Category Archives: Media

Long After the Turkey Is Gone

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

November 28, 2005

The turkey carcass is in the pot…with onion, hominy and hot sauce.  Soup is on the way.

This year, around the table, we were five generations, from 2 to 82.  Twin toddlers climbed into and out of every lap in the room, not counting the times they were carried around by cousins and tripped over by kitchen cooks.

Stirring the soup, I reflect on the last eighty years, a time our two-year-olds will have to read about in their freshman history books.  It’s easy to mark the cultural changes in the lives of people around the dinner table.

Half of the family arrived by plane this year.  Years ago, when my own grandmother came for Thanksgiving, I remember waiting for her at one of the only four gates at the sole Phoenix terminal.

Back then, workers pushed a rolling staircase up to the airplane, the plane door opened, and travelers climbed down the stairs, exposed to the weather—rain, shine, or sleet—and across the asphalt runway into the terminal.  I would stand on my tiptoes, watching for Grandma’s fancy hat with the pheasant feather.  Like everyone who flew in the 60’s, she dressed to kill in her Sunday best.

Only forty years later, we have four terminals and countless gates at Sky Harbor International Airport.  Travelers now step out of the 747 directly into the comfort-controlled terminal.  And seasoned travelers long ago gave up their Sunday best in favor of comfortable jeans and running shoes.  Forget fancy hats with feathers.

A Thanksgiving feast had to have been unimaginably special to my grandmother who remembered her small town canning food in the school basketball gym during the Great Depression.  If you wanted stuffing in the 30s, you made it by scratch, with dried bread carefully saved over the previous month.  No prepackaged stuffing mix or heat and serve dinner rolls.  Worse yet, no stores were open for the cook who forgot to buy cranberry sauce.

Back then, after dinner, Grandma told us how they would entertain each other in the parlor.  As a kid, she did a great Bug Dance, her mom played the piano, and everyone in the family took turns reading stories out loud.

Today we huddle around the large, flat screen, surround-sound television for Thanksgiving football.  If you blink, we have instant replay…from four different camera angles.  And for viewers who need a “trip down the hall,” Tivo will let them back up to any Hail Mary pass reception they missed while gone.

How can any child today ever truly understand the magic of a clunky black and white television console first introduced in the 50s and the four national stations that went dark after 9:00 p.m.?  Tic tack toe has given way to Game Boy.  Pencils are mechanical.  Running shoes now come with lights, buzzers and wheels.  And fancy hats with feathers are crushed in the corner of a dirty thrift store…or rented out by costume stores.

From 2 to 82, at Thanksgiving this year, we evidence the cultural changes already accomplished.   And we guess at coming changes we will never live to see.  What will our country be like when the twin toddlers turn grey and squint to focus through 2.25 reading glasses?

Will stores deliver pre-cooked turkeys ordered online from cell phones?  Will viewers interact with football teams through wall mural televisions?  Will running shoes with wheels be jet powered?

More to the point, what will the crowd around the table look like in another 80 years?  Will brothers pass the gravy to their clones?  Will everyone be 5 foot eight inches tall, thanks to gene selection…an essential way to match the competition in job interviews where physical appearance is more important than resume experience?  Will children with harelips even exist, when elimination of “imperfect” babies is mandated by insurance companies who set medical protocols to keep costs down?

And at the center of it all, what will our families look like?  This current generation of toddlers now is growing up predominately in homes without fathers.  In four more generations of unwed teen pregnancy, will people even be able to imagine a time long ago when mothers and fathers were married for a lifetime and babies were bounced on the knees of Grams and Gramps at their fiftieth wedding anniversary?

This year’s turkey is gone.  It’s in the pot.  And there’s a lot to think about as I stir the soup.

September 3, 2004 – We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

May 14, 2004 – Order in the Courtroom!

 

See Archives for more past editorials.

An Impure Thought

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

November 14, 2005

It used to arrive in a plain brown paper wrapper.  Schoolboys lucky enough to find a hidden copy would sneak off to share it at school… a perfect way to win points with their friends.

In the span of one lifetime, the plain brown paper wrapper has been recycled to make in-your-face glossy catalogues and wall-sized murals of nearly naked teens suggestively posed by Abercrombie and Fitch.  MTV puts the photos to music.  And video games draw you into the fun.

