I’m grateful to the GQ magazine reporter who asked Florida Sen. Marco Rubio about the age of the earth.
It raises a vital question for a country where significant numbers of Americans reject much of science from creation to evolution.
Biblical belief in the age of the earth is a matter of faith. That belief cannot be proven or disproven any more than other religions’ creation stories can be proved or disproved.
I respect such beliefs but I don’t want national science education, policy and appropriations dependent on Flintstones riding dinosaurs and running the National Science Foundation.
So I hope other reporters ask potential 2016 presidential candidates the same and similar questions.
It’s a legitimate probe into whether candidates are qualified to judge the soundness of science in federal law, policy, regulations, appropriations and appointments.
Rubio responded, the age of the earth is “one of the great mysteries.” He can believe what he likes, but a president who embraces Hebrew scripture as science would be a disaster of biblical magnitude.
The question to Rubio might have been apart from the main thrust of the longer interview, but asking a senator what he knows about the age of the earth when creationism is a national issue is no ambush. Moreover, he’s a presidential hopeful in a party that allies itself with anti-science Americans.
Here’s what Rubio said: “I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in six days or seven actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.”
Or maybe reporters can ask Republican candidates whether they accept Bishop Ussher’s 17th century assertion that the earth was created in 4004 BC. He calculated that from biblical generations and stories, not from science as we know it.
Even some creationists don’t rely on Ussher and they can’t agree on how long each of the six biblical days of creation lasted. Then there’s the religiously inspired “young earth” controversy over how long ago the six 24-hour days of creation occurred, but it was thousands, not billions of years ago.
At least reporters can ask GOP creationists whether they accept the biblical six days of creation literally — 24 hours each — or whether “days” was an ancient way of speaking about much longer periods. It can’t be both. That’s a controversy.
But I won’t be surprised if reporters fail to challenge candidates who equivocate or suggest there is an unresolved controversy between biblical creation stories and scientific dating of the earth’s origin.
This is one issue the news media should be able to handle. It’s not economics, birth certificates or Mormon underwear. If the news media have a problem, it will be the dearth of religion reporters available to explain that there should be no public policy creationism controversy.
That’s why there is no controversy “to teach.” Giving creationism equal or greater time than science in classrooms recalls hired guns who argue that smoking isn’t harmful or dingbats who insist that space shots and moon landings were faked in movie and TV studios.
Real damage was done to creationism or intelligent design as classroom alternatives to science in the 2005 federal court decision by Bush-appointee Judge John E. Jones III in Pennsylvania. He ruled that intelligent design is religious creationism and not science and creationism/intelligent design advocates on the Dover Area school board lied under oath to hide their religious motivations.
It’s a cultural battle that won’t end; neither biblical believers nor adherents of science can triumph by eliminating the other’s certainties.
However, reporters shouldn’t wait until 2016. The entire House of Representatives faces voters in 2014, as does one-third of the Senate.
CURMUDGEON NOTES:
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As much as I usually enjoy Krista Ramsey’s controlled, empathetic reporting and writing, I don’t understand why Enquirer editors wasted her talent and their limited space on their serial about a bank-robbing granny. Who cares? If I learned anything, it was from the front page dedicated to the start of the serial. It was pure, screaming tabloid and perfect practice for the day the Enquirer shrinks its page size again.
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The Enquirer discovered a foreign policy “expert” living silently among us for years. That’s their word: “expert.” He was outed on Monday’s page 1 in a lavishly illustrated story about his taxpayer-paid travels. It’s U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot. Face it, travel doesn’t make anyone an expert. If it did, Rick Steves should be our next Secretary of State.
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Here we go again. Our Enquirer carrier is supposed to deliver the Enquirer seven days a week and the New York Times Monday-Saturday. Last Wednesday, the Enquirer arrived but the Times didn’t. Times call center people in Iowa promised a replacement paper by 2 p.m. We’re still waiting.
Thursday, there was no Times for the second day and, instead of a replacement Wednesday paper, the Enquirer carrier tossed a copy of the Wall Street Journal .
I can’t invent this stuff. The WSJ is the only serious challenger facing the Times as a national daily.
Times people in Iowa promised a replacement Thursday paper. I’ve called so many times I can recite their script with them, including faux sincerity when apologizing for missed papers.
I also sent another note to the circulation VP at the Times , using the email address on the paper’s website. (I couldn’t find any such person or email in the online list of Enquirer contacts. No surprise.)
