5,000 in five years. In the US, once-great newspapers like the Seattle Intelligencer and the Christian Science Monitor now exist only online if at all. Network news programs are in competition with specialized cable news channels. Journalism itself is an endangered industry.
Yet I repeat, without journalism or some kind of reporting standard, we cannot expect to have an informed electorate or a functioning democracy. We have only to look back at the 2003 US attack on Iraq to see what happens when news media fail to do their job adequately. The New York Times’ Judith Miller actually served time in prison for not doing her job properly. She and the Times were so enamoured of the “scoop” that they reported whatever the mendacious George W Bush White House told her, without checking it. She flunked the skepticism test.
Reporters are supposed to be skeptical, persistent and to have at least two separate confirmations for every fact. But persistence is dangerous in Donald Trump’s America, where last month, West Virginia reporter Daniel Heyman was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace, for persistently asking questions of Health Secretary Tom Price. If convicted, Heyman could face up to six months in jail – for shouting questions at a public official.
Unfortunately, politicians who stonewall are just one of the reasons that facts are becoming harder to find. Perhaps that’s why, for the past 20 or 30 years, the ever-expanding media have featured mainly opinions rather facts. Rush Limbaugh on radio and Bill O’Reilly on TV built their careers by having white-man tantrums on air.
CNN aired shows like “Crossfire,” with opponents shouting over each other, until Jon Stewart scolded them on their own show and told them their format was actively harmful to democracy. The late Roger Ailes built Fox News on patriarchal white rage, as did the neo-Nazi Breitbart “News,” with columnists like Milo Yiannopoulos and his idiotic claim that anything -- including cancer -- is better for women than feminism.
The 2016 US election brought us an unprecedented barrage of stories presented as news that were completely unrelated to any confirmable facts. Many if not most of these stories were shared online, on specialized websites, or on social media. And almost all of them could be disproved quickly for anyone who took the time to check.
****
Let’s pause for a moment to sing together. Our beloved Music Director Jane Perry is off-duty for the summer, so we have video hymns today. The words to We Would Be One, will be projected. The tune is Finlandia, and it’s #318 in the grey hymnal. Please rise in body or spirit, as you are able.
We Would Be One
****
Now I want to show you some of the steps I usually take in order to check the validity of the news I read or see on TV. Let’s start with a sample case. How many people here have heard of the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation? I’ve been following the Foundation for about a decade because it is one of the largest non-profits promoting women’s rights, and IMO, most of the stories circulating about the Foundation are fabrications.
So let’s start with a shocker, a video from RT TV, that looks like a news item.
The broadcaster’s argument is that, “In 2015, the Clintons wrote off $1,042,000 in charitable contributions. Of that, $1 million went to none other than the Clinton Family Foundation, where they get to control the flow of money. So in 2015, 96% of the Clintons’ charity went to…themselves.” Even if true, this argument is kind of irrelevant. But what this video seems to claim is the reverse, that somehow the foundation’s money ended up in the Clintons’ hands.
So let’s start fact checking. Since we’re looking at a charity, we’ll go to two websites that evaluate charities and non-profit organizations, Charity Watch, and Charity Navigator, which is much larger.
Here’s CharityWatch.org, which gives the Clinton Foundation an A rating overall. For governance and transparency, CW says the Foundation fulfills all its filing requirements. That’s a very favourable report.
Let’s try Charity Navigator, a much larger site that assesses non-profits. Charity Navigator tells us that the annual budget is $190 million and gives the Foundation a 97% score for financial accountability and a 93% score for transparency. That's very favourable too.
We could launch a general Google search, as long as we stick to news outlets we know and trust. Fortune Magazine ran a comprehensive article about the Clinton Foundation before the 2016 election. One of the Foundation’s programs provides healthy food and exercise classes to 31,000 US schools. Another separate but still affiliated program, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, negotiated hard with pharmaceutical companies to decrease the price of anti-retroviral drugs, and now supplies AIDS drugs to 11 million patients, mostly in Africa.
Here’s another magazine article. Inside Philanthropy tells us that, between them, Bill and Hillary Clinton earn $141 million a year. They donate 10.8% of their income to charity, (or about $14 million) including to their own private Clinton Family Foundation. The IP article follows the Family Foundation’s grants of $5000 to $25,000, to 70 nonprofit organizations in Arts and Culture, Health and Human Services, Children and Youth, Education, and Policy and Global giving. “To our eyes,” the article concludes, “the Clintons look like pretty standard major donors.”
By now we have four solid sources that say the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation does a lot of good in the world. And if we go to the Foundation’s own website, at the bottom of the front page, we find a quick accounting statement that says 87.2% of revenues to go Program Services,
8.6% to Management and General expenses, and 3.7% to Fundraising.
So what about the RT video I showed at the beginning? Here’s another reason to know your news outlets. RT stands for “Russia Today.” I view RT as a Russian propaganda machine, of the kind that was very active during the Cold War. RT popped up on Youtube about 10 years ago. At the time, I was editing an independent weekly newsmagazine online, and RT looked like it would be another Al Jazeera, which I regard as a usually credible source.
These days, unfortunately, as TV critic John Dolye says, “... if you’re a thinking person with a reasonable level of skepticism, Russia Today might seem ridiculous....But it’s not funny. It’s a bracing, brazen example of skewing the news coverage. And it is not without power and influence. It is commonly accepted that RT pays American cable and satellite companies handsomely to carry the channel. It has a lot of money to spend and has slick, well-staffed channels in several countries...”
RT is far from the only party attempting to influence our thinking, of course. Here in the city, we live in a sea of advertising. Political parties vie for our attention. The National Post promotes conservative views and free market capitalism. SUN News attempted to win a spot on basic cable, in hopes of building popularity for right-wing views, similar to Fox News in the States. Ezra Levant claims to be a journalist, and calls Rebel Media a news organization, even though he organizes right-wing political events in order to cover them.