Fully fusing porn with American family life, last May, hometown burger king, Carl’s Jr. gave Dads something to watch with their young boys.  Paris Hilton, barely clad in a thong bikini, “with hoses shooting up everywhere,” writhed in suds atop a Bentley…seductively licking her lips over a hamburger.

As Pamela Paul writes in Pornified, “Today, pornography is not only planted in people’s psyches; it’s everywhere in our culture….We’ve become ‘pornified’—that is, the culture, values, standards, and language of pornography have infiltrated our daily lives, shaping how we view sex and how our sexual and romantic relationships play out.”

And just like the consequences related to sexual promiscuity, the consequences of our porn addiction are beginning to take a toll on marriages, families and our children.  Psychiatrist Jennifer Schneider studied ninety-one women and three men, “all of whom had spouses or partners seriously involved in cyber sex.”  She found they all shared feelings of hurt, betrayal, rejection, abandonment, humiliation, jealousy, and anger.

But Schneider’s study points to something not so widely known about addiction to porn.  As Paul reports it, more than one in five of those surveyed by Schneider, “had separated or divorced as a result of their spouse’s cybersex addition.  Half reported their spouses were no longer sexually interested in them, and one-third said they were no longer interested in sex with their partner.”

Men interviewed by Paul tell it best.  “Kenneth, a married man and father of three, began to have trouble relating to women in the real world.  ‘I objectified them,’ he explains… ‘If you meet someone and you’re preoccupied with women’s anatomy because you spend time looking at porn, then in the real world, you spend a lot of time looking at women’s anatomy.’”

Another father addicted to porn, Liam tells Paul, “It takes a three-dimensional human being with feelings – someone who could be your daughter, sister, or mother – and basically says, this is a creature that is only intended to satisfy your sexual desires.  It becomes your natural way of thinking.”

Even as married fathers like Kenneth and Liam struggle to overcome their addiction to porn, teachers in our classrooms are witnessing its impact on our youth.  Dana spends five days each week in the classroom talking about sex with teens.  She and the kids cover the physical, emotional and relational reasons for abstaining from sex until marriage.

On the last day of class, Dana brings up the subject of porn.  “I can see it in their eyes,” she says.  “Half of the kids in the class look down at their desks.  They’re involved with porn, and they’re embarrassed.”

Dana has a hard job in a culture that mixes porn with simple television commercials for hamburgers.  She must help students understand the damage of an impure thought.  She must lead them through the natural consequences of linking a beautiful expression of intimate sexual love to the heartless eroticism of porn.

We train our bodies with our minds.  And the irony of training our minds with porn is that we destroy our ability to enjoy the natural physical sexual pleasures that sustain a marriage between husband and wife.  Our libido is no longer satisfied by natural sexual activity.  And our intimate emotional connection with our sexual partner is destroyed.

“It’s really a shame that today, people are actually afraid to admit they are opposed to pornography,” Paul says. “It’s time we realized that this line of thinking – fed to us by the pornography industry – doesn’t have to be our way of thinking.  The reality is that using and accepting pornography has negative effects on our lives.”

The brown paper wrapper existed for a reason.  Its existence acknowledged the harm that can come from an impure thought.  And for the teens who meet Dana each week, this is a message that can’t come too soon.

 

Read More About the Impact of Porn

 Pamela Paul, PORNIFIED: How Pornography Is Transforming our Lives, our Relationships, and our Families, TIMES BOOKS, Henry Holt and Company, September, 2005.

 October 29, 2004 – Food for the Brain

 See Archives for more past editorials.

Wonder Love

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

October 10, 2005

He was “Little Stevie Wonder” at just 12 years old, fresh from his first appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Since that debut, Wonder has recorded more than 30 Top 10 hits and won 19 Grammys.

After a ten-year absence from recording, Wonder is back. He is motivated by a special message, the message some say “has formed the cornerstone of his legendary career.” Gathering reporters to his studio for a special studio session and interview, he interspersed performances of the 15 tracks on his new album with reflections on his career and his purpose for writing and singing.