The Times circulation VP couldn’t happy about paying to deliver the WSJ . An aide called, saying he’d do all he could by phone. Not much. Actually, nothing.
Friday, finally, the Enquirer carrier got it right: Enquirer and Times . That can’t last. The lapses are not new.
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Questions are being raised about foreign research involving UC and Henry Heimlich. UC News Record reporter Benjamin Goldschmidt said, “The study tested whether or not a modified version of the Heimlich Maneuver could stop an acute asthma attack or treat asthma symptoms without contemporary treatment. The subjects’ parents gave consent and the results reported no adverse effects, according to the study. The 67 children who participated were between the ages of six and 16.”
Goldschmidt said Heimlich’s son, Peter, is pressing the inquiry at UC and elsewhere. The younger Heimlich said that “Since at least 1996, based on dubious evidence, my father has claimed that the Heimlich Maneuver can stop asthma attacks, but asthma experts have expressed strong doubts . . . For example, in 2005, Loren Greenway, administrative director of respiratory and pulmonary medicine for Intermountain Health Care in Salt Lake City, told a reporter that using the Heimlich maneuver in an acute asthmatic condition … could actually kill somebody.”
Peter Heimlich said he targeted UC because Charles Pierce, adjunct professor of psychiatry at UC, was involved with applying for loans for the study in Barbados, an Atlantic nation between Haiti and Venezuela. He cited email correspondence in the Winkler Center’s Heimlich Archives at UC.
The News Record quoted UC spokesman Greg Hand, who said the majority of Pierce’s work is done at Children’s Hospital, not with UC.
Previously, Peter Heimlich raised questions about his father’s foreign experiments on malariotherapy, which seeks to prove that infecting people with malaria creates HIV-killing fevers.
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If you missed it, find last week’s page 1 New York Post photo of a man about to be killed by a subway train.
Freelance photographer R. Umar Abbasi said it is one of dozens he shot using his flash unsuccessfully to alert the driver about an emergency. A furor followed the Post ’s decision to print his photo.
Photographers frequently are faulted for not intervening in violent or deadly situations. So let me offer a couple comments.
First, Abbasi had no duty to try to lift Ki-Suck Han to safety. He says he wasn’t close enough, the train was coming, he was unsure whether he could lift the man. Others, closer, did not try to help.
Whether photographers should set aside their cameras and get involved is a recurrent question. My answer is this: The greater the risk, the smaller the obligation to help. That’s how we get images of wounded and dying soldiers, people trapped in or rescued from bombed buildings, prisoners being shot, stabbed, torture, etc.
That’s what photographers do. They show us what’s happening and in many situations, photographers would have been casualties if they’d try to intervene.
An older colleague at the Minneapolis Star said a woman who survived the collapse of a downtown hotel complained that he photographed her instead of helping. My colleague sent her an autographed copy of the photo, inscribed, I recall, “Deadlines are deadlines, lady.”
Second, the Post wasn’t wrong to publish the photo. I’m on the side of showing what happens when things go very, very wrong. War is ugly. So are traffic accidents, trench cave-ins and shootings here. Sanitizing does no service to readers/viewers who need to know what happened in a newsworthy event. Is the photo disturbing? Yes. But not so much as Ki-Suck Han’s death at the hands of a stranger who pushed him on to the tracks.
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Photographers often spend their lives known for one news photo: Marines raising the flag on Mt. Suribachi, a young woman screaming over the body of a student at Kent State, a starving Sudanese child watched by a nearby vulture, a South Vietnamese officer executing a Viet Cong suspect with one shot to the head. Some images win famous prizes. Some photographers build careers on their moments. At least one, Kevin Carter, bedeviled by what he’d seen among Sudanese famine victims, killed himself. Abbasi will not easily shake the image of his image of that subway death.
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The Dec. 8 Economist online has a cautious update on the declining newspaper industry, including Gannett, owner of the Enquirer . Included is a look at the ways pay walls like that at the Enquirer are succeeding where online content long was free. At some papers, online income finally is seriously compensating for income from lost print ad revenue. But the Economist warns “Most important, a paper’s content has to be worth paying for, which is bad news for (unnamed) papers that have cost-cut themselves into journalistic wraiths.”
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I love a journalistic hoax. A top Chinese daily, People’s Daily , reported that “ The Onion has named North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un as the sexiest man alive for the year 2012.”
