“You get to make a living; you give to make a life.” ~Winston Churchill

One of my co-workers brought in a “Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF” box today, so I thought I’d blog about it in case anybody was unaware of this wonderful tradition.

UNICEF started their “Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF” program in 1950 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, when five fantastic children decided to bring decorated milk cartons along with them when they went trick-or-treating on Halloween, collecting donations to send to children who were suffering in post-war Europe. They donated their $17.00 total (not too shabby for 1950) to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. Shortly afterward it became a nationwide tradition, and UNICEF started distributing little orange boxes to schools to be given to the students so that they could participate. According to Wikipedia, over $119 million USD has been collected through “Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF” since its inception. Canada joined the party in 1955, and they have collected $96 million CAN since. Hong Kong has raised $6 million HK since they joined the tradition in 2001.

If your children did not bring orange boxes home from school, you may order them here, or if you run out of time you can pick them up at participating Pier 1, Hallmark and Baskin Robbins locations. UNICEF also provides this canister wrapper so you can make your own.

Once you’ve collected your donation, learn how to donate here. You can do so online, by phone, by mail, or at a Coinstar® center.

The Grotto Blog by Lauren E. Moccio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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“Journalism is an act of faith in the future.” ~Ann Curry

UPDATE 10/05/09: Anderson Cooper spoke to Broadcast & Cable: “There’s a huge disconnect with the American people paying attention in Afghanistan,” says CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who recently spent a week embedded with the military at Jaker, a remote forward operating base in Helmand province. “These are not stories people are watching. Frankly, when I was there, “60 Minutes” was all over the place. CNN has a full-time correspondent there. There are people telling the stories. But I know for a fact that not a lot of Americans, no matter what they say, are interested or are willing to spend a lot of time watching. I think polls reflect that, ratings reflect that.” [...] “Every time I’ve gone to Afghanistan and been embedded with troops, they have the same message, which is, folks back home have no idea what’s going on here,” says CNN’s Cooper. In 2006, Cooper spent several days with the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan. “They all told me the same story,” he says. “They would be back home for two weeks of R&R, and they were on a plane or in a bar and somebody would ask them, ‘Where are you serving?’ And when they said Afghanistan, the response was always, ‘Well, at least you’re not in Iraq,’ as if Afghanistan was incredibly easy. Every time I’ve been over there, the [soldiers] I have been with could not have been happier to have someone [telling] their stories.”

The article also noted that: “An Associated Press reporter lost a foot in an IED attack in August, the same month that CBS News Radio correspondent Cami McCormick was seriously injured during an attack in Logar province that killed an American soldier.”

I’m a member of a discussion website on which the political tide tends to lean heavily to the right. I thought I’d pick out some commentary to post here. None of the links are actually present in the discussion except the link to CPJ and the final one (to a CNN article on the final decision regarding media coverage of flag-draped coffins).

One of the more intelligent conservative posters surprised me with the following inanity:

“Back when Prs. Bush was the Commander in Chief, the incompetent press and many others in the anti-war movement complained about the policy against publishing pictures of flag draped coffins. The charge was that Prs. Bush was trying to sanitize the horror of war by keeping the powerful image from the public view.

So, now that Prs. Obama has been the Commander in Chief for 9 months, where are the calls for a change of policy? Where is the incompetent press’s accusations of cover up and prohibition? Where are the complaints from anti war activists?

While Prs. Bush was in office, the issue was elevated to a Constitutional Crisis… but now that they can’t use the images as a weapon against the president, they have just let it drop.”

Bear in mind that I do consider this guy to be one of the more intelligent posters.

One of the less intelligent conservatives came up with this genius in response:

“Well, since they drool all over Obama and act like adoring little puppies when he’s around they’ve conveniently forgotten that our soldiers are still in two wars and still dying. They seem to be dying at an even greater rate in Afghanistan and we don’t really hear much about that. Remember how the left screamed about the accidental deaths of civilians, too? Well, they’re still dying under Obama’s watch but they’re all strangely quiet now. I’ve come to the conclusion that they only care about people when they can make use of them.”

This is my response:

“That’s because you’re all watching Fox instead of CNN.

Anderson Cooper spent the entire week following Labor Day in Helmand Province, Afghanistan to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11–going on patrol with marines, giving them a platform to send messages to their loved ones, reporting on the statistics, reporting on the fact that they need more troops and that the war is not going well, giving marines a chance to talk to the cameras and tell us what’s really going on there. They showed that while tons of Americans think they’re over there in fancy bases with all the comforts of home, they’re actually living in tents, covered in dust with H1N1 lurking (which Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta both caught while they were there), with nothing but MREs for food and a few dumbbells for entertainment.

Dr. Gupta went inside the army hospital and showed our incredible military working on those civilians you mentioned and saving their lives every day.

Michael Ware, also of CNN, has been living in Iraq and Afghanistan for years reporting on these wars, and he didn’t change his technique just because Washington changes its colors. He’s still there. His vehicle was almost hit by an IED when he was shooting a piece for AC360.

The ratings were horrific. Nobody watched.

