Families Foreign and Domestic

It’s a sad thing to read the news and find it fixated on sex and death.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand the business model of the news industry and in that industry, as in many others, sex and death sell.  However, the responsibility of the news media is to keep us informed, a job that they cannot do well if they let their “selling” get in the way of their “informing.”  Take for example the media’s failure to responsibly inform us about the deterioration of the fundamental building block of our society – the American family.

The news media treats the family as though it were an obstacle to political success.  Attentive readers well know that the recent affairs of Attorney General Spitzer, Senator Ensign, and Governor Mark Sanford have been assessed primarily with regard to the negative ramifications of the sex act on the offending party’s political career.   Take the coverage of Governor Mark Sanford.  According to the news, Gov. Sanford has disgraced his party by committing adultery.

In a widely e-mailed column from the New York Times, liberal Gail Collins advised Gov. Sanford on behalf of “us all” that his problem was not his womanizing but his failure to leave a contact phone number so that “we” could reach him.  She followed that tasteless advice by suggesting that “perhaps the party has been too strict about the no-girlfriends-while-running-for-president rule. If they don’t drop it, pretty soon the youngest contender will be 75.”  Notice, Sanford’s error is not familial, not one of breaking the marital covenant, but political. If the Republicans would only cast aside their outdated expectations of fidelity within the family, their political problems would be solved.  Evidently, Ms. Collins assumes that we the voters do not care about the integrity of the family unit.

On the same day that Ms. Collins balked at the notion that Republicans ought to insist on fidelity and integrity within the family, the New York Times also ran a story about the tragic destruction of the family unit in Africa.  As many as 50 million children are orphaned as a result of disease or warfare in Africa.  Their problem is the same as ours: the disintegration of the family. These children are left without the care and support families provide, and thus are malnourished and unprotected.  Evidently, we are to care about the integrity of the family unit after all.

It might seem like I am comparing apples and oranges here.  After all, one story is talking about abuses of power by people in office while the other story is talking about tragedy resulting from uncontrollable disease and warfare.  However, to argue this only proves my point – the news has conflicting ideas about the importance of the family.  As the Times demonstrates, it’s easy to care about the problem of families in Africa while choosing to be flippant about the problems of the family unit at home.  Regardless of how the family disintegrates, a society without its fundamental building block is in dire straits – see Africa as exhibit A.  It’s time the news industry helped its buyers see how the problems of Sanford and Africa are related.

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