What am I Missing Here?

I don't like Suze Orman.  Mostly because she is from the Dr. Phil "I won't help you until I've totally humiliated you and made sure you realize what a stupid piece of sh*t  you are" school of "self help" (which isn't self help at all) television.   I also don't like that she's always calling her viewers "Girlfriend"   Girlfriend, I am not your girlfriend.  I don't like her because she perpetuates the stereotype that all women are idiots when it comes to money and if it wasn't for her we would all be in the poorhouse.

Now I don't like her because I think maybe she's proving that we are all idiots.  She's hawking  her own pre-paid credit card that is the greatest card ever, if she does say so herself.   Its so wonderful because she's made a deal with one of the credit reporting agencies to report your usage of this card and maybe someday it will improve your credit score.

Um. No.  It won't.  Because a pre-paid credit card is not credit.  You can't miss a payment.   You can't screw it up.  So you can't prove that you can handle credit because it's um, NOT CREDIT!

Am I the only one that sees this?  I've heard this woman interviewed by half a dozen people on this and NOBODY has asked her about this little detail.  What am I missing?

Joining your Opponent in the Gutter

That's pretty much whata "reporter" from Lavender magazine did when he inflitrated a support group for people struggling with same sex attractions and then broke the confidentiality rules to out one of the attendees - a Pastor Tom Brock who likes to blame gay people for tornadoes and such.

Now yea there's that sinful part of me that smirked and said "I KNEW IT" when I first read about this over at Pretty Good Lutherans.    ANOTHER anit-gay person who is actually gay himself.  Then I realized how the information was come by and that is unacceptable.    The reporter should be fired.  Except that I fear that was his assignment.

So what that he's gay and doesn't want to be?  Does that change anything he has done?  No.  I thought he was a ridiculous man before and now I think he's a pathetic ridiculous man.  I'm sorry he's gay and doesn't want to be.  We all have to be things we don't want to be.  Do you think I want to be a widow?  He's just pathetic and deserves prayers and yes, a little sympathy.  Knowing he was at a confidential support group doesn't really change or help anything.  I suspect most anti-gay people of being gay anyways - you don't need to be invading the privacy of unhappy, struggling people to know that's mostly true.

Shame on Lavender magazine and it's reporter.  Journalism should be better than that.  Is this what we are coming to?  God help us all

We aren't hearing from the Ladies...

The new (and excellent) ELCA News blog "Pretty Good Lutherans" has a new post with dismaying news as to how little we are hearing from lay people in general but in particular women about church stuff.

I'm very wary of talking to the press myself. Many years ago I found myself in the odd and unusual position of having a growing congregation in a small town. I was hot stuff in the synod in those days. Truth be told it probably had more to do with the Missouri Lutheran pastor in town who was offending people in his congregation right and left and then one day just didn't show up in church and turned out he left his wife and moved in with another man in another town. But at the time we thought it was because I was so clever.

So a well known since passed on to the church triumphant religion writer from Minneapolis, Clark Morphew, interviewed me for a story about a pastor of a growing church. This is what I told him "Well first I wanted to build them up, so they could feel good about what we were doing already so we could feel like we like we had something of value to new people to the church"

And some how or other the quote got changed to how I lectured them in the pulpit about how they needed to shape up so they could have something of value to offer to new people. It was insulting the the congregation and it made me sound like somebody who preached from the pulpit that they had nothing of value to offer. I was so ashamed I didn't even show the article to anybody. It was easy to hide since we were in a small town in Wisconsin and this was published in St. Paul.

Since then the only thing I say to the press is "Yes, our chicken dinner is on Sunday night at 4 pm" I had an interesting Twitter debate with Pretty Good Lutheran blog writer Susan Hogan about that stance. She thinks I should just get more savy about the media. She's probably right.

Oh yea and before you think I'm a hotshot with regard to growing a small town church. Yea the older members got alarmed at the influx of all the new people and their newfangled ideas and things got kind of ugly, and pretty much drove the new and creative folks with their new newfangled ideas out. And I was no longer a hot shot in the synod. And I learned an important lesson. Growing or dying... it's not about me. Which is probably another reason I'm not all that interested in putting myself in front of a reporter's mike.

Bees are our friends - More Irresponsible Journalism

Ugh - this story was on the news this morning and it just ticked me off! Bees Swarm San Diego Beach What a missed opportunity to educate people about bees. Bees are endangered and we need bees. Not just for honey. Just look here at a list of crops pollinated by Bees. He could have used the story to inform people that swarming bees are not aggressive or dangerous and that they should just be left alone and will leave before long.


If you find a swarm of honey bees - do not call the exterminater - call a bee Keeper

More Irresponsible Journalism

I'm sure this is a story that Magdalene's Egg would cover, were Father and Mother and Baby not away

The Vatican is demanding a retraction of a story printed in the the Times of London that in an upcoming visit, the Pope was planning to present Prince Charles with ”a gift that may strike an unwelcome chord”: a facsimile of the 1530 appeal by English peers to Pope Clement VII asking for the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

As everyone knows, Pope Clement refused that appeal, King Henry married his mistress anyway and renounced Roman Catholicism, establishing the Church of England."

Wonder where the the Times got that idea. Maybe it was in one of those chain emails. Someone should tell them about Snopes.com

Irresponsible Journalism

Melissa Suzanne Huckaby was just minding her own business when suddenly her world was invaded by calls from the press, and death threats. Why? She shares the same name with Melissa Chantel Huckaby, accused of murdering 8-year-old Sandra Cantu. The two women are the same age, are both Sunday School teachers and live 14 miles apart.

Life suddenly scary for the other Melissa Huckaby

Apparently some dufus reporters just found a Melissa Huckaby on MySpace, downloaded her photo and plastered it all over TV and newspapers. It was the wrong Melissa Huckaby. Melissa Suzannne has had to take down her MySpace because of all the threats. Her cousins are afraid to go to school because of the false connection. She's worried about her own daughter's safety.

So what kind of half-assed journalism is this? You just download any old picture you find on the web that matches the name without doing a modicum of research to make sure you got the right person and plaster it all over TV?

SHAME SHAME SHAME on the idiot so called reporters who grabbed the photos, the lazy irresponsible editors who okayed the broadcasting of her photo without doing their homework. I think some jobs need to be lost over this. And she should sue them into oblivion. She's a single mother. She could use the money. Probably to hire some security.