The “incompetent press” does what they have to do to get the advertising dollars to send these journalists over there, and real journalism doesn’t seem to making as much money as Glenn Beck’s Howard Beale-style rants.

Business wise, I tip my hat to Fox. They’re doing incredibly well. Bill O’Reilly’s demo ratings (ratings in the 25-54 age demographic, the target audience for advertisers) regularly beat CNN and MSNBC in total viewers. You can’t argue with their business model. It’s stellar. They’re raking it in. God bless ‘em.

But I suggest you take a look at the website for the Committee to Protect Journalists at www.cpj.org to see what the “incompetent press” has really been fighting against, with no help from Americans. We lost 120 journalists in Operation Iraqi Freedom. They’re out there, putting their lives on the line every day. Because of them, the information is out there, it just doesn’t seem to be very lucrative because, left or right, Democrat or Republican, Americans don’t seem to care.

Is it really the media’s fault? If reporting on the wars got killer ratings and raked in millions of advertising dollars, how fast do you think they’d have that business up and running and on the air? Yesterday, that’s when. And to their credit, people like Anderson Cooper use their star power to make sure it happens anyway, for the few hundred thousand of us who are watching.

So I don’t know if people drooling all over Obama are the problem, because while there are always blind followers and it’s never good, I doubt the four million people who watch “The O’Reilly Factor” every night (an absolutely unprecedented number for a cable audience) are the same people you’re referencing.

The cable news audience leans heavily to the right for whatever reason, and Cooper does an entire week that is all marines, all the time–and it was some of the best reporting his team has done these past few years, which is saying something because they’re good–and he can’t scrape together 500,000 viewers because apparently whatever Greta van Susteren had going on at 10:00 was more entertaining.

I don’t know why Americans don’t pay attention to international news. I don’t know how to fix it. But there are journalists in the field with their necks on the line to provide you with the information you claim “we don’t really hear much about,” so the only reason you’re not hearing about it is because you’re not paying attention, along with millions more just like you.

But the second Glenn Beck threatens to shoot himself on the 7:00 news, I’m sure you’ll be tuning in. Keep watching Fox and let me know when the flag draped coffins show up. I won’t be holding my breath.”

Later in the thread, a voice of reason:

“I might be completely wrong about this but I thought lifting the ban was under consideration a couple of (or more) months ago but there were conflicting opinions about whether the families of the fallen should have a say so about their loved one’s casket being photographed. I watched the arrival of our dead soldiers on the news every night during the war in Vietnam. Those images carried a lot of weight when it came to reminding the public of the true horrors of war.”

My response to this:

“You’re 100% correct.

I believe the first coverage that was allowed was at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where my cousin was stationed during his last few years in the service (he’s now the fire captain down there).

President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates decided that the decision on this media coverage should be left up to the families, as it’s the same policy that was already in place for airing the services at Arlington.

The media coverage is allowed when the family permits it; it just gets terrible ratings, so we don’t see it. See above.

Here’s the article on Dover and the final decision.”

Feel free to discuss in the comments section. Who’s at fault for the misinformation here? The media or the American public?

UPDATE: The original poster then clarified: “Laurie, actually, that is why I separate the “incompetent press” from the members of the press who actually do their jobs. Yes, there are actually many examples of “competent” and even excellent journalism out there. Thanks for giving us these examples.”

The Grotto Blog by Lauren E. Moccio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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“Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.” ~Helen Keller

I’m back to blogging after a death in the family. Thank you for your patience.

September 10th was The Trevor Project Day. This day purposely coincides with World Suicide Prevention Day, and the 35th annual National Suicide Prevention Week 2009, which is this week: September 6th-September 12th, and is sponsored by the American Association of Suicidology. The reason Trevor Day is so important is because it is organized by The Trevor Project, the only 24/7 toll-free, confidential suicide hotline for LGBTQ youth in the United States. I feel that this organization is a national treasure and gets too little attention. Please take this opportunity to take notice of the organization if you have not already, and help to publicize it through your own avenues, whether they be your personal website, blogs, tweets, what have you. This is a resource worth its weight in gold.

Most importantly, if you are reading this and you need help right now, or know someone who does, CALL 1-866-4-U-TREVOR.

For non-time sensitive, non-urgent questions, there is a “Dear Abby” style page on the website called “Dear Trevor” with a secure contact form through which you can submit a question and have it answered by professionals. You can find it here.

The Trevor Project has a hard battle to fight. According to the organization:

“Suicide is one of the top three causes of death among young people (15 to 24-year-olds). Only accidents and homicides occur more frequently as causes of death among young people.

LGBTQ youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers.

LGBTQ youth who come from a rejecting family are up to nine times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers.”

…Nine. I don’t even know how to wrap my brain around those numbers.

This is a national crisis. The Trevor Project might very well be the silver bullet. Please find out more at their official site, as well as the page that I created for them here, which will give you a good overview of everything that the organization offers–and discover how you can help.

The Trevor Blog is also an excellent resource for up-to-the-minute news and events, and you can follow them on Twitter @TrevorProject.