In fact, I think the reason most people don’t think much about media literacy is that the media presence seems kind of overwhelming. And yet, if you ever tried comparing US coverage of, say, the Iraq war, with the CBC’s coverage, you’ve probably already noticed a difference. With luck, each of us has a few favourite news sources.
I’ll talk about how to choose reliable news sources in a few minutes.
****
We’ll take a break now to collect the offering. I invite you to light a candle of joy or concern on the side if you like, or drop a pebble in the water here. Our hymn is Meditation on Breathing
You’re welcome to sing along, or just enjoy.
****
Let's talk about mainstream sources for a few minutes. At home, we take the Globe and Mail and usually listen to CBC Radio One. I like the Metro and I'm not so keen on the Herald. I subscribe to the Atlantic and Consumers Report. What publications do other people like?
We've talked about some of our preferred major media news sources. When we go online, we have instant access to thousands of news outlets globally -- plus millions of individuals' accounts and opinions. Some web page have official sounding names and zero credibility, like "National Report." Without some kind of sorting mechanism, we could easily drown in "content."
Every published story usually carries some clues. As a journalist, I look at the reputation of the source of the story and the outlet that carries it, as well as how many sources are cited within the story. I search on the topic and see what other publications are saying. Lack of corroborating stories is usually a bad sign. And I try to check the facts, or find a fact-checker on the story.
Perhaps the longest-serving fact-checker on the Web is Snopes.com , which began in 1995 by checking urban legends and has evolved into checking news stories and celebrity claims.
Started by two retired insurance workers, Snopes soon became a standard newsroom reference if you wanted to check a jarring story. Last December, Facebook signed a deal with Snopes to check the fake news circulating on member pages.
Now, says Kalev Leetaru in Vanity Fair, Snopes’ founders are divorcing, and the expanded Snopes site is part of the divorce case. Snopes is still a standard reference in newsrooms, he says, for situations like the recent case when the president’s spokesperson invented an imaginary Bowling Green Massacre to justify the travel ban on people coming from Muslim countries.
A more recent contender is Media Bias Fact Check, which fact checks stories and also rates publications according to their left/right bias or reliable/unreliable status. MBFC even includes a list of the 10 best fact-checking sites, such as Politifact, or the Annenberg Centre, or the Poynter Institute.
Fact checkers can help identify which news sites to avoid, and their responses can be useful in online discussions. However, we seem to live in a post-fact or “alternative fact” political climate.
Fans of democracy argue that, as a society, we need the whole news media ecology, including funding for major investigations as well as independent journalism sites like rabble.ca where I write a weekly blog post. One major difference between Canada and the U.S. is that Canada's CRTC rejected core-cable status for Sun News Network, a kissing cousin to far right-wing Fox News in the U.S. Canadians have shown that much media savvy already.
In the U.S., a mere six companies control all the news media, outside of PBS. There are a few independent media outlets, such as Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! and Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept. I visit Commondreams.org and Alternet.org daily. On YouTube, I like The Young Turks -- youthful, insightful, insouciant, and literally Turks of Turkish descent. Bill Moyers also listed his top 10 investigative sites on his blog.
Among mainstream media, Reuters News Service stands out for editor-in-chief Steve Adler's instruction to newsroom staff to cover the White House the way they cover governments such as, "Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia, nations in which we sometimes encounter some combination of censorship, legal prosecution, visa denials, and even physical threats to our journalists."
For what it's worth, in my opinion most Americans would be amazed at the even-handed and thorough approach CBC takes to news gathering. Business Insider found that Americans place most trust in British news sources, but rely on the likes of Fox and CNN for domestic news.
Pew Research Center approaches the question another way, asking instead which news outlets are the more trusted. The Center found differences between liberals (who trusted 28 out of 36 news outlets) and conservatives, who trusted only 12 out of the 36 news organizations named.
Like anything else we see, what we observe depends largely on where we're standing. Social media tend to reinforce our own attitudes, in that we see more of what we indicate we like. We need to treat our media diet like our food diet, aiming for variety as well as flavour and sustenance.
We need to teach our children how to assess what they see onscreen, looking at source, content and context. As individuals, we need to follow a few trusted news sources like rabble.ca and CBC.ca, and keep a list of wildly inaccurate or politically unpalatable ones, like breitbart.com. And we can't take high quality news gathering for granted.
News used to be the most important programming that local or national broadcasters could offer. These days, newspapers are thinner than thin mints. TV network websites promote entertainment or reality shows, and conceal news programming under the "more" button.
Last December, Canada's Public Policy Forum des politiques publique du Canada issued a report that warns Canada's news media cannot survive their steeply dropping revenue. The Shattered Mirror report found that 225 weekly and 27 daily newspapers have merged or closed shop since 2010, in more than 210 federal ridings. Small market TV stations have closed. Newsrooms everywhere whittle away at staff and services. The Public Policy Forum cites an estimated 30 per cent reduction in journalism jobs since 2010.
In response, Public Policy Forum President Ed Greenspon convened a panel of experts including pollster Allan Gregg to recommend ways to save the industry. The Shattered Mirror calls on the federal government to support Canadian news media in a dozen ways such as adjusting tax breaks for online advertising; allowing non-profit media to register as charities and thus be eligible for philanthropic funding; strengthening the Copyright Act; strengthening and expanding Canadian Press; establishing Indigenous journalism as a discipline; creating a legal advice service for investigative journalists, and establishing a Future of Journalism and Democracy Fund, with an immediate endowment of $100 million and annual deposits of taxes from Canadian advertisements placed in foreign online media.