“Of all the needs that we have right now,” Wonder tells them, “more than anything, we need a time for love.” Each track on his new album touches on love in one of its forms, “from physical to unrequited to family affection to the way people treat strangers on the street.”

Leaning forward during his interview, he drives his point home to his audience. “We need to have more respect for each other.” Wonder is responding to the lack of respect he senses coming “from people in their relationships as well as our leaders in government.”

Born as Steveland Morris Judkins Hardaway, on May 13, 1950, Wonder was only 12 when he began to record for Motown. He had his first hit at the age of 13, “Fingertips.” While his own performance as a singer won him critical acclaim, he also worked behind the scenes, writing for such groups as The Spinners and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

Blind from infancy, Wonder developed a love of music. He began to learn the piano at the age of seven and had also mastered drums and harmonica by the age of nine. After his family moved to Detroit in 1954, Steveland joined a church choir, planting the root of a gospel influence on his music.

The enduring quality of Wonder’s music over a span of 40 years owes much to his ability to express optimism, faith in the future, and love. Sylvia Rhone, who heads up Motown Records, says, “Nobody can illuminate our greatest hopes, soothe our deepest fears, and put us on the musical high road like Stevie Wonder.”

Even his song titles inspire the high road. How can anyone repress a smile when reading, “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” “My Cherie Amour” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours”? His 1984 hit, “I Just Called To Say I Love You”, is Motown’s biggest-selling single in the UK and won him an Oscar for best song.

“Ever since Songs in the Key of Life,” Wonder says, “I feel it’s been a blessing from God giving me the titles, but ultimately, all songs must stand on their own. I’ve always written about love, but the ones that spoke to me the loudest are the ones you’ll find on A Time 2 Love.”

We owe a debt of gratitude to Wonder and other entertainers who use their talents to inspire the finer and nobler sentiments in life. The unfortunate truth is that we humans have both love and hate pulsing through our blood. And it is the rhythm and sound of our culture that is needed to beat the drum, stirring our passions and filling our spirit with the life-giving message of love.

A Time 2 Love is a message worth passing on — in music and in life.

       

December 10, 2004 – The Best Part of Snuggling

 See Archives for more past editorials.

Celebrating Failure

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

October 3, 2005

Yahoo!  Young women lead the way in tearing down sex taboos!  Another sex study.  And another news report.

Yahoo!  Feelings of guilt plummeted, especially among young women. 

Yahoo!  Sexual practices that were frequently reviled by earlier generations – especially oral sex – were becoming far more acceptable and widespread. 

Yahoo!  Oral sex has become so popular.  In previous generations, oral sex was considered disgusting.  Now young people see it as another way of being sexual.

Yahoo!  It’s also part of the general trend of sexual behavior moving away from marriage and reproduction.  Yahoo!

Once again, eager Yahoo.com reporters rush out to herald “a landmark new report by researchers.”  And with the thoughtlessness of lemmings content to march off the cliff, if dying produces a two-inch headline, they report on the state of teen sex in America complete with confetti and fanfare.

Do any of these Yahoo reporters bother to read their own news reports?  Are any of these reporters parents with sons and daughters?  Are any of these reporters suffering from infertility, herpes outbreaks, or cervical cancer?  Would these be the examples of “pleasure” linked to rampant sex?

Americans are literally schizophrenic about sex.  In January, we wring our hands over the rising rate of unwed teen parents.

In February, we celebrate Valentine’s Day by handing out red flavored condoms that fail to prevent infection by the humanpapillomavirus (HPV), the cause of over 97 per cent of cervical cancer.

In March, we bemoan college spring break trips to Florida and Mexico, where thong bikinis, alcohol and tanning oil make sex nearly unavoidable.

In April, we buy magazines with nearly naked models on the cover in the latest summer thong bikinis.

In May, headlines cry out about the dangers of prom night.

In June, a new “landmark report by researchers” reveals that television is more sexual than ever, and…because of that… that kids are more sexual than ever, too.

In July, doctors announce they are treating increased number of teens for gonorrhea of the throat, the result of oral sex in junior high school.

In August, a lawsuit is settled out of court by parents who discovered their thirteen-year-old daughter was sold an abortion in violation of state law without their knowledge.