There’s not a moment to lose.

The Grotto Blog by Lauren E. Moccio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.lauriebethsgrotto.com.

“Euna and I are two of the lucky ones whose story of captivity resulted in a happy ending. But there are so many journalists imprisoned around the world whose fate is still undecided. It is my sincere hope that the energy ignited around bringing us home will be harnessed into raising awareness around these fellow journalists and their struggle for freedom.” ~Laura Ling

UPDATE: Laura Ling and Euna Lee released a statement on September 1st, 2009 about their capture that was published both on CurrentTv’s website and as an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times: “When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side [...] We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained.”

I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out what to write in response to the return of Laura Ling and Euna Lee to their homes and families. All of us watching and waiting with bated breath, sending and re-sending Twitter messages, signing petitions, refreshing news feeds…we all waited for that moment when they descended from the plane, and Euna swept little Hana into her arms and Laura ran into the arms of her husband. I can’t tell you the relief and joy I felt, as I’m sure you all felt, watching that reunion of friends and family, and watching the restrained pride on the faces of President Clinton and Mr. Gore. It’s damn nice to see the good guys win.

I was less patient than I should have been. I was less patient with the media, the extraordinary American press of which Laura and Euna are both members, than I should have been. Weeks went by when Lisa Ling and her family attended candlelight vigils and we heard nothing, nothing from the press and nothing from Washington. There seemed to be a particular gag order that was afflicting CurrentTV, the San Francisco-based independent media company for which Laura and Euna work, and for which they were on assignment in China when they were taken. A lot of us got very angry very quickly, and with the blessing of hindsight that is 20/20, I realize now that I should have known that there was more going on behind the scenes, that sometimes international relations require calculation and calm, and that our waiting would pay off.

There’s an incredible irony in the fact that such great silence was necessary to prevent two of our press agents from being silenced permanently. It’s that necessity that made me hesitant to write this, and makes me wonder just how strategic we need to be in the days ahead…because “the girls,” as they were so lovingly (and strategically—it wasn’t lost on me that Lisa Ling and others who spoke on their behalf did their best to make them seem vulnerable and harmless) called during their time away from us, are home now, but the tenuous relationship with North Korea remains. America and her allies still have journalists doing work in South Korea and in China, and if we aren’t careful, there might be a next time—and we might not be so lucky next time.

The media’s reporting of their return remained cautious and strategic, even after the girls were in the air, even after they were home. Dan Abrams, Chief Legal Analyst for NBC News, tweeted his frustration with this: “The media reporting on the ‘pardon’ of Ling and Lee without more context implies there was a legitimate ‘conviction.’” I understood him, because it infuriated me as well, and for someone who has devoted one’s life to law and the integrity of the justice system, it must be devastating when things like this happen. That said, I wonder where our responsibilities really lie when it comes to freedom of the press v. control of the message in situations like this one, where complete truth-telling could be a serious bungle. There are situations where despite their reputation for being callous and hungry for any scoop, the media will withhold information upon request of the authorities, to avoid interfering with the investigation or to protect those involved, or even to protect our national security when it comes to details about military strategy and training methods. When it comes to dealing with a country like North Korea, a country that has a bitter hatred for the concept of a free press, and a country with which we have no diplomatic relations, how careful do we need to be? If in times of war or other turmoil, the law falls silent, should the press follow? Where do we draw the line between being wise, and being like them?

I don’t know the answers to these questions; I just know that I’m less judgmental of the media silence on this case, and other cases of imprisoned journalists, than I was a few short weeks ago, and I know that I worry about even publishing thoughts as seemingly harmless as these.

One thing of which I am sure is that there is great joy in this reunion, and great symbolism. The First Amendment and the people who protect it do not go down without a fight. Laura Ling and Euna Lee are soldiers for that cause; they are members of the United States press corps. I was heartened to see people displaying the yellow ribbon in their honor as they would for a POW, and I cried both for them and for this country when they were brought back to us. This was not a small thing we witnessed. This was a chance for the average American to take a moment and realize that it’s not just those in uniform who put their lives on the line for this country—they’re called the press corps for a reason. Sarah Palin and others would do well to reflect on this before they take another shot at “the media” in the general sense, because while there are rotten apples, I have no doubt in my mind that we wouldn’t be able to debate this subject at all were it not for the journalists who do their jobs well. It is their courage and nobility that allows me to write this blog, and allows you to read it. Journalists die every day. Journalists are captured every day. They risk this so that we can critique our government and hold them accountable, so that we can read books, and start blogs, and build libraries, and share information, and go to school, and learn new languages. They do it so we can make art, and sing songs, and love the ones we’re with. They do it so we can create beauty of the highest natural order.

I have such extraordinary gratitude for everyone who worked and wrote and fought and cried for Laura and Euna to come back. It was an honor and a privilege to be a part of the Twitter campaign, and I now have renewed confidence in new media and its daunting power.

And so the story continues. In far-off lands, and in America, where the streets are paved with gold.

