Intervention Please: My Father Watches Fox "Views"!

My father, now 85 years young, was always a strict Cronkite man. He watched Walter Cronkite for the news and no one else, despite the wonderful offering of network news anchors in the golden days before 24 hour news. Sometime after I moved from Columbus, OH, to Los Angeles, Dad started watching CNN then he migrated to the 24 hour variation of the news broadcast on FOX. I call it FOX Views because it's anything but the news. It's more like what Hollywood does to books when they're made into movies. Actually, it's even worse because what FOX does is make the same bad movie just with different talking heads. At least once a week since the 1999 election Dad has repeated some piece of "news" he heard on FOX. With every outrageous, stupid, twisted claim Dad's repeated, I've berated FOX then found what the actual story is (thank you FactCheck.org and Snopes.com) and repudiated every story. I've begged Dad to stop watching FOX, even suggested that he watch FOX one day a week then MSNBC the next then CNN the next, rotating the channels he watches so he can see for himself that FOX does not deliver the news. Apparently I have little influence on him. He's been a life-long Republican and I abandoned that ship after Nixon. It's kind of funny now because Dad knows I despise FOX and how their "analysts" slowly poisons their audience so he won't even admit to watching FOX anymore. He'll relate some political horror story but claim he saw it on CNN. I know better because I watch CNN and MSNBC and if that story wasn't on either of those channels, I know he saw it on FOX. Nevertheless, I listen quietly then debunk the claims in an email to him the next day, quoting FactCheck.org, Snopes.com, Reuters.com or what ever legitimate news source had the original story. My dad's not a fool. He's well read, is in a continual quest for knowledge, taught himself calculus and is currently teaching himself Arabic. Yet he continues to watch FOX views as if it were a credible source of news instead of the farcical cartoon it really is. I blame it on the people who surround him now. All the way-to-the-right, head-stuck-in-a-box folks with no curiosity about the world, science, politics or anyone else beyond their own 6 square blocks. It's very hard to watch. I'm tempted to rent a van, drive to Carrollton. VA and kidnap him from his current sphere of influence. Is there an intervention program for sufferers of FOX's brainwashing? If not there should be. At least he doesn't listen to Limbaugh. Yet.

I Love Bill Moyers!

This morning I finally got around to watching last Friday night's episode of "Bill Moyer's Journal."  I normally never miss his program but when I read the show summary I was quite sure I'd find it boring: "Religious scholar Karen Armstrong discusses human commonalities and her work on an international charge for compassion."  Yep, "Pretty dry..." thinks I.  Having been wrong about first impressions or first readings, I chose to trust my past experiences with learning from what Bill Moyers' discusses on his program.   "I'll give it 5 minutes, then it's 'Da Vinci's Inquest' if it's a snooze-fest." sez I to the dust bunnies. Yes, I live alone with my coven of dust bunnies.  I launched into the show and about 75 seconds later I was totally hooked by the interview and her intelligent, exploration of religions. I learned that Karen Armstrong is a prolific author of numerous books, one of which, "History of God,"  I sent as a gift to my dad, who's on a kind of theological inquiry of his own. I bought the book based on a review, not because I read the book myself or knew anything about the author.  I really do need to pay more attention!  For someone like me, who sees the worlds religions as cauldrons for politics, ego, violence and hate mongering -- some of the most ethical, compassionate and righteous people I know are atheists --  Ms. Armstrong's knowledgeable writings seem to be a quest for a universal higher meaning and the deconstruction of compassion. She asks, what is it to really be compassionate?  She suggests, to paraphrase, it is the ability to feel and acknowledge another's pain, wishes and desires -- which brings us to: do not do unto others that which you would not have done unto you. To that end she organized a "Charter for Compassion," a multi-faith effort to define compassion as it's expressed in the various religions.  As I understand this, she sees compassion as a unifying, universal human expression that may mitigate our baser tendencies toward the destructive excesses of greed and power -- but perhaps that's my interpretation. In 2008, the Oxford educated Ms. Armstrong received a $100,000 "TED" (Technology, Entertainment and Design) prize (TED.com/) for this project.  I don't do her justice in this writing and recommend viewing the episode. It's stimulating and thought provoking and better expressed through the program's episode which can be viewed on Bill Moyers' PBS web site: .  And no, I didn't switch over to "Da Vinci's Inquest" (more about that in another blog entry).