In September, SIECUS rejects abstinence sex education as “fear-based.”

And now it’s October.  Yahoo!  Teens are having more sex at younger ages for more fun.

Do we really need more reporters and researchers counting and reporting the number of teens having sex and the ways they are doing it?  Do we really need more magazine surveys that solicit intimate details from people about their every little sexual practice?

What does it say about a culture struggling to find ways to keep porn off the Internet and out of the hands of children at the same time it is celebrating when we learn that North American sexual taboos are out of fashion?

With so much research and so much news, we have learned so little.  If we truly understood the news we read, this week’s story would have been heralded with a much truer headline.   Young women lead the way in ignoring sexual consequences. 

Sadly, that is nothing to Yahoo about.

Copyright © 2005 Jane Jimenez         

 

January 3, 2005 – Teen Pregnancy:  What’s the Problem?

September 10, 2004 – Duh

Oral Sex: The Big Surprise

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

September 19, 2005

Oral sex is a leading story this week.  The Centers for Disease Control announced last Thursday that oral sex is a common practice among U.S. teens.

Once again, this report has spawned a public response filling column inches in newspapers and hours of air time on talk radio.  Evaluating the rate of oral sex among teens, Kristin Moore, president of Child Trends, declares to The Washington Post that, “…these numbers indicate this is a big concern.”

Indeed, radio talk show hosts are concerned.  They have picked up the story and are talking with listeners around the country.  Their listeners are concerned.  We are all concerned.  But are we surprised?

Not anymore.  One decade earlier, oral sex was a term largely confined to medical journals and sex-friendly publications.  It was a term limited to descriptions of private adult relationships.  Never did people link this behavior to adolescents.  Today Professor of Pediatrics Claire Brindis tells The Washington Post, “…we’re talking about a social norm.  It’s part of kids’ lives.”

If there is any surprise left about teens and oral sex, it is the surprise that so many adults and authorities on teen sex now consider oral sex a normative behavior for teens.  It is surprising to hear a radio listener tell Michael Medved that he would rather have his child  engage in oral sex than sexual intercourse.  “Is your child a son?” Medved asks.

“Yes,” the caller admits.  Medved pursues.  Would the caller sanction oral sex if his child were a daughter?  “No, I guess not.”

Dr. Brindis thinks we should give teens a stronger message about the risks of oral sex.  The surprise here is what she considers the stronger message.  “Maybe we need to do a better job of showing them they need to use condoms,” Brindis advocates in The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, the poster man and woman for oral sex are making news half way around the world.  As reported on Independent Online, “a rubber company in China has begun marketing condoms under the brand names Clinton and Lewinsky.”

Spokesperson Liu Wenhua of the Guangzhou Rubber Group, in a pre-sale promotion, was handing out 100,000 free Clinton and Lewinsky products.  Eventually, when sold in southern China, a box of 12 will cost $3.72 and $2.35 respectively.  Liu, obviously a clever marketing strategist, points out, “The Clinton condom will be the top of our line.”

The big surprise of the CDC story on oral sex and teens is that there is no surprise.  As we tally up the news stories and commentary, the real surprise is that we appear to have lost our resolve to consider oral sex a blight on the sexual innocence of our children and a threat to their health and welfare.

A father endorses oral sex for his son because it can’t cause pregnancy.

A health expert and professor declares our best strategy to counter the fad of oral sex is to do a better job of teaching teens how to use condoms for oral sex.

And our nation’s highest officer, known around the world as a proud proponent of oral sex as a method of avoiding “sexual relations” and adultery, now has his own name on a line of condoms in China.

Where, in all of this, is the clear and authoritative call to teens, “STOP!”?  Clearly, we have lost our ability to be surprised.  But have we also lost our ability to cry out to our teens with absolute concern for their emotional and physical health?

Have we sunk so low that we assuage our pain at seeing young people engage in risky behaviors by helping these teens justify the risks as manageable and preferable to making a baby?

Preferring the path of least resistance, we have abandoned our children because it is just too much trouble to hold the line of defense for their protection.  The big surprise about teens and oral sex is that there is no big surprise.

 

September 10, 2004 – Duh

October 29, 2004 – Food for the Brain

See Archives for more past editorials.