The Grotto Blog by Lauren E. Moccio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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“Press freedom is essential to our democracy, but the press also must not abuse this license. We must be careful with our power. We must avoid, when possible, publicity circuses that make the right of a fair trial a right difficult to uphold. We must avoid unwanted intrusions upon people’s privacy. Liberty and, no less, one’s reputation in the community are terribly precious things, and they must not be dealt with lightly or endangered by capricious claims of special privilege. Above all else, however, the press itself must unwaveringly guard the First Amendment guarantees of a free press. The free press, after all, is the central nervous system of a democratic society. No true democracy, as we understand the term, can exist without it.” ~Walter Cronkite

I am not a journalist.

As a blogger, it’s incredibly important for me to say that and to continue to believe it. My blog contains opinion pieces based on fact, not simply the facts. I have no cause to lump myself with those who are performing that truly crucial, almost sacred duty Mr. Cronkite describes above—many of whom suffer exile, captivity and death to preserve global press freedom, to keep the public informed, thus fighting oppression and totalitarianism in the most effective way. That’s not to say that there’s no place for editorializing in journalism—far from it, just that the distinction should be made clear.

Walter Cronkite was, of course, the epitome of unbiased and reliable journalism, the gold standard. He calmly related the details, but he did so with a tiny, endearing touch of awe, at once both an authority figure and a peer—you rarely knew quite how he felt about a story, but you knew he felt. He grieved for the premature death of a young president, and he practically bounced with glee when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. He boldly “put on [his] editor’s hat,” as he put it, because after the Tet Offensive his conscience told him that Vietnam was a bigger mistake than the public was being led to believe. Walter Cronkite wasn’t just an anchor, he was first and foremost a reporter, and he went into war zones and put himself on the line long after it was necessary for his career. He was the voice of reason and understanding for a weary, frightened nation when we needed him most, and remained so long after passing the torch to Dan Rather. I loved watching Dan Rather throughout my childhood and I have great respect for the man, but I know he isn’t Walter Cronkite. Somehow I always knew that, even though the first time I saw Mr. Cronkite was probably on “Sesame Street,” having been born much too late to watch him nightly. That said, there was something about that twinkle and that touch of awe I told you about before that set him apart and made him trustworthy, to the extent that even as a child I could sense it. There was something incredibly human about the way he spoke and the way he looked into the camera lens, the same something that lets eyes meet across a crowded room, the same something that wordlessly communicates that we are each fighting a great battle. The same something that makes you take a leap of faith, the same something that makes you have faith.

Mr. Cronkite had the same something that makes you go back to the original definition of a “romantic,” which had very little to do with what we today consider romantic love. It had to do with the way you lived your life and the concept of fighting for a cause—but it actually had quite little to do with why you were fighting; it had to do with how you fought. It essentially meant that you were willing to fall on a sword for your beliefs. Romantic poet Charles Baudelaire famously said, “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling.” Great journalists take this way of feeling and apply it to exact truth. Like Edward R. Murrow before him, Mr. Cronkite set the paramount example of how it’s done. That’s what his legacy should be.

Walter Cronkite’s fight for exact truth extended to the welfare of other journalists, long after the retirement he so soon regretted. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, he preferred taking an active role in the organizations with which he associated himself, and knew he lacked the time to do so with their organization, but he took an honorary membership because he believed so strongly in their cause. However, “there was nothing honorary about Cronkite’s involvement with CPJ. Not only was Cronkite America’s best-known journalist, he had led a group during the Vietnam War that gathered information about reporters and photographers who were missing in action. His involvement with CPJ suggested to U.S. journalists the seriousness of the new organization, and his name at the top of the letterhead had the potential of getting the attention of government officials around the world. It did.”

Mr. Cronkite wrote letters on behalf of imprisoned journalists over the years and was a quintessential reason why three British journalists charged with espionage in Argentina in 1982 were released after 77 days of confinement. He wrote a letter to secure visas for CPJ representatives to visit apartheid South Africa and plead on the behalf of journalists there for their safety and the freedom to do their jobs. He hosted fundraisers and attended their annual events. He was tireless, passionate and fearless—a true, classic Romantic.

I was much more crushed by his death than would be expected of someone of my age, but more young people have affection and respect for him than most in the older generation realize. I’m the type of person who gasps when I get hurt; it’s my natural reaction to pain, which I first realized many years ago when deeply slicing my finger in an attempt to cut a bagel (how’s that for an East Coast injury?). I had no idea that Mr. Cronkite was ill, and when I turned on CNN and saw the headline, I gasped out loud even though no one else was in the room.

I never really believed in immortality, and I never thought immortality was a good idea. To be honest, Mr. Cronkite lived much longer than I would normally wish on anybody. That said, it’s a horrifying moment when the last person on Earth you thought might actually live forever closes his eyes for the last time.

Goodnight, Uncle Walt.

The Grotto Blog by Lauren E. Moccio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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“People thought ‘Beavis & Butthead’ were the end of civilization. Now they seem tame compared to ‘Bret Michaels’s Rock of Love.’ I watched that show for two minutes and I got crabs.” ~Craig Ferguson

Sorry for the long wait, folks. Life intervenes.

