Godspeed, Mr. Cronkite!

"Newsman Walter Cronkite, who died at the age of 92, was so thoroughly and uniquely linked with the word 'trust' that it is tempting to say that the word should be buried with him. In the generation since he left the anchor desk at the CBS Evening News, there have been other public figures who inspire passion, devotion, confidence, intensity and personal identification. But trust, that milder but deeper sentiment — Cronkite owned it."

Equal Marriage Rights = Civil Rights

There’s not necessarily a lot new in this pro-equal marriage rights post, titled Even Same-Sex Marriage Is A Basic Civil Right on The Huffington Post, but I am impressed that the author of the post, Menachem Rosensaft, is—among other things--a devout man of faith, who is a professor at the Cornell University Law School , Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project, and the son of two Nazi concentration camp survivors.

I think that, from a possibly semi-selfish point of view, hearing people of the Jewish faith (especially those, like Mr. Rosensaft, who have a direct link to the horrors of World War II) speak up & advocate for GLBT people helps to remind the world that all kinds of people have long been victims of ignorance & irrational fear. I think it also helps to remind that part of the world who—by circumstance—are more casual observers in the worldwide battle for human rights understand that what homosexual people seek & aspire to is not really any different than those lofty (and sometimes even not-so-lofty) ideals that spring eternal in the breast of any of the other members of the family, homo sapiens.

Now THAT'S what I call HARDBALL!!

You may not believe it, but I am really not a confrontational kind of person & yelling & screaming is not usually my modus operandi, but I inadvertently saw this on Hardball last night (I was just wasting time waiting for my hero, Keith Olbermann, to light up my TV & my life) &, even though, in my humble opinion, Chris Matthews is a little too enamored of John McSame & has proven himself to be a bit of a Clinton-hater, and is altogether just not my cup of tea, politically- or televisionally-speaking, I was just mesmerized by his interaction with a hapless, screaming right-wing Bush lover named Kevin James (not he of King of Queens fame, by the by) trying to take down our Mr. Obama & trying to equate talking with your enemies with surrendering to your enemies (a la Neville Chamberlain).

To Chris's credit, he just couldn't let that bit of stupidity ride & repeatedly challenged Kevvy to specifically state what it was that Chamberlain did pre-WWII that the world now sees as appeasement of Adolf Hitler. It seems that (obviously NOT) College Boy couldn't answer the question. Seems the Kevster was more interested in trying to take down a few notches the guy he knows not-so-deep inside is probably gonna be the next President of these United States with some mindless spoon-fed right-wing pablum.

I can't believe I find myself saying it, but Chris was right*: we can't just talk to our friends in this world; if we want to make progress on some issues & make the world even a tiny bit safe & potentially more stable, sometimes--JUST SOMETIMES--we're gonna have to talk to our enemies. It's not like they're gonna go away if we pretend they're not there (no matter what President DICK Cheney & his sidekick Dubya & their fanboy Kevin seem to have concocted in their nefarious noggins)! TALKING TO YOUR ENEMIES IS NOT THE SAME THING AS CAPITULATING TO THEM...DUH!

You gotta give it to ol' KJ, though, even given his obvious anger issues, what he lacks in historical knowledge, he sure makes up in hysterical volume! I actually even felt oddly uncomfortable for the guy. Heck, I even almost didn't laugh out loud at his getting caught at his obviously flawed imitation of a Repugnant Party parrot!

Give it a watch! Mark Green, by the way (the actually obviously sane guy Chris was interviewing too, does a great job. Made me glad he's on my side!)

*in this ONE instance

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms & Moms-To-Be out there! Unfortunately, I won't get to see my mom today, but, like millions of other Americans on every 2nd Sunday in May, I will be calling her today to wish her a happy day today & to let her know how blessed I am that she's my mom!!

Below you will find a short history on Mother's Day from the good folks at Wikipedia, including the fact that it was originally intended by the woman who first thought up the idea in the U.S. shortly after the U.S. Civil War as a day for mothers (& others) to protest the idea of war. You can find a more detailed history of Mother's Day around the world & more info on how the original founder of Mother's Day in the US eventually came to renounce the day due to what she saw as it's over-commercialization at Mother's Day Central at http://www.mothersdaycentral.com/about-mothersday/history/.

The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother's Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.