There's a reason the 45th U.S. president is furiously trying to control the news media, to the extent that Washington D.C. police have laid felony charges against six journalists who covered Inauguration Day protests. And it's the flip side of the reason that the U.S. and Canadian constitutions protect freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
As former Globe and Mail editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon put it: "Canada's news media is in the midst of an existential crisis. So, therefore, is our democracy."
****
Questions? Discussion?
****
We end today's service with our linking song, Spirit of Life but we invite everyone to stay for lemonade and cookies. This video plays the song through twice. We'll sing the first time, and let it run. You're welcome to sing it twice. Thanks for coming.
Sunday Service Unitarian Church of Calgary July 2 2017
Board member greets audience
Chalice lighting: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why they call it, the present.
Opening:
Welcome, and thanks for coming. Today I’m going to talk about how to evaluate the political and meta-political overtones in the news media that surround us, especially the online media. I think Unitarians should be interested in this topic because our fifth principle affirms the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. Democracy is only possible with an informed public, and that’s the news media’s job.
By the end of this talk, I hope you will have some tools to evaluate whatever you read or watch, to help choose some reliable outlets and assess any new outlets you encounter.
By “reliable”, I mean a news outlet that cites its sources, confirms its facts at least two ways, declares its bias and maintains its integrity. As a woman, I’m all too aware of media biases. I’ve spent most of my career challenging them. While I’m not sure that any news source can be “objective” or “neutral,” I AM sure it can be honest and transparent.
My point is that we as readers and as voters should choose our media sources as carefully as we choose our food sources. I think most Unitarians prefer local, whole foods to nourish their bodies, instead of fast food or frozen TV dinners. In the same way, we should be careful to choose news outlets that emphasize facts, with perhaps a bit of social justice analysis.
Who am I to offer such advice? I’ve been a free-lance journalist for 46 years. I’ve published six books with major publishers, I wrote a national column for 12 years and a Calgary Herald column for four years. I’ve been listed in the Canadian Who’s Who for my work since 1988, and in Wikipedia since 2006. In 1992, the Governor-General sent me a medal with a certificate for my “significant contribution to compatriots, community and Canada.” Since 2002, I've been writing the On The Other Hand blog for rabble.ca . I try to publish on Friday.
As a journalist, I’m here to persuade you that an educated, informed and engaged electorate is the bedrock of democracy. That’s kind of a truism in my business. While drafting the US Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson famously said that if he had to choose between a government and no newspapers, or newspapers and no government, he would choose newspapers without government.
More recently – 2014 – a scholar named Lisa Muller wrote a paper for the London School of Economics, looking at how news media affect elections in 47 countries. She concluded that, “As it happens, countries with a higher degree of media performance show higher levels of political participation and less corruption. They also tend to have a more lively civil society, and elected representatives seem to reflect the preferences of citizens more adequately....”
So let’s say that the media are at least potentially valuable to all of us. Since we’re all constantly exposed to major media, everybody feels qualified to be a critic. But an outsider may not see all the forces operating against effective reporting, starting with the fact that major news media workforce has shrunk drastically in the last two decades.
Reporter Jan Wong calculated that Canada lost half its newsroom staff from 2006 - 2011, falling from 10,000 jobs to 5,000 in five years. In the US, once-great newspapers like the Seattle Intelligencer and the Christian Science Monitor now exist only online if at all. Network news programs are in competition with specialized cable news channels. Journalism itself is an endangered industry.
Yet I repeat, without journalism or some kind of reporting standard, we cannot expect to have an informed electorate or a functioning democracy. We have only to look back at the 2003 US attack on Iraq to see what happens when news media fail to do their job adequately. The New York Times’ Judith Miller actually served time in prison for not doing her job properly. She and the Times were so enamoured of the “scoop” that they reported whatever the mendacious George W Bush White House told her, without checking it. She flunked the skepticism test.
Reporters are supposed to be skeptical, persistent and to have at least two separate confirmations for every fact. But persistence is dangerous in Donald Trump’s America, where last month, West Virginia reporter Daniel Heyman was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace, for persistently asking questions of Health Secretary Tom Price. If convicted, Heyman could face up to six months in jail – for shouting questions at a public official.
Unfortunately, politicians who stonewall are just one of the reasons that facts are becoming harder to find. Perhaps that’s why, for the past 20 or 30 years, the ever-expanding media have featured mainly opinions rather facts. Rush Limbaugh on radio and Bill O’Reilly on TV built their careers by having white-man tantrums on air.
CNN aired shows like “Crossfire,” with opponents shouting over each other, until Jon Stewart scolded them on their own show and told them their format was actively harmful to democracy. The late Roger Ailes built Fox News on patriarchal white rage, as did the neo-Nazi Breitbart “News,” with columnists like Milo Yiannopoulos and his idiotic claim that anything -- including cancer -- is better for women than feminism.
The 2016 US election brought us an unprecedented barrage of stories presented as news that were completely unrelated to any confirmable facts. Many if not most of these stories were shared online, on specialized websites, or on social media. And almost all of them could be disproved quickly for anyone who took the time to check.
****
Let’s pause for a moment to sing together. Our beloved Music Director Jane Perry is off-duty for the summer, so we have video hymns today. The words to We Would Be One, will be projected. The tune is Finlandia, and it’s #318 in the grey hymnal. Please rise in body or spirit, as you are able.
We Would Be One
****
Now I want to show you some of the steps I usually take in order to check the validity of the news I read or see on TV. Let’s start with a sample case. How many people here have heard of the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation? I’ve been following the Foundation for about a decade because it is one of the largest non-profits promoting women’s rights, and IMO, most of the stories circulating about the Foundation are fabrications.
So let’s start with a shocker, a video from RT TV, that looks like a news item.
