Category Tolerance

Pompous is funny—Fox News proves it

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Talk about looking for excuse to pile on!  Fox News Channel found one and did, and Jon Stewart was there to skewer them.

On last night’s The Daily Show Stewart used the coverage of a recent contretemps involving NASA (full disclosure: I work for a NASA contractor) to ridicule Fox’s anti-anything-Obama  attitude and its religious intolerance.

Yeah, yeah, I know, “We report, you decide,” and the news shows versus the opinion shows, but still…(and don’t bail out before he cracks America’s News Mommy, too.)

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I once thought Fox just hoped the rest of us weren’t paying attention, but now I realize they don’t care about that.  They have faith, my friends—faith that eventually, each of us loyal, God-fearing, right-thinking Americans will come around and agree with them, and the lack of fairness and balance won’t matter.  In the meantime, cha-ching!

(All in all, sort of the same attitude that ESPN has, as demonstrated by having finally put their last shard of editorial integrity into a blind trust.)

USA 234, HIPRB! 1

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Happy 4th of July, all you American patriots…the rest of ya, too.  I’ve got a gift for you, even though you’re not the one turning 234 years old: I invite you to remove your shoes and stroll barefoot among the new tabs at the top of the page, up there under the site title (I gotta get a better title).

For almost a year I’ve been using this page to show off my ideas, but mostly to practice putting one word in front of the other on a regular basis again.  When I discovered that there can be more than one page here, I knew how I wanted to use them.

For years I’ve been saving quotations that appealed to me.  Some I saved just because they were so well written but most of them are ideas I agree with, expressed more ably and eloquently than I am capable (of).  (See.)

Choose from ideas about American law and government and politics, thoughts about my first post-college profession, a section of funnies, and a collection of philosophical takes on life.  I hope you enjoy them, and offer your comments pro and con.  I’ll be adding to the sections as new material is discovered.

So, what did you get me?

“Many Faiths, One Truth”

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

That’s the title that caught my attention from atop an opinion piece in last week’s New York Times.

You don’t have to be a scholar of religions to understand that the major faiths share some basic teachings.  In this essay the Dalai Lama recounts discussions with scholars and experiences from his travels to demonstrate that compassion is a common tenet among the great religions, even when acts by a few of the “faithful” make it hard for the rest of the world to see that.

He believes recognizing common ground makes us better able to accept differences: “While preserving faith toward one’s own tradition, one can respect, admire and appreciate other traditions.”  He’s arguing for greater tolerance from all people toward the faiths and practices of all other people, and not just for feel-good reasons:

Finding common ground among faiths can help us bridge needless divides at a time when unified action is more crucial than ever. As a species, we must embrace the oneness of humanity as we face global issues like pandemics, economic crises and ecological disaster. At that scale, our response must be as one.

To paraphrase: stop letting differences in religious tradition and practice get in the way of the unity we Earthlings need to embrace.  Don’t throw away the gift while arguing about the pattern on the wrapping paper.