In the short yet incredibly pervasive life of Twitter.com, opinions of the site and its relevance to our culture have been pretty enthusiastic on both sides, without much of a middle ground. Some have hailed it as having more cultural importance and more efficiency than broadcast journalism, and some react with abject horror at the very mention of the website that is destroying the Western world as we know it.

Now…everybody calm down for a second. Twitter may be powerful, as is most obviously illustrated by the incredible ability of whoever the hell is running that thing to constantly duck the Iranian authorities during the aftermath of their “election,” and allowing protesters and freelance journalists alike to exchange information with the outside world. That said, it probably is not going to surpass the outreach of broadcast news any time soon, and conversely, it is certainly not responsible for the downfall of humanity. Ironically, the blogosphere represents the pantheon of Twitter haters, people who cannot believe that any intelligent person would ever use this website, and how it represents the dumbing down of the West, and nobody cares what you ate for lunch, and general tearing and rending of garments.

Of course, this has happened before. It happens every twenty or thirty years or so. This time, however, we’ve broken the pattern. See, we as human beings tend to have essentially the same conversations and basic questions and exchanges of information as the generations that preceded us—from “will there ever be peace on Earth?” to “is there a God?” to “I love you,” to “my God is better than your God, therefore I hate you,” to “life is absurd and hilarious and beautiful, therefore I love you,”—you get the idea. It’s old news by now, or at least it should be. The thing that trips us up is that the lens through which we view and exchange this same information, and the speed at which we view and exchange this same information, keeps changing. The last major change—before the Internet as a whole, that is—was probably that big, scary, blinking picture box in the living room. The one that was going to kill the film industry and eliminate human emotion and traumatize the children and turn them into turnips.

Of course, none of this ever happened, and the Baby Boomers knew it wasn’t going to happen. This didn’t stop the Silvers, a.k.a. the Greatest Generation, from being terrified that television was the worst thing that ever happened to humanity, and when that turned out to be false, from transferring that same fear to the personal computer, along with some of the older Boomers. I knew someone in high school whose grandmother was convinced that their home computer had a secret button somewhere that would alert the Russians to come bomb the crap out of us because we were all on the dadgum ‘puter and wouldn’t be paying attention. No, I am not making that up. Of course, that never happened, either. Despite this fact, the fear remained for a lot of people—ironically again, many of these people love television. Television is a brilliant invention. There is an intimacy and a trust that is innately formed when people like Walter Cronkite and Peter Jennings and Anderson Cooper come into your home, and tell you, “Look, I know this is scary. I’m scared, too, and sad. But we’re strong people; we have been through worse, and you have journalists looking out for you and telling you what the deal is and holding people accountable, and this too shall pass.” Do I sound sappy? Sentimental? Deeply attached to my fellow man? Good. I am. And so is the rest of my generation. People may claim that we’re all running around glued to our Blackberrys and have lost all ability to make true connections with one another. There is a grain of truth to this, but anybody who was in New York during the aftermath of 9/11 knows it isn’t really true. Anybody watching the protests for same-sex marriage and the vigils trying to bring Laura Ling and Euna Lee home knows it isn’t really true. Anybody paying attention to the extraordinary emotion all around the world surrounding the inauguration of President Barack Obama knows that for Generation XYZ, it sure as hell isn’t true.

The reason I said that this pattern has been broken by Twitter is because of the ages of the people doing the complaining. If we were following the pattern we’ve been repeating since time immemorial, then we should expect the Baby Boomers to be having a heart attack about Twitter and how it’s the end of the world, and won’t someone think of the children. Bizarrely, it’s not them, at least not dominantly. Many Boomers, particularly stay-at-home mothers who run online businesses, have realized that Twitter is a much more effective way of building traffic to your sites and links than Facebook or any other social media website could ever hope to be. That’s certainly been my experience. Surprisingly enough, it seems to be largely Generation XYZ-ers who are panicking about Twitter and how it’s ruining the web, and how they don’t want people “tracking their every move,” as if Twitter (likely powered by the Russians) crawls inside your brain and extracts your innermost secrets.

Going back to the pattern…the television industry is also loaded with crap, and false prophets. While television has presented us with wonderful entertainment and up-to-the-minute news, it has also provided us with a lot of shameless vulgarity and ugliness—after all, you can’t really put Flava Flav and Charlie Rose in the same category; can you (please say no)? However, so has the print media that came before it (Rupert Murdoch, are your ears ringing?). Those of us who live in the West have the freedom to pick and choose which television stations we watch, which newspapers we buy and which websites we visit just as we choose our places of worship, and it amazes me that people don’t realize that Twitter offers the exact same options.

Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar (who now tweets, by the way), two people who produce five hours of live television per week that basically consists of them giving us their opinions, have called people who do the exact same thing using Twitter “egotistical”—on national television. It’s enough to make you think you fell down the rabbit hole. In reality, you don’t have to follow your boring neighbor who tweets about his ham sandwiches any more than you have to watch “Denise Richards: It’s Complicated” (please don’t) nor read The New York Post (seriously, please don’t do that). And people aren’t “tracking your every move” through Twitter any more than the Russians are spying on you through your television set, because you alone decide what you post. If you don’t want me to know you’re having some sort of intimate moment with your inflatable friend, don’t tweet about it. The freedom is yours, folks. Yet for some reason, people refuse to realize this, and prefer to gripe. And one thing is definitely changing—they’re griping younger and younger.

Agree? Follow me on Twitter @TheGrottoTweets.

The Grotto Blog by Lauren E. Moccio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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“In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.” ~Michael Jackson

For five minutes, I thought it was ridiculous.

For the first five minutes of the news coverage, it seemed like your run-of-the-mill celebrity-palooza, bumping real news from the headlines in order to talk about something more ratings-grabbing, more sensational.

Then it sank in.

If I’m being completely honest, I made my share of Michael Jackson jokes over the years. It was such easy material, and during that circus sideshow of a trial, you just had to do it. Still, I didn’t believe he was guilty (and I still don’t) and the sight of that frail ghost of a man shuffling into court in his pajamas broke my heart even more in light of what he once had been. Of course, he was tortured even then, practically a slave to his father’s ambition as a child, along with the verbal and physical abuse—and, later, a slave to the demons that resulted from that. But the extraordinary accomplishments of this individual should not be overshadowed by the more bizarre aspects of his life, and by the fact that he seemed to get younger as he got older, beginning as a strangely professional, hard-working child, and eventually living a child’s dream in the only way an adult male in his forties could—he bought himself an amusement park and turned his life into a twisted, fantastical dreamland because he couldn’t deal with reality. We shouldn’t forget the musical genius that he was because the last decade of his life was so heartrendingly sad.

My personal reaction to Michael Jackson’s death has been a bit deeper than I would have expected, had there been any sort of warning. It hasn’t blinded me to the fact that cable news should probably move on, should probably cover the Yemen plane crash and the fact that we officially “left” (heh) Iraq, the situation in Gaza, the situation in Myanmar, in Eastern Congo, how New Orleans is holding up, what Al Franken’s victory (finally) means. You know, news. However, his fans are crowding the streets as I type this, and his record sales have skyrocketed, and people are stunned. Anything that causes this kind of a public response deserves extensive coverage (if not quite this much), at least until after the funeral.

Anybody who listens to “Who’s Lovin’ You” and can’t grasp what a prodigy he was has got to be missing something important, but his career as an adult is what made him the legend he is. Just limiting it to how much Justin Timberlake has ripped him off might be enough, but it should be pointed out that it wasn’t just the incredible performances—he choreographed “Thriller.” He was clearly influenced by James Brown, but he created dances no one had ever seen before. Everything every boy band in the nineties did was based on his choreography, and every rap and hiphop artist—as they have lined up in droves to admit since his death—owes something to the music he wrote, performed, and choreographed. Thriller wasn’t just a good album. It was an amazing album, one of the great stand-out creative pieces in a self-indulgent decade of music marked by mediocrity.

The racial boundaries he broke down might be the most important thing. MTV absolutely would not, under any circumstances, play a black artist until Michael Jackson. Their cover was that they were “a rock station,” and that was to be interpreted as “true rock and roll is only played by white artists, and that’s what Middle America wants to see, so that’s what we do.” It’s to his agent’s and producers’ credit for doing the pushing and the legal threatening, but it was the draw of Jackson himself that demolished that barrier, and that paved the way for Tupac and all the rest of them. He also revolutionized the music video, upping the budgets for filming them and the attention that was paid to them. MTV, racist bitches that they were when they were first presented with his solo work, has benefited from Michael Jackson like no one else, except perhaps the public. The public which he obviously loved…and I think that love really saved his ass on numerous occasions, because he didn’t have much else to live for.

You know, as much as I knew all this before he died, and I was an admirer of his, I was never really a fan (my taste in music tends to be a bit older) . I turned up the radio when the Jackson 5 came on, and I played tracks from Thriller. But I didn’t think about Michael Jackson too often, because it was just more comfortable not to. Now, however, as his fans converge in the streets in Harlem, Los Angeles, and his birthplace of Gary, Indiana, and as his music is played on the news and people line up to share their emotion-filled memories and their heartbreak at his loss, those walls have come crashing down for me.

I was born a little bit late to have the same relationship with Michael Jackson that Generation X had with him, and I would never try to talk that down or compete with it, or make it anything other than what it was. But I remember when “You Are Not Alone” came out, and dancing around to tracks from Thriller in my dance class in childhood. I remember singing “I’ll Be There” with my chorus in sixth grade, and how jealous I was because we took the low part and the seventh grade girls took the high part, and I fancied myself a soprano even though I couldn’t really sing. I remember my mom teaching me how to moonwalk when I was a little girl. The guy transcended our culture in a way that is undeniable, and as I watch, dumbfounded, as the public he so dearly loved reacts to his death…I feel a surprising pain. Much like the morning after you work out after you’ve been lazy for a long time, and you have aches in muscles you didn’t know you had? That’s the pain I feel, in the little portion of my heart that I didn’t even know was there, the part of me that loved him right back.