The broadcaster’s argument is that, “In 2015, the Clintons wrote off $1,042,000 in charitable contributions. Of that, $1 million went to none other than the Clinton Family Foundation, where they get to control the flow of money. So in 2015, 96% of the Clintons’ charity went to…themselves.” Even if true, this argument is kind of irrelevant. But what this video seems to claim is the reverse, that somehow the foundation’s money ended up in the Clintons’ hands.
So let’s start fact checking. Since we’re looking at a charity, we’ll go to two websites that evaluate charities and non-profit organizations, Charity Watch, and Charity Navigator, which is much larger.
Here’s CharityWatch.org, which gives the Clinton Foundation an A rating overall. For governance and transparency, CW says the Foundation fulfills all its filing requirements. That’s a very favourable report.
Let’s try Charity Navigator, a much larger site that assesses non-profits. Charity Navigator tells us that the annual budget is $190 million and gives the Foundation a 97% score for financial accountability and a 93% score for transparency. That's very favourable too.
We could launch a general Google search, as long as we stick to news outlets we know and trust. Fortune Magazine ran a comprehensive article about the Clinton Foundation before the 2016 election. One of the Foundation’s programs provides healthy food and exercise classes to 31,000 US schools. Another separate but still affiliated program, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, negotiated hard with pharmaceutical companies to decrease the price of anti-retroviral drugs, and now supplies AIDS drugs to 11 million patients, mostly in Africa.
Here’s another magazine article. Inside Philanthropy tells us that, between them, Bill and Hillary Clinton earn $141 million a year. They donate 10.8% of their income to charity, (or about $14 million) including to their own private Clinton Family Foundation. The IP article follows the Family Foundation’s grants of $5000 to $25,000, to 70 nonprofit organizations in Arts and Culture, Health and Human Services, Children and Youth, Education, and Policy and Global giving. “To our eyes,” the article concludes, “the Clintons look like pretty standard major donors.”
By now we have four solid sources that say the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation does a lot of good in the world. And if we go to the Foundation’s own website, at the bottom of the front page, we find a quick accounting statement that says 87.2% of revenues to go Program Services,
8.6% to Management and General expenses, and 3.7% to Fundraising.
So what about the RT video I showed at the beginning? Here’s another reason to know your news outlets. RT stands for “Russia Today.” I view RT as a Russian propaganda machine, of the kind that was very active during the Cold War. RT popped up on Youtube about 10 years ago. At the time, I was editing an independent weekly newsmagazine online, and RT looked like it would be another Al Jazeera, which I regard as a usually credible source.
These days, unfortunately, as TV critic John Dolye says, “... if you’re a thinking person with a reasonable level of skepticism, Russia Today might seem ridiculous....But it’s not funny. It’s a bracing, brazen example of skewing the news coverage. And it is not without power and influence. It is commonly accepted that RT pays American cable and satellite companies handsomely to carry the channel. It has a lot of money to spend and has slick, well-staffed channels in several countries...”
RT is far from the only party attempting to influence our thinking, of course. Here in the city, we live in a sea of advertising. Political parties vie for our attention. The National Post promotes conservative views and free market capitalism. SUN News attempted to win a spot on basic cable, in hopes of building popularity for right-wing views, similar to Fox News in the States. Ezra Levant claims to be a journalist, and calls Rebel Media a news organization, even though he organizes right-wing political events in order to cover them.
In fact, I think the reason most people don’t think much about media literacy is that the media presence seems kind of overwhelming. And yet, if you ever tried comparing US coverage of, say, the Iraq war, with the CBC’s coverage, you’ve probably already noticed a difference. With luck, each of us has a few favourite news sources.
I’ll talk about how to choose reliable news sources in a few minutes.
****
We’ll take a break now to collect the offering. I invite you to light a candle of joy or concern on the side if you like, or drop a pebble in the water here. Our hymn is Meditation on Breathing
You’re welcome to sing along, or just enjoy.
****
Let's talk about mainstream sources for a few minutes. At home, we take the Globe and Mail and usually listen to CBC Radio One. I like the Metro and I'm not so keen on the Herald. I subscribe to the Atlantic and Consumers Report. What publications do other people like?
We've talked about some of our preferred major media news sources. When we go online, we have instant access to thousands of news outlets globally -- plus millions of individuals' accounts and opinions. Some web page have official sounding names and zero credibility, like "National Report." Without some kind of sorting mechanism, we could easily drown in "content."
Every published story usually carries some clues. As a journalist, I look at the reputation of the source of the story and the outlet that carries it, as well as how many sources are cited within the story. I search on the topic and see what other publications are saying. Lack of corroborating stories is usually a bad sign. And I try to check the facts, or find a fact-checker on the story.
Perhaps the longest-serving fact-checker on the Web is Snopes.com , which began in 1995 by checking urban legends and has evolved into checking news stories and celebrity claims.
Started by two retired insurance workers, Snopes soon became a standard newsroom reference if you wanted to check a jarring story. Last December, Facebook signed a deal with Snopes to check the fake news circulating on member pages.
Now, says Kalev Leetaru in Vanity Fair, Snopes’ founders are divorcing, and the expanded Snopes site is part of the divorce case. Snopes is still a standard reference in newsrooms, he says, for situations like the recent case when the president’s spokesperson invented an imaginary Bowling Green Massacre to justify the travel ban on people coming from Muslim countries.
A more recent contender is Media Bias Fact Check, which fact checks stories and also rates publications according to their left/right bias or reliable/unreliable status. MBFC even includes a list of the 10 best fact-checking sites, such as Politifact, or the Annenberg Centre, or the Poynter Institute.
Fact checkers can help identify which news sites to avoid, and their responses can be useful in online discussions. However, we seem to live in a post-fact or “alternative fact” political climate.
