How Long, Exactly, Can You Shield a Child?

Today, Rod Dreher blogs that - as moving as little Paris Katherine Jackson's heartfelt speech about her father was - perhaps it would've been better to shield the child and her brothers from the spectacle that was Michael Jackson's memorial service.

As usual, Rod fails to look at the context to get the main point. In this instance, perhaps, sure, if you just look at that one piece of the afternoon, you might feel that way.

But you have to look at other parts. What I took away from that memorial service was that this little girl was aware of what people said about her father. She wanted to defend him.

I saw her jump up - she was one of the first, in fact - to applaud Al Sharpton's comments about her father not being strange, for instance.

By many accounts, Jackson tried to shield his children from much of the mockery made of him. But I remember being an 11-year-old girl. I knew when my parents were fighting over the phone. I knew when the child support check was late. My mother rarely told me, but you can intuit a lot.

I think she knew how the world saw her father. Whether the realization came over the past few days, after his death, or much earlier as paparazzi trailed them when Michael Jackson took her and her brothers out and about, she knew that part of the world saw him as a beloved entertainer, and another part saw him as something freakish to be mocked.

I saw no coercion from the family - if that was the case, you'd think Jackson's oldest child would have been asked to speak, or even all the children. Instead, I saw a bright, grief-stricken, articulate child who wanted to humanize her father. It was a gut reaction that reminded everyone watching that they may have lost an entertainer, but she lost her daddy.

And she certainly deserved to tell us that.

Seriously?

So, Sunday is the only day we get the Dallas Morning News now. We used to get it every day, but then when they quit responding to our stop paper requests on vacations, we canceled the subscription.
We got an offer for Sunday only, and decided to give it a whirl again. It's an easy whirl, given that the paper is so light and I only allow myself to read the first three graphs of any Rod Dreher or Steve Blow column. But imagine my - no, wait, a little background is an order here.

Just a few short years ago, I was responsible for not only cleaning the newspaper bathroom, but also writing all major stories and designing the paper - laying it out, as it's called in newsroom vernacular. So reading the print version of TDMN is not just an exercise in frustration because of some of the writing (btw, Elizabeth Souder rocked that T. Boone Pickens story Sunday), but also because of the design.

So imagine my dismay to page through the paper to find this gem - a black and white photo of fireworks.

May I just ask how many layers of boneheadedness did that have to go through before it landed in my yard. I can see being an overworked copy editor and it not registering. But doesn't this page go through at least two more layers before it makes it to the press? At some point, shouldn't someone have said, "You know, this is a great photo, but a black and white picture of fireworks is really kinda stupid?"

And then it also dawned on me - we can expect more of this. Through mismanagement - which led to decimating the newsroom and overworking people who were already overworked anyway - there is literally nobody there to say, "Guys, we can't put a freakin' black and white picture of fireworks in the paper."

So while I thoroughly intended to mock Dallas' Only Daily for this, all I can really muster is a slow head shake, and going to find a black mourning band for my sleeve. Because really, while this may seem small to many, it's one of many symptoms that this patient is very, very ill. This photo is one of many death rattles over the past year, and management has given every indication they've signed a DNR.

Let's sit shiva for the Dallas Morning News, and try to figure out how we're going to accurately tell the story of Dallas in years to come without it.

Things That Make Me Want to Hit Myself About the Head With Hammers

Fair warning, this'll probably be the first in a series. As a rule, I'm a fairly content individual, but there are a few things that actually do make me want to hit things, or hit myself with things.

This week? It's been the commenters on the DMN. Specifically, the slackjawed mouthbreathers who turned this story about the Gay Rights march in Oaklawn into a discussion rife with homophobia, and completely filled with jawdroppingly awesome untruths.

The conversation veered - and stayed - on gay marriage. More than one person insisted the law in Texas didn't ban it, and that there was a lot of fuss about nothing. A simple Google search could've cleared that astounding misconception up, but since the poster couldn't even spell discriminatory correctly, I'm assuming there were challenges that precluded such an experiment with the truth.

But really, I do not get this debate about gay marriage. The government (and I'm veering dangerously into Trey Garrison territory here) has no business being in the marriage business. Marriage is a religious ceremony. Government (if I'm recalling my constitutional knowledge correctly and completely forgetting the past eight years) isn't supposed to be engaged in religion.

The simple solution? The government gets out of the marriage business, and begins offering civil unions to everyone, for legal purposes. You get your civil union at a courthouse, and then it's up to you - and a church - to hash out any marriage ceremony you might want.

The answer seems so simple that there's probably something I'm missing. If I'm not, why hasn't it happened?

Things I've Said This Week

Said this week, and in no particular order:

1. I would like some of the Moose Knuckle ice cream. (Dessert request gone awry)

2. I've discovered five speedwalking geriatrics can be downright terrifying when they're headed your direction.

3. It burns my ass something fierce.

4. If I have to pony up blood or buy Avon, they're getting Funyuns and Diet Dr Pepper, and they'll like it.

5. MJ and Farrah are not only merely dead, they're really most sincerely dead.

6. In honor of MJ, any rumbling I do in parking garages or subway stations will include the use of jazz hands.

7. That squirrel is looking at me again.

8. Dueling asshats? AWE.some.

9. Hee! Anal Fissures.

10. Is having a raging case of the stupids. I think it might be contagious.

Dear Dallas Morning News:

I totally agree.

Wherein channels 8 and 11 start noticing a sucking sound...

Ah, yes. The digital conversion. When we first started hearing about it, it was kind of like Armageddon - you heard about it, heard it was approaching, but it was always far enough away that it didn't seem like something to really worry about.

And, despite the flurry of information in the past year about it, apparently some people emerged from beneath their rocks, twiddle their antennas, and realize they could no longer see Troy Dungan - never you mind Troy hasn't been on in more than a year. They couldn't see him, nor Tracy Rowlett, and it was nigh to upsetting.

Now we find out that people all over the DFW area are having the same trouble. People that prepared for the impending Digipocalypse by getting the converter box. People that know how to program VCRs and work iPods. People who read newspapers. People who read newspapers on the Internet.

In other words, fairly technically astute individuals with a modicum of ability were unable to procure the channel 8 or the channel 11 digital signal via antenna and converter box (or antenna and HD television).

As we scanned and rescanned the antenna channels the day after the switch - mind you, we have Uverse, so this was just for back up - we couldn't help but wonder if other people were having the same difficulty.

Judging from the comments on this post over at Uncle Barky's site, they are. And judging from early numbers after the switch, this difficulty could - possibly - be really screwing with the two channel's ratings.

People are essentially lazy. Sorry people, but we are. I know. I mean, I'm sitting here, on the couch, in my pajamas, and have been since 6 p.m. or so. We're lazy. If we can't get a channel in via a set top antenna, and we don't already have a roof antenna up, what's the over/under on one of us lazy SOB's actually carting our keisters to Target or wherever to pick up an antenna, then climbing up on the roof to install it and aim it and whatever the heck else you have to do to get a stupid signal?

Yeah. I thought so.