Author: Kevin B. O'Reilly

Churn that butter, baby

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

This morning I received spam from AMISH SKIN SALVE, but I misread it as AMISH SKIN SLAVE. I was thinking, “Boy, the Amish aren’t what they used to be.”

Of course it was just spam for Amish-made “chickweed healing salve,” which makes a lot more sense. This reminds me, though, of a very interesting documentary, “Devil’s Playground,” that Karen and I saw about the Amish period of rumspringa.

At 16, Amish teen-agers are allowed to live English, which means they can drink, drive, use drugs, have sex, get a job outside the community, etc. But when they come back — 90 percent do — and join the Amish church, it’s for good.

The Amish community examined in the documentary is in Indiana. It’s amazing to see how quickly the formerly sheltered Amish teens so quickly transform themselves into … white trash.

Operation Iraqi freedom surgically removes 1st, 4th amendments

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

First they shut down an Iraqi newspaper “because of an article that U.S. occupation authorities and Iraqi officials considered an incitement to violence and a threat to human rights in Iraq,” and now 500 Iraqi detainees have been held incommunicado from families and 90 percent of them have not been allowed to consult a lawyer.

Best of all, they are being housed in one of Iraq’s most notorious prisons.

Iraq’s desaparecidos may simply be a cost of maintaining order before the civil justice system is up and running, U.S. authorities say.

Good thing Dubya’s against nation building.

A waste of time

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Be prepared for TSA screeners to begin cluelessly examining your cell phone, PDA, digital camera, etc. the way the apes at the beginning of “2001” investigated the mysterious monolith.

Sure, Homeland Annoyance boss Tom Ridge admits, “there’s no indication” Al Qaeda has actually used any electronic devices to smuggle weapons onto airplanes.

Still, he adds helpfully, “if you have these electronic devices in your carry-on baggage, pull them out, because if we find them in the X-ray machines, we’ll pull you aside and take a look.”

Sigh. If airport screening is going to continue to focus on detecting weapons instead of terrorists, on disarming everyone instead of arming pilots, flight attenders and employing air marshals, then it was only inevitable that our electronic necessities would eventually join the parade of passenger possessions to be prodded and poked.

Six out of 9 ain’t bad

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

The Cubs have now won their third straight series against a very good team, pulling to within only a half game of the Cardinals for second place. They certainly aren’t blowing anyone’s socks off, and Grudzielanek’s going down will hurt, but the Cubs do seem intent on staying in the hunt for a while longer yet.

Additionally, the Cubs’ destiny is to a great degree in their hands. They have 14 games against the Astros and Cardinals in August and early September, after which they play a string of sub-.500 teams to finish out the year. If the Cubs can win those series against the Astros and Cards it will be their division to lose in September.

And if they make the playoffs, with the strength of their starting pitching, anything can happen. Anything.

In other good news, the White Sox are still in second place.

Ideology matters

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Andy Martin is an excellent journalist. For a long time, he worked for the Chicago Tribune’s investigative team and broke some major stories, including several about corruption at City Hall, before moving on to the paper’s Washington bureau. I learned a lot from him in the investigative reporting class he taught at Columbia. In many ways, he’s the perfect example of a very hardworking, nose-to-the-ground type of journalist.

And he’s also, apparently, wearing ideological blinders. I posted earlier about a story of his on the anti-fast food crusade. In that story, he featured several of the usual anti-choice suspects, and I noted that he didn’t speak with anyone from the Center for Consumer Freedom . Martin’s story more or less left all the contentions made by the anti-choice crowd unchallenged.

But yesterday, he finally got around to it. His quick and dirty profile of the Center for Consumer Freedom’s executive director, Richard Berman, ran under the headline, “Flinging mud in the nation’s food fight.”

Gee, I’m sure this story will be very fair. The story goes on to give Berman’s critics the most space, as they charge that he’s unfair and hits below the belt, that he exaggerates and is just a paid shill of the food and beverage (and formerly, gasp, the tobacco) industries.

I suppose the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s extreme and bizarre agenda is measured and reasonable by comparison, right Andy? Come on.

And so it goes. Any old busybody who puts on his scientist lab coat can tell us how to live our lives, but if a targeted industry tries to defend itself — and, oh yeah, its consumers — then they’re just a bunch of self-interest mudslingers. Talk about your hoary journalistic cliches.

That’s the nut of the problem, though. If a really good journalist like Martin goes slants the stories this way, what’s the barely competent journalist doing? I’d like to think good journalism is good journalism, but many times it’s untrue. Journalists make critical evaluations about how to describe the subjects of their stories, who to quote, etc., and by so doing reveal their biases. Martin has revealed his.

I almost forgot

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Check out this link, which I came across while doing some work-related research. Do you remember when it seemed like every other Web page around was this ugly?

My favorite part is the random pictures of the guy’s grandkid at the bottom of this otherwise insurance-related site. You’ll have to scroll down for a while to get to them since pretty much everything is on one page.

It takes me right back to 1994.

Modest expectations

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Really, I don’t expect much out of life. In many ways, I’ve got far more than I deserve: a loving wife, friends and family, a good job, a sense of humor.

Honestly, I don’t even expect or insist that the Jarvis el stop be clean. The smell of urine is, if not one if its charms, at least one of its defining features.

But I don’t think it is too much to ask: Please, no shit on the stairway.

I found, and rather studiously avoided, a big pile right on the landing between the two sets of stairs on my way back home from the Cubs game Tuesday night.

What’s the thought process that results in this? I understand that when you gotta go, you gotta go, and if you’re homeless it’s probably tough finding a place that will let you use their bathroom. But is the Jarvis stop so devoid of traffic that taking a dump right there on the stairway is as serene as a corporate honcho’s private bathroom?

What happened to doing it in the alley, behind a dumpster? Or in the bushes in the park?

By the way, I thought briefly of telling the station attendant about the matter, but I didn’t, mostly because I couldn’t be bothered but also because I didn’t want to be the one to deliver the bad news. Who wants to be the guy who has to inform someone that shit-cleaning has just been added to his nightly roster of duties?

I expect, at least, that some kind soul might return the favor to me someday.

Two out of three ain’t bad

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Both the Red Sox and the Cubs won two out of three from the first-place teams they’re chasing — the evil, evil Yankees and barely dislikable Astros, respectively.

Of course, things are looking a lot brighter for the Red Sox, who with the win went 20 games over .500. The Cubs, on the other hand, pulled themselves up to .500, period. And whereas the Red Sox lead the AL wild card race by two games, the Cubs are five and a half back in the NL.

Additionally, the Blue Jays seem to have faded in the AL East while the Cubs would still have to leapfrog the Cardinals to hunt down the Astros.

And, oh yeah, the Cubs play the very hot Giants and Diamondbacks this week. Yippee!