Fans of democracy argue that, as a society, we need the whole news media ecology, including funding for major investigations as well as independent journalism sites like rabble.ca where I write a weekly blog post. One major difference between Canada and the U.S. is that Canada's CRTC rejected core-cable status for Sun News Network, a kissing cousin to far right-wing Fox News in the U.S. Canadians have shown that much media savvy already.
In the U.S., a mere six companies control all the news media, outside of PBS. There are a few independent media outlets, such as Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! and Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept. I visit Commondreams.org and Alternet.org daily. On YouTube, I like The Young Turks -- youthful, insightful, insouciant, and literally Turks of Turkish descent. Bill Moyers also listed his top 10 investigative sites on his blog.
Among mainstream media, Reuters News Service stands out for editor-in-chief Steve Adler's instruction to newsroom staff to cover the White House the way they cover governments such as, "Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia, nations in which we sometimes encounter some combination of censorship, legal prosecution, visa denials, and even physical threats to our journalists."
For what it's worth, in my opinion most Americans would be amazed at the even-handed and thorough approach CBC takes to news gathering. Business Insider found that Americans place most trust in British news sources, but rely on the likes of Fox and CNN for domestic news.
Pew Research Center approaches the question another way, asking instead which news outlets are the more trusted. The Center found differences between liberals (who trusted 28 out of 36 news outlets) and conservatives, who trusted only 12 out of the 36 news organizations named.
Like anything else we see, what we observe depends largely on where we're standing. Social media tend to reinforce our own attitudes, in that we see more of what we indicate we like. We need to treat our media diet like our food diet, aiming for variety as well as flavour and sustenance.
We need to teach our children how to assess what they see onscreen, looking at source, content and context. As individuals, we need to follow a few trusted news sources like rabble.ca and CBC.ca, and keep a list of wildly inaccurate or politically unpalatable ones, like breitbart.com. And we can't take high quality news gathering for granted.
News used to be the most important programming that local or national broadcasters could offer. These days, newspapers are thinner than thin mints. TV network websites promote entertainment or reality shows, and conceal news programming under the "more" button.
Last December, Canada's Public Policy Forum des politiques publique du Canada issued a report that warns Canada's news media cannot survive their steeply dropping revenue. The Shattered Mirror report found that 225 weekly and 27 daily newspapers have merged or closed shop since 2010, in more than 210 federal ridings. Small market TV stations have closed. Newsrooms everywhere whittle away at staff and services. The Public Policy Forum cites an estimated 30 per cent reduction in journalism jobs since 2010.
In response, Public Policy Forum President Ed Greenspon convened a panel of experts including pollster Allan Gregg to recommend ways to save the industry. The Shattered Mirror calls on the federal government to support Canadian news media in a dozen ways such as adjusting tax breaks for online advertising; allowing non-profit media to register as charities and thus be eligible for philanthropic funding; strengthening the Copyright Act; strengthening and expanding Canadian Press; establishing Indigenous journalism as a discipline; creating a legal advice service for investigative journalists, and establishing a Future of Journalism and Democracy Fund, with an immediate endowment of $100 million and annual deposits of taxes from Canadian advertisements placed in foreign online media.
There's a reason the 45th U.S. president is furiously trying to control the news media, to the extent that Washington D.C. police have laid felony charges against six journalists who covered Inauguration Day protests. And it's the flip side of the reason that the U.S. and Canadian constitutions protect freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
As former Globe and Mail editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon put it: "Canada's news media is in the midst of an existential crisis. So, therefore, is our democracy."
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Questions? Discussion?
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We end today's service with our linking song, Spirit of Life but we invite everyone to stay for lemonade and cookies. This video plays the song through twice. We'll sing the first time, and let it run. You're welcome to sing it twice. Thanks for coming.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Rock of Ages -- Unitarian Church of Calgary March 16 2014
Rock of Ages, Rock of Faith
Before service: Video: For the beauty of the earthRock of Ages, Rock of Faith
Service leader: Penney Kome – Guest speaker: Carolyn Pogue
Welcome: Board member -- Brandis Purcell
Greet your neighbour
Chalice lighting and opening words from Annie Besant:
O Hidden Life vibrant in every atom;
O Hidden Light! Shining in every creature;
O Hidden Love! Embracing all in Oneness;
May each who feels himself as one with Thee,
Know he is also one with every other.
Introduction: Penney Kome
Good morning and thanks for coming to hear about the importance of rocks in our lives, especially the oldest rock in the world. I want to take a moment to highlight why this topic is important to us as Unitarians.
First of all, our seventh principle (adopted in 1993) is to affirm and promote the interdependent web of all existence – all existence, in addition to all life. Recent extreme weather events have shown the wisdom of this approach. Even if we speak of the planet as Earth and not Gaia, clearly the natural forces wreaking havoc this winter have been anything but inert.
With this congregation in particular, we’ve been fortunate to have so many geologists as valuable members, thus proving once again that UU s are well grounded in science as well as in faith. We UU s also like to learn from other beliefs, and rocks figure prominently in many faiths, as our guest speaker will show us.
Just as humans feel kinship with animals and plants, so do we also relate to the minerals that share our world, Long before pet rocks became a fad, people around the world carried rocks as companions, in the form of touchstones and worry beads. We humans warm to rocks, even knowing that they are lifeless. We learn about our world from rocks, and we incorporate them into our belief systems.
Today I have the great pleasure of introducing a distinguished author and peace activist, Carolyn Pogue. Carolyn’s many books include two historical fiction books, a peace colouring book, and the book we’re celebrating today, Rock of Ages. As an activist, she founded the Calgary chapter of Women in Black, and that led to annual Peace Camps for children which have been held in this church, at least once. You may be familiar with Carolyn's campaign against child poverty, with The United Church Women's Child Wellbeing Initiative. [Oh, and her spouse is famous too. We are also honoured to have the Very Reverend Bill Phipps with us again today.]
