Recently I purchased a new TV.  That in and of itself is not much of a major life event.  But it reminded me of a lunch I went to 52 years ago in London.  The guest speaker was the president of Ferranti, Ltd., a British electronics firm, and I was covering it as the correspondent for Electronic News.  Why would my new TV remind me of a lunch that long ago?  The speaker, whose name I can’t remember, talked about the great strides electronics would make in the coming years.  I don’t recall much of the many non-existent things he predicted except for two.  He said one day we would have telephones that would work without wires.  He was referring not to cell phones but phones you could walk around within your home.  Even those were unheard of in those days.  Then he announced, (and I shall paraphrase from memory) “Someday we will have televisions that you can hang on your wall.”  The British well-mannered audience noticeably muffled a guffaw.  Now remember, in the 1960s televisions were big bulky things many of which were built into massive pieces of furniture.  The TV I just discarded is 12 years old, weighs about 85 pounds, is 19  inches deep and has a cathode ray picture tube.  (See photo.)  My new TV is an inch and a half thick and weighs about six pounds.  But back to my luncheon.  As a young enthusiastic reporter I thought I had a “big story.”  I could see the headline “British Electronics Executive Predicts the Future.”  I raced back to the office and whipped my story off by trans-Atlantic cable (there were no satellites nor Internet in those days).  When the next issue came out my story was not on the front page, in fact, it was not in the paper at all.  Highly chagrined, I called the editor to ask why a sensational story like mine didn’t make the paper.  His reply was essentially, “Are you kidding!  We are a respected, serious electronics newspaper.  If we put out a story about TVs hanging on the wall we’d be the laughing stock of the industry.” Can you imagine someone predicting that you could watch TV on a mini-screen mounted on your eyeglass frame?  Are you kidding?

 

Michael Sam, a six foot two, 260 pound defensive lineman and potential NFL player, just “came out” as gay.  The most shocking thing about his admission is that so many people consider it shocking.  “My God he is a football player!” they weep and wail and wring their hands!  (And probably gnash their teeth but we will get to biblical references later.) Would it shock them to learn there are gay doctors, lawyers, bank tellers and auto mechanics?  The issue here is that a lot of people in our country —especially white males--have this image of football players as the epitome of masculinity so a gay football player seems to go against their great American “values” (whatever they are any more).   Not only do these guys have to deal with learning that a big, talented male athlete who is capable of viciously slamming an opponent to the ground is gay, they also have to deal with their so-called “faith.”  You know, God says homosexuality is a sin, an abomination and all that and how can you argue with God?  Okay you’ve heard the familiar rebuttal to biblical homophobia that the Old Testament also declares that adulterers should be stoned to death.  Considering our statistics on divorce rates, probably half the adult population in the Unites States would be in serious trouble under Leviticus 20:10.  Doesn’t it strike you a bit absurd when God gets involved in whether someone is fit to play in the NFL?  Fortunately, the vast majority reaction has been very supportive of Sam especially among football players.  I guess the supportive people also read the Bible.  Remember John 8:5 when the scribes and Pharisees brought the adulteress to Jesus and pointed out Moses’s law said she should be stoned to death and Jesus replied, “Ok the one without sin should toss the first stone.”  Looks like Sam would be one of Jesus’s draft picks.  Can you imagine what the reaction would be if one of the bearded males in that revered example of masculine American culture Duck Dynasty came out as gay? 

The New York Times had a few startling revelations this morning.  One story reported that the Russians leaked a recording of a phone conversation between two American diplomats.  Can you imagine a national government listening in on the phone conversations of another country? Atrocious.  The United States has every right to be outraged.  Another story (deep inside on page A15) noted the ranking House Republican woman, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, is being investigated for possible campaign spending irregularities.  She gave the official Republican response to the State of the Union address.  If you managed to stay awake for all ten minutes of it you got her entire autobiography, and the promise that the Republicans had a plan to make every American life peachy creamy without saying how.  Anyway, she is being investigated by the Office of Congressional Ethics.  What I found interesting is that such an Office exists.  “Congressional ethics” strikes me as an enormous oxymoron.  One editorial bemoaned Russia’s repressive government. The phrase that caught my eye was “charges against those demonstrators are baseless and more evidence of “Putin’s way of getting revenge” on his critics.”  Politicians extracting revenge?  Shocking.  At least he could have been more subtle and shut down a bridge leading to Sochi.  And finally, John Boehner expressed doubt that there will be immigration reform during this Congress.  Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) laid the blame for the immigration reform impasse on, guess what, the Affordable Care Act.