Obviously unaware that the Onion is an American satirical website, Chinese editors copied it verbatim: “With his devastatingly handsome, round face, his boyish charm, and his strong, sturdy frame, this Pyongyang-bred heartthrob is every woman's dream come true. Blessed with an air of power that masks an unmistakable cute, cuddly side, Kim made this newspaper's editorial board swoon with his impeccable fashion sense, chic short hairstyle, and, of course, that famous smile.”
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Radio pranks are nothing new. Years ago, when WNOP “Radio Free Newport” broadcast from an Ohio River barge, it would play recordings of prank telephone calls. One was to a railroad asking if the caller could use its engine roundhouse to play a huge Bobby Breen U.S. Steel record. Another asked a department store lingerie clerk about an Erin go Bragh, and I think, a Freudian slip. A supermarket customer insisted he properly assembled his “chicken parts kit” but it would only fly backwards. What should he do? The “Green Hornet” called a garage, supposedly servicing his Black Beauty car to ask when his Filipino houseboy Kato could pick it up. Finally, there was the soldier who called a McDonald’s with a detailed order for an entire Army reserve or national guard unit. The laughs, of course, came as recipients of the calls struggled to make sense of the queries until they realized they’d been had.
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Sometimes, however, a clever media hoax goes sadly wrong. That’s apparently what happened last week when Australian radio DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian fooled nursesat London’s King Edward VII Hospital
into thinking they were the Queen and Prince Charles. They wanted to know how Kate was handling her severe morning sickness.
In an early morning telephone call, Greig, impersonating the Queen, said: “Oh, hello there. Could I please speak to Kate please, my granddaughter?”
Thinking she was speaking to the Queen, immigrant nurse Jacintha Saldanha, on switchboard duty, replied; “Oh yes, just hold on ma’am.”
She put the call through to the nurse in the Duchess’ room. That nurse, so far unnamed, also thought she was speaking to the Queen and provided details about Kate’s health.
The Sydney station, 2Day, heavily promoted its prank and broadcast it repeatedly. It became an international sensation; even the real Prince Charles was reported to have thought it funny.
Nurse Saldanha was found dead Friday, three days later. London police said they are not treating her death as suspicious. That means suicide or natural causes. British news media assumed suicide, suggesting Saldanha couldn’t deal with humiliation after 2Day’s recording of her embarrassing error went viral. The London Telegraph said “the two presenters who made the call will be questioned by Australian police following a request by Scotland Yard, which will gather evidence for an inquest.”
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Elizabeth P. McIntosh was a Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter writing for women in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7. Editors killed her story, saying her graphic description of civilian victims would be too upsetting. Last week, the Washington Post published the uncut story with McIntosh’s recollections. It’s vivid, fine reporting, the kind of writing we seldom see today.
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An inexplicable failure of journalism honesty landed NBC in court. George Zimmerman, who admits he shot and killed unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, sued the network. He says NBC editing of his original 911 call defamed him and caused intentional infliction of emotional distress.
NBC played the its reporter’s edited tape three times. On it, Zimmerman says, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. He looks black.”
But on the unedited tape, Zimmerman says, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”
Then the 911 dispatcher says, “OK and this guy — is he white, black or Hispanic.”
Only then, in response, Zimmerman said, “He looks black.”
Neither the dispatcher’s question nor Zimmerman’s answer was racist. If a police officer was to be dispatched, it was important what the potential suspect, Trayvon Martin, looked like.
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Here’s a story I haven’t seen as we edge up to the fiscal cliff: how many billions are spent on fully employed people whose wages are so low that employers transfer their costs to the rest of us? Medicaid, food stamps, etc. aren’t limited to the unemployed or aged. And while they’re at it, reporters can tell us how much a full-time worker must earn to equal all of their taxpayer-supported benefits.
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And now, a birther alert. Ted Cruz, newly elected Hispanic and perfectly conservative senator from Texas, says his Canadian birth doesn’t disqualify him from a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. He told Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker , “The Constitution requires that one be a natural-born citizen and my mother was a U.S. citizen when I was born.” He could have added that Americans captured Canada 200 years ago in the War of 1812, assuring Donald Trump of Cruz’s eligibility. And hey! Americans then defeated Santa Ana at the Alamo.
CONTACT BEN KAUFMAN : [email protected]