I could go on and on, but the real treat today is to hear Carolyn speak for herself. And we’ll start by inviting her to tell us a Story for All, and inviting the young and young at heart up to the front. Please do come up, children. Carolyn would love to meet you.
Carolyn Pogue: Everybody Needs A Rock, by Byrd Baylor
Author Byrd Baylor offers ten tips for choosing your very own rock.
Penney Kome: Now it’s time to light the children’s chalice and head downstairs to your classrooms.
Sing children out: Go now in peace, go now in peace, may the spirit of love surround you, everywhere, everywhere, you may go.
PK: Now please join us in a new song. Carolyn has brought a hymn with her, Called by Earth and Sky, by Pat Mayberry. Please stand in body or in spirit and sing with us. This hymn is not in our hymnbook. Look up at the screen for words and music.
Offering: After the basket has passed, you may light a silent candle or this week you may drop a polished rock into a bowl of water, to symbolize your joy or concern.
Caring Committee report
I am here on behalf of the caring team -- that is all of us -- as we care for each other in this congregation.
We take this time in the service to tend the sacred ties that bind our lives to one another. These are the relationships that are the foundation of this beloved community that we get to create together. We recognize ourselves as part of an interdependent web of existence, affirming that what touches the life of one of us, affects us all. In these moments, we seek to widen the caring ministry by sharing the joys, sorrows, concerns and milestones in our own lives and in the life of the congregation.
[SWEET team member reads joys and concerns from green cards and talks about greeting cards to sign.]
We light this candle of concern for all those spoken concerns as well as those in our hearts.
There are joys and milestones in our midst as well. We light this candle for for those.
One of our greatest joys is to welcome newcomers to our midst. If you are here for the first time, and if you are comfortable doing so, please stand or wave and be recognized.
We light this candle of joy for all that has been spoken, for the guests among us, and for all the unspoken joys held in the silence of our hearts.
Welcome and please join us for coffee and take a blue cup. The blue cup serves as an invitation to conversation. Please also take a moment and stop by our Welcome Table located in the Barker Room and sign our Guest Book.
Finally, we light our candle of global concern.
Homily: “Faith like a rock,” Carolyn Pogue talks about rocks as metaphor.
Penney
has mentioned some of the work I’ve been involved with over the years. I
realized, soon after I began thinking about writing Rock of Ages, that this book really brings together a lot of this work. It is about how I feel about this precious planet.
The
Acasta River gneiss — or the rock from the Denadziidee River— is the
most ancient on Earth. Currently, the rock is located southeast of
Sahtu/Great Bear Lake, but it hasn’t always been located there. After
it arose from the primal waters more than four billion years ago, it
continued to move. Because of techtonic plate activity, scientists say
that this rock has slipped beneath mountains and emerged into the air
again. It has travelled to the equator and to the other side of the
planet. It is the Rock More Travelled you could say.
Two
years ago I sat at my computer and stared at this rock. I knew that it
had a story inside and I wondered if I could find it. In fact, I found
many stories. This morning I share some from a chapter in Rock of Ages in which I looked at some of our spiritual connections to rocks.
Humans
around the world have long understood "rock" as a metaphor for the
sacred. Stories, scriptures and hymns abound with this imagery. As well,
followers of a variety of spiritual traditions venerate particular
rocks and stones.
England
The British Isles are rich with rock and stone stories, rituals and holy places. Stonehenge in
England is by far the most well known of the megalithic sites. It can
be seen for about three kilometres all around. There are about 80 major
stones, some brought great distances from the area now called Wales.
Although it is a very busy tourist and pilgrimage site, modern Druids
are still able to practice ceremonies during Solstice. It was apparently
constructed so that humans could align themselves with the great powers
of the universe. Stonehenge is about 5,000 years old.
Saudi Arabia
Tradition says that the Black Stone fell
from the sky. It is said to have been venerated in pre-Islamic times,
and according to Muslim tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and
Eve, the beginning. It is the eastern cornerstone in the Grand Mosque in
Mecca, Saudi Arabia, set there by the Prophet Muhammad in 605 CE. A
piece of it is framed and set into the side of the mosque and this is
where millions of pilgrims annually come to pray, and to kiss, touch or
point to it in a show of reverence. Pilgrims walk around it in prayer
seven times. If devout Muslims can possibly do it, they are required to
make at least one pilgrimage during their lifetimes. Many millions do
just that because there is but one Black Stone.
Tibet
For Buddhists, though, there are many Mani
stones. These are stone plates, rocks or pebbles inscribed with Om mani
padme hum, “hail to the jewel in the lotus,” which is a prayer for
compassion. Mani stones are placed along roadsides or rivers and
sometimes walls as a prayer offering, and as a reminder that Earth is
sacred. People walk clockwise around them or pass on the left. This is
the way the Earth revolves.
Ireland
Few
visitors to Ireland wouldn’t know about the Blarney Stone. This stone,
in Blarney Castle near Cork, has many legends attached to it. One says
that the Blarney was once part of the Stone of Scone in Scotland.
Another says that the builder of the castle appealed to a goddess for
help in settling a lawsuit. She told him that if he kissed a stone enroute
to court he would receive an eloquent tongue. He did, and the judge
ruled in his favour. In gratitude, he incorporated the stone into the
castle. Today, the Blarney Stone is said to impart the gift of the
blarney to the one who will lean over backward to kiss it. The
literature proclaims that if you kiss the Blarney Stone, “you’ll never
be at a loss for words again.”
Manitou Stone in Alberta
A
few years ago I was told by a Cree friend about a holy stone in this
province. It is The Manitou Stone. Learning about it made me cringe. The
story is wrapped inside the larger painful story of European Christians
believing that they needed to “save” people, and the cruel
establishment by the Canadian government, of Indian Residential Schools
and racist policies and laws.
