The Eternal City

"Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try and break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all. In parts of Africa little boys were still stolen away by adult slave traders and sold for money to men who disembowled them. Yossarian marveled that children could suffer such barbaric sacrifice without evincing the slightest hint of fear or pain. He took it for granted that they did submit so stoically. If not, he reasoned, the custom would certainly have died, for no craving for wealth or immortality could be so great, he felt, as to subsist on the sorrow of children ...

Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon or burn up ...

What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute the same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best famalies were worse families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perphaps Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere ...

"Help!" he shrieked shrilly in a voice strangling in its own emotion, as the policemen carried him to the open doors in the rear of the ambulance and threw him inside. "Police! Help! Police!" The doors were shut and bolted, and the ambulance raced away. There was humorless irony in the ludicrous panic of the man screaming for help to the police while policemen were all around him. Yossarian smiled wryly at the futile and ridiculous cry for aid, then saw with a start that the words were ambiguous, realized with alarm that they were not, perhaps, intended as a call for police, but as a heroic warning from the grave by a doomed friend to everyone who was not a policeman with a club and a gun and a mob of other policemen with clubs and guns to back him up. "Help! Police!" the man had cried, and he could have been shouting of danger."

-Catch 22

Every Man's Tradegy

"How could he, with all his carefully calibrated goodness, have known that the stakes of living obediently were so high? Obedience is embraced to lower the stakes. A beautiful wife. A beautiful house. Runs his business like a charm . . . . This is how successful people live. They're good citizens. They feel lucky. They feel grateful. God is smiling down on them. There are problems, they adjust. And then everything changes and it becomes impossible. Nothing is smiling down on anybody. And who can adjust then? Here is someone not set up for life's working out poorly, let alone for the impossible. But who is set up for the impossible that is going to happen? Who is set up for tragedy and the incomprehensibility of suffering? Nobody. The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy -- that is every man's tragedy."

- Philip Roth, American Pastoral

What Are We Worst at Covering?

So, I read a blog post whose prompt is this posts title, with We being journalists. I responded to the original post and I thought it would be nice to repost here.

As a side note, Kirstof is an amazing reporter. I usually love anything he writes and he often offers some great insights. Someone worth keeping up with.

The original article.

My comment:

“And public health is related to science, which traditionally has been a weakness in journalism, although coverage has improved dramatically over the last 25 years (and at the Times truly is splendid!).”

Being rather young, I can’t comment much on the improvement of science reporting over the past 25 years, but I can tell you that its definitely, in my opinion, easily the most underreported subject today. I don’t necessarily want to pick on the Times per se, but, other then when Swine Flu caused the big hysteria that it did, when was the last time a Science article made it to the frontpage?

In the above post you state that public health is journalisms biggest failing, and then you mention that most people don’t know what rotavirus is. I argue that public health policy, in terms of providing universal health coverage, is actually reported quite heavily (and rightly so), but that your specific example shows how poorly the science behind public health is snubbed.

Indeed, for something so important its suprising how little science reporting is emphasized in our biggest publications. Science has been solely responsible for our improved standards of living, which in turn has given us the luxury to treat eachother with the respect that human beings deserve. Civilization is a product of our science and I think you would be suprised how quickly it would disappear without our modern technological wonders.

I don’t want to be too harsh Mr. Kristof, because I think you do a beautiful job reporting on something else that is very much underrported as well, which is the plight of the developing world and the billions that live with proverty everyday. But even in this case, science holds the key to alleviating much of the suffering and pain that continues on this planet even today, in an age when it should have been eradicated long ago.

So please, I beg you and the Times, and other major publications, to grace your front pages with a science article or two a day. It has made so much possible for you and me and the rest of the civilized world and it can offer so much more.

Thanks.