And now, if I may beg, borrow and steal from Jon Stewart (as I am wont to do)…here it is, your Moment of Zen.

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Stephen Colbert tries to process this past week in news: “Boy, those Iranians are really mad at Letterman.”

This week, our wonderful president Barack Obama displayed some pretty fantastic cat-like skills in killing a housefly with his bare hands during a CNBC interview. I’ll embed the clip for those of you who didn’t catch the endless replays on our beloved 24-hour cable news channels (read: you’re not nearly as nerdy and pathetic as I am).

Of course, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) saw an opportunity to create another media circus starring them, and claiming that they were asked for comment, which is probably true (they actually claimed that the media was clamoring for their thoughts on the matter “in droves,” which I don’t believe for a New York minute), they actually criticized the President of the United States of America for killing a common housefly. They melodramatically called it an “execution” and say that it is proof that he is “imperfect,” and are sending him a more humane insect-catching device.

These histrionics are typical of this insane fringe organization that causes normal and excellent animal-rights organizations such as The Humane Society and the ASPCA to have that much more work to do to gain ground with the public. This is one of their less damaging manipulations of the media, despite the fact that it’s pretty disrespectful to criticize the president merely to gain headlines, and even more disrespectful to do so when there is such discord happening in Iran.

More damaging PR stunts have been the famous 2003 incident “Holocaust on Your Plate,” when these imbeciles compared the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews to the killing of animals for human consumption. According to the CNN article I just linked, they used genuine images of starving and dying people from Nazi death camps, and had the audacity to call upon the Jewish community to support the campaign.

There are various levels of grotesqueness to be found in a typical PETA publicity stunt, and though to my knowledge there were none so gross as the aforementioned, there was the time they used fake slaughtered humans in their ads and there was the time they asked Ben & Jerry’s to use human breast milk in their ice cream instead of cow’s milk.

The “PETA Kids” portion of their website is full of disturbing imagery and upsetting language–my favorite being the classic “Your Mommy Kills Animals” comic book and Thanksgiving-inspired “Mama Kills Animals” game, which traumatize kids by trying to indoctrinate them with the idea that their mothers are callous murderers (brainwash them while they’re young, right, PETA?). They also have a history of highly disturbing publicity stunts aimed at children.

The problem with all of this is that they do sometimes make good points–what they say about the fur factories and the inhumane ways in which animals are slaughtered for fur are true. However, when they do make a decent point, nobody listens, because they’re not famous for doing that; they’re famous for being idiots. By subscribing to the old, very inaccurate adage “all publicity is good publicity,” (tell that to Eliot Spitzer and Rod Blagojevich), and stooping so low to keep themselves in the headlines, they have destroyed their credibility and severely hurt the credibility of anyone who considers himself to be an animal rights advocate of any kind.

There is a way to make this sort of media manipulation backfire so perhaps they’ll think twice before doing it again. There is a superior organization that PETA despises that deserves your donations, volunteer hours and promotion much more–Heifer International. This excellent non-profit provides livestock to needy people in both developed and lesser developed nations–providing milk and eggs for their own consumption and for profit. They also train people in entrepreneurial skills in true “teach a man to fish” style, providing them with the means to earn their own money and build their own self-worth. They teach farming and environmentalism. They also secure promises from the recipients of gift animals so that the offspring of these animals will be passed on to more people in need. They have strict animal well-being guidelines. Find out ways to support them at www.heifer.org.

Here’s a video in which Jane Kaczmarek of “Malcolm in the Middle” fame talks about Heifer International on “The Bonnie Hunt Show” (cue the video to 2:10):

This organization is unique and brilliant in its approach, and because of its lack of vegan-friendly activities, is on PETA’s blacklist. The best way to make some real good out of PETA’s irresponsible media manipulation, and the best way to make it backfire, is to respond by supporting Heifer International. Support them in any way you can–buy gift animals, volunteer, or just promote them–on your own website or blog, on your Facebook and Twitter, word of mouth, whatever. Just make sure you make it clear that you’re doing so not just because Heifer International is an outstanding non-profit, but because PETA is a PITA (“pain in the ass,” for those of you in the back row). Let’s try to get their names together in as many search engine results as possible. Give them the publicity that they want, but show them that all publicity is not always good.

If you want to donate livestock in PETA’s name, their organization headquarters is:
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
501 Front Street
Norfolk, VA 23510
(757) 622-7382

The Grotto Blog by Lauren E. Moccio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.lauriebethsgrotto.com.

As you may be able to immediately ascertain from the title of this blog entry, I was not a normal child.

It’s a bit of an understatement to say that my family is interested in politics. We’re obsessed, particularly my mother and me—although the rest of the family certainly has more than a passing interest. I remember being riveted on election night as a child, and during the campaigns…oh, the campaigns. The power, the energy, the inanely unnatural finger-pointing, the bob and weave, the intensity of the press corps, the sex scandals surrounding the most highly repressed WASPs of our nation. I loved it all.