In
the early days, the story tells us, the Great Spirit, Manitou, sent an
iron stone to Earth. Some call it a meteorite; others call it Old Man
Buffalo, perhaps because of its power to protect the buffalo, the life
blood of the people of the Prairies.
The
Blackfoot and Cree, believed that the Manitou Stone protected them
against war, disease and famine. The Elders taught this. People left
offerings near the stone and made prayers and songs in its honour.
When
Christian missionaries arrived in the area, they saw how the people
regularly travelled to the stone and revered it. The newcomers believed
that the Manitou Stone was a stumbling block to the conversion of people
to Christianity. In the 1860s, Reverend George McDougall, a Methodist,
spirited the Stone away and left the hill and the people, bereft.
The
prophecy of the holy ones came true. Very soon, there was indeed war
between the Blackfoot and the Cree. Within a few years, the buffalo
population was decimated.
And,
finally, a small pox epidemic decimated the people, killing George
McDougall’s three daughters, too. War, disease and famine had arrived
with a vengeance.
The
Manitou Stone had been sent to Toronto, Ontario where it was lodged at
Victoria University for more than 100 years. Eventually, a new
generation of church people felt shame for the theft and returned the
stone to the west. But the councils of Elders and chiefs could not
decide who should take responsibility for its care or where it should be
placed. And so, the Manitou Stone today is on display at the Royal
Alberta Museum in Edmonton.
Just
before the Solstice in December 2012, a Ceremony of Forgiveness was
held at McDougall United Church in Edmonton. Initiated by Anna Faulds,
the ritual involved representatives of Blackfoot, Cree and Dene nations,
the Royal Alberta Museum and the local and national United Church. The
intent of the ceremony was to remove the negative energy surrounding the
Manitou Stone. Such is the power of sacred rocks to this day.
Cosmologist
Brian Swimme says that science has finally recognized what First
Peoples have always said, “We are one.” Swimme says, “We are the
universe in human form — related, in terms of energy and of matter — and
part of an amazing story.”
I
believe that this rock is important today because it is a physical
connection to that amazing story. We can touch the beginning of
time.This is why, for example, universities and museums around the world
want a piece for display and study — and the Smithsonian Institute went
north to get a piece for a cornerstone for a new museum.
Geologist
Janet King located this rock in 1989. In all of Earth’s history, it
took until now for the world to catch a glimpse of it. It made me wonder
if this grandfather rock had kept his story quiet until now for a
reason.
Part
of the outcrop is embedded deep in the Earth, part of it stands bold
against the wild sky and part of it swoops down into the river. It
connects, therefore, Earth, air, water. It remains to be seen what we
will make of it.
[end]
Now, please join us in singing Hymn #308, in our gray hymnal -- The Blessings of the Earth and Sky
Centering -- Poetry excerpt plus lithophone (musical rocks) video
Anne Marie Sewell has made her poem "if you must touch river rock" available in Carolyn's book, among other places. We excerpt it here so we also have time to share an exciting brand new video that my colleague Greg Locke just made available for the first time on Thursday night., in which musicians call forth the voices of rocks.
This video from a 2012 Sound Symposium shows how to wrap bungee cords around flat rocks to build sounding chambers, which echo when someone strikes the top rock. Musical rocks are called lithophones. In this video, they sound like rainsticks.
We will read the poem excerpt and then play the video, and we invite you to relax into contemplating what we have to learn from rocks. Please put your feet flat on the floor and your hands in your lap, and think about taking a few deep breaths. You might want to close your eyes for a minute once the musicians get going.
"if you must touch river rock", excerpt, by Edmonton Poet Laureate Anne Marie Sewell
...let some stones be porous
some rough, some smooth
so your fingers are soothed
and learn to touch like water
and if one is grey
call it writer's stone
all colours or none
heavy or light
the fog that conceals
or clouds the birthplace of rain
the mind of the poet,
story of it hidden
let this one remind you
the beating of a heart
much older than our own
enfolds us our blood
part of that dancing over stones
that give the river its song
Video by award-winning photographer Greg Locke, from the 2012 Sound Symposium held in Doctor's Cove, Newfoundland https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151948818822681&set=vb.592097680&type=2&theater
Responsive Reading: #550 Please join us in a responsive reading. Carolyn will lead this side with words in regular font. Penney will lead this side with words in italics.
We Belong to the Earth, attributed to Chief Noah Sealth
This we know. The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth.This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family.
All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughter of the earth.
We did not weave the web of life. We are merely a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
Closing words:
Let us bless and keep one another.
Let kindness rule in our hearts
and compassion in our lives,
until we meet again. Amen.
by John C Morgan
Please join hands or assume the Namaste position for our final Hymn, #123, Spirit of Life. The words are on the wall.
Hymn#123: Spirit of Life -- Words are on the walls
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Rooting for the Olympics underdogs
Photo by Penney Kome, Calgary Pride March September 2013
Although some LGBT leaders urged a boycott on the Sochi Olympics due to Russia's draconian law against "homosexual propaganda", generally world response has been to treat the event as a teachable moment about celebrating all the different forms of human love.
Russia’s new law banning gay friendly “propaganda” accessible to minors has sparked serious and humourous protests globally. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision not to attend the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi puts him in good company. Neither President Obama nor Vice-President Biden will attend, nor French President Francois Hollande German President Joachim Gauck or European Union Commissioner Viviane Reding.
On February 5, rallies in 20 cities worldwide protested outside the offices of ten major Olympics sponsors. In addition, CTV news reported that, “A coalition of 40 international groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, sent an open letter to the 10 biggest Olympic sponsors last week urging them to run ads promoting equality for LGBT people.”
All the sponsors promptly re-affirmed their commitment to human rights. Some specifically declared their support for LGBT rights.
"Russia's law is harmful to LGBT individuals and families, and it's harmful to a diverse society," said a post on the AT&T Consumer Blog, under the headline A Time for Pride and Equality.
The next day, Chobani (Yogurt) CEO Hamdi Ulukaya issued a statement "It's disappointing that in 2014 this is still an issue," he said. "We are against all laws and practices that discriminate in any way, whether it be where you come from or who you love. For that reason, we oppose Russia's anti-LGBT law."
As ABC News reported, De Vry University spokesperson Ernie Gibble said, "We are against Russia's anti-LGBT law and support efforts to improve LGBT equality." Coca Cola announced its strong support for LGBT rights. McDonald’s stated it supports human and civil rights. Visa said that it was “engaged” with the IOC on “this important topic.”
Google changed the logo on its search page, showing rainbow patches, each holding an athlete in a winter Olympic sport, above a quote from the Olympic Charter about human rights.
Late night talk show host Chelsea Handler inspired rainbows over city halls across Canada when she ran the wrong photo – Vancouver mayor Greg Robertson – while reporting the Sochi mayor’s homophobic remarks. Learning of the mix-up through Twitter, Robertson seized the opportunity to reiterate his well-known support for gay rights.
“I’ve always stood strong and proud for Vancouver’s LGBTQ community, and gay rights are really important to Vancouverites,” he said. Vancouver Council voted to send a delegation to Sochi to lobby the IOC for gay rights, headed up by City Councillor Tim Stevenson, who is gay.
After Vancouver stepped up to the challenge, city after city across Canada voted to fly the rainbow flag for the duration of the games, starting with St John’s, Nfld. Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, and Whistler, among others, are flying rainbow flags out front, as their mayors hold news conferences to assert their cities’ support for LGBT rights. Toronto’s Rob Ford is the biggest hold-out.
Then came the advertisements: Chevy’s Olympics ads include same-sex couples raising children Norway promoted sports with an ad that ends, “Whatever team you play for...” ; the Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion issued a 33 second commercial with two lugers rocking back and forth with a caption saying, “The Olympics have always been a little bit gay;" and Britain’s Channel 4 re-branded to a rainbow-coloured logo and launched a “Gay Mountain” ad campaign.
The world seems to have seized upon the Sochi Olympics as a teachable moment. Twenty years ago, such a public outpouring of support would have been unimaginable. I am as stunned but delighted as I was the night the United States elected its first Black president. As a Unitarian, whose denomination has offered same sex marriage in Canada since 1974, I honestly did not expect to see this sea change in within my lifetime.
As well, there’s been a fierce debate on whether to boycott the games. In August, actor Stephen Fry wrote, “An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 on Sochi is simply essential.” George Takei in the States urged the same. Some progressives shun the games completely – not easy to do in this Olympics-soaked news cycle. Meanwhile, reporters have mentioned most spectator seats remain unsold, for a number of reasons.
Conversely, other high-profile LGBT folks have urged gays to make their presence at Sochi highly visible and as successful as possible. As Susan Cole wrote in NOW, “gay rights activists have the chance to get unprecedented visibility.”
On the other hand, one young gay man close to my heart is worried that the news media attempts to support gay athletes could actually jeopardize them. Everybody’s looking for a Jesse Owens -- the Black athlete who won four gold medals at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics -- to prove Putin wrong. This fellow pointed to the coverage of Ireen Wust, who won two gold medals for speedskating. News reports mentioned that she prefers to be identified as a Dutch skater, even though she is out as a lesbian at home – in Holland, where people don’t pay much attention to such differences.
Yes, every victory by an LGBT athlete throws the hateful law’s lie back in the teeth of official Russia. But, he said, “Right now the media are on a witch hunt for every gay athlete who wins a medal. In effect, they’re identifying potential targets.” He pointed out that Ireen Wust is still competing, still in Russia, where speaking out for gay rights is against the law. Wust should be the person to decide how she identifies (she has won speedskating gold three Olympics in a row) and how much risk she wants to take.
Although Canada lines up with the gay-friendly nations on the Olympics, he said, LGBT communities at home usually see a different orientation. Somewhere over the rainbow, the athletes will come home again. And now that all of these companies, politicians, and celebrities have made this big show of how much they support gay rights, he said, “it’s time for them to live up to it.”
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Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the 1936 summer Olympics, a record that stands to this day. According to the Olympics website, “...Owens won four gold medals, in the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and the long jump. He managed to break or equal nine Olympic records and also set three world records. One of those world records was in the 4x100m relay. The quartet set a time that wouldn’t be bettered for 20 years.”
Even more remarkably Owens , a Black man, achieved all this in an extremely hostile environment. The Ineternational Olympics Committee chose Berlin in 1931, two years before Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933.
According to Wikipedia, “Hitler saw the [1936] Games as an opportunity to promote his government and ideals of racial supremacy, and the official Nazi party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, wrote in the strongest terms that Jews and Black people should not be allowed to participate in the Games.”
World outcry forced the Third Reich to retract their outrageous request, and a few brave Jewish and Black athletes did compete. If Jesse Owens’ extraordinary triumphs embarrassed the Adolf Hitler’s government and its claims of Aryan racial superiority, other nations did not seem particularly sympathetic.
Indeed, some nations urged the world to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and forty-nine countries actually registered athletes with alternative games in Barcelona. Unfortunately, the Spanish Civil War erupted the day before the games were due to start.
Russia was among the first to announce it would boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympic games -- even though the Third Reich retracted its original demand that no countries send Jewish or Black athletes -- largely because Russia boycotted all the Olympics at that time and instead participated in the international workers’ games, Spartakiad.
So there’s a certain irony in the way so many nations have turned against Russia during the 2014 Olympics, on human rights grounds.
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