My dad spent some time working for a local politician in Westchester, New York when Nelson Rockefeller was Governor in the early 1970s—about ten years before all members of the Republican Party who didn’t mind being labeled “liberals” went the way of Jimmy Hoffa. My mom campaigned in her home state of Delaware for Joe Biden during his first run for the Senate in 1972. After earning her degree in political science from the University of Delaware, she instilled her love of politics in me at an early age. Born in September of 1986, I grew up with children who enjoyed bedtime stories from the likes of Eric Carle, Washington Irving, Dr. Seuss and Beatrix Potter. While I enjoyed their work and respected their niches in literary history, I truly delighted in the words of Thomas Paine, Woodward & Bernstein, and Henry Kissinger (thanks, Mom!).

Please don’t read any of this as narcissism. I was no prodigy; I was just strange.

Those were heady days. While I have surprisingly clear memories of the presidential race between incumbent George H.W. Bush and newcomer Bill Clinton in 1992 (I was five for most of the campaign), the gubernatorial race between incumbent Mario Cuomo and State Senator George E. Pataki in 1994 solidified my political interests. I was eight. I hated Pataki. I spit his middle initial like a dagger. He would ruin the state of New York, of this I was sure. I was glued to that campaign every day after school. Election night arrived—November 6th, 1994. Dan Rather spoke directly into my tiny soul. The tallies were still too close to call when I was made to go to bed, and the next morning, with a look on her face as though a loved one had died, my mother poked her head through my bedroom door. “Pataki won,” she said sadly. I angrily picked up my brown teddy bear with the red ribbon tied in a bow around his neck (then cleverly named “Teddy”), threw him against the wall, and stomped off to school. Yes, this really happened.

As the years went by, I grew to like Governor Pataki. He proved himself to be a real moderate, doing outstanding work as a conservationist and creating Family Health Plus, health care for low-income adults. By the sixth grade, the environmentalism was enough for me to change my tune, and to extend the olive branch, Teddy was rechristened George E. Pataki, and he remains so to this day.

I remain a pretty staunch left-winger, though I will occasionally surprise you. I was a very enthusiastic Obama supporter (although for reasons mostly pertaining to health care I supported John Edwards during the primaries). I think we Democratic voters (I’m technically unaffiliated) are doing pretty well right now, and even 2016 is looking pretty good. My suggestion? Rahm Emanuel/Hillary Clinton.

I know, I know. But that’s because you haven’t heard the campaign slogan yet.

“Emanuel/Clinton 2016—because after 16 years of this crowd, it might actually be enough to finally boil down Ann Coulter into her natural state—Botox, Kryptonite and George W. Bush’s old draft notices. Vote for us!”

[Cue Rahm flashing a thumbs-up and punching out the camera lens]

It’s gonna be a thing, folks.

The Grotto Blog by Lauren E. Moccio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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Welcome to the new blog.  I’m not quite sure yet what the angle will be, but I hope it will be at times informative and at times funny, preferably both.  Check out the About page to get an overview.  The main site is here:  http://www.lauriebethsgrotto.com.  Please also enjoy the links on the right-hand side of your screen.

I want to open this with an example of what I consider to be heroism.  Other than the obvious choices–servicemen, fireman, war correspondents and journalists who practice in countries with limited protection for press freedom and for their personal safety (you’ll hear a lot from me on that subject) there are average people all over the world committing acts of heroism, and ironically, they aren’t getting any press.  I’ve seen it in my own country when average people with average incomes dropped everything to pick up where FEMA left off after Hurricane Katrina, some of them quitting their jobs and moving cross country to get the job done, because as heroes usually do, they saw no alternative.

However, I want this blog to have an international flavor (and I want to enlist your help with that, dear readers, so comment away) so this evening I would like to tip my hat to a small group of heroes that didn’t get any mainstream press, at least not in America.  This past Sunday, Kazakhstan News reported that an Arab gay group in Beirut, Lebanon gathered peacefully in the streets–not to protest for marriage, because Lebanon isn’t there yet.  They gathered merely to protest for the beatings and the murders to stop, and for the right to wave their rainbow flags.

Lebanon’s only overt LGBT rights group, Herem, organized this protest in response to what they said was the beating of two gay men by police, but also in response to the recent spike in murders of members of the LGBT community in their region.   The Lebanese government prohibits homosexuality, as their Article 534 states that such sexual relations “contrdict the laws of nature.”

There is no government support and very little media support for this cause in Lebanon.  Herem stands alone.  It humbles me greatly to envision what these people face and that they risk their lives  and the well-being of their families to try to change this law, and to win hearts and minds without the security of the police or the support of the media that they would receive if they were elsewhere.

Think of these people for a few minutes when you read this.  Thank you for indulging me and allowing me to honor these courageous people in my small way, and if you would pass this information on to your friends and colleagues I would be eternally grateful.

Read the full article here: http://www.kazakhstannews.net/story/499926

Welcome to the Grotto.

The Grotto Blog by Lauren E. Moccio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.lauriebethsgrotto.com.