Ramblin' with Roger

Peevish QUESTION

I wrote a little piece about pet peeves a little while ago. But I’m interested in asking you folks if there are things that really bug you, especially if you have not much to do with it. Maybe it’s the political discourse that’s distasteful.

I was at work helping someone with a question, and I rediscovered that there are a couple issues that really have been bugging me, and really are, in the end, none of my business. Though I will make a case for the idea that, at least the former issue is a public health issue and therefore everyone’s concern.

Issue #1 is the huge number of Cesarean section births in the United States. From this document, the CDC notes that the C-section rate went up for the 11th straight year in 2006 up to 31.8%, the highest ever reported in the country. Lowering the rate was a governmental objective for the last quarter century. The mission actually seemed to be working for a while – the rate went from 22.8% in 1989 to 20.7% in 1996, but it’s been going up ever since. The optimal rate is between 5% and 10%. The whys are varied, but it concerns me regardless. And it worries some in the medical community as well.

The other issue involves pregnant women smoking. I know that tobacco is addictive, but when I see it, it makes me crazy anyway. Low birth-weight babies are often the result.

So what issues that really don’t affect you directly nevertheless gets on your nerves?

ROG

Putting the Rube in Boob Tube

I am periodically reminded about why I hate reality television. This includes many of the so-called talk shows.

Someone I know very well was actually on a talk show some years ago on a panel, speaking about an important topic. Yet when the promos came out for the show, which was NOT Jerry Springer, but rather a JS-lite host, it was all about whatever elements made the topic controversial. As it was, my acquaintance hardly got in a word edgewise because other participants were far more aggressive. I had actually forgotten this, though I have the show on a VCR tape.

Then I got this e-mail this week from a group called Vitiligo Friends:

We are looking for 2 people—we are taping this March 25th in the morning:

1. A woman in her 30s to 40s who was either recently diagnosed or has had Vitiligo for years and has affected their lives. We are looking for someone who’s face is pretty extreme and it has affected their lives in a negative way. They can’t work because their Vitiligo has affected them, or they have issues dating and forming relationships. Is it holding them back? We need someone who has a severe enough case where makeup cannot be used. Please email XXX@yyy.com along with your name, age, location and photos.

2. A woman in her 30s to 40s who is a success story. We want someone who has tried either UV light therapy or topical creams and it has worked for them to be a success and inspiration story for others. This person should have an interesting back story as well and turned to these treatments to gain confidence.

Please email XXX@yyy.com along with your name, age, location and photos, including a before and after photo if possible.

This, BTW, is for the Dr. Oz show, the physician who Oprah has promoted.

Now why would anyone want to be person #1, subjecting himself or herself to be, essentially, the BEFORE picture in a BEFORE and AFTER photo? On national syndicated TV, no less.

Now there WAS a follow-up e-mail from the Dr. Oz folks, probably in reaction to the initial message: “We are looking to help someone with a more severe case of vitiligo–we have a specialist available who has a new cosmetic procedure out that could work for various people. We would love a woman in her 30s-40s who has tried some treatments and they haven’t worked and now worries that her vitiligo will and is effecting her life in a negative way. We want this to be positive and to have a positive outcome for our guest.”

Well, thank you for THAT. Positive outcome, you say.

These demi-stars end up having their lives parsed in a 24-hour media blitz, which needs to report on which Real Housewife of East Podunk is having a smackdown with another Real Housewife. Or whether someone appearing on The Bachelor once poised for sex magazines. Or whatever.

Whatever visceral pleasure one might get from watching this stuff – and I don’t – I REALLY don’t understand anyone who actually wants to APPEAR on most of these programs these days. And while I suppose I understand the appeal of 15 minutes of fame, I think that my overexposure to these folks that pop from one reality show to another, even in passing, makes the watching of same beyond my comprehension.

Even people who are arguably stars have difficulties with “reality”, as SamuraiFrog notes, parsing Jessica Simpson’s new show. Maybe it’s the term “reality” in these unreal settings that’s the biggest irritant of all.

ROG

the Experiment

Usually, I try to write something comprehensive (and ideally, comprehensible) to post the next morning. I have maybe a half dozen things in draft form, not quite ready to go. So as a one-off experience, I have gotten up at 5:03 a.m., slightly foggy, and will write for 20 minutes, and post whatever at 5:30.
**
Doing the March Madness thing. For those not familiar, it’s college basketball. I think the idea that, theoretically, ANY ONE of the 65 teams (well, 64 now), can win lends a sense of democracy to the proceedings. I have our local team, Siena, winning their first game, over Purdue, just as they won their first first game the last two years as an underdog. Still haven’t finished my picks, though, tentatively, I have Kansas over Syracuse, west Virginia over Baylor, and because I believe WV got jobbed out of being a #12 seed, WV over Kansas. Anyone who actually FOLLOWS basketball with insights, please comment. SOON.
***
Gave blood on Tuesday, BP was uncharacteristically high for me. It’s usually 100 to 120; that day, it was 138. What changed has been a habituation to caffeinated cola; I mean one a day, not multiples, but I’ve just stopped. Yesterday about 4:30 pm, I went to the bathroom and threw cold water on my face.
***
Anyone out there use that free wifi searcher from Makayama? I downloaded it, put it on my thumb drive, but couldn’t get it to work on my laptop at home.
***
I was checking Dead or Alive this morning.
Knew Peter Graves died. He started on the second season of the show Mission: Impossible, and those two or three seasons with him, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, were among the best in television. He was also in my top three favorite comedy, Airplane!
Merlin Olson died. I never saw a single fill episode of Little House on the Prairie. I knew him as a football player for the LA Rams, back in the days that Los Angeles actually had a pro football team. I mean besides UCLA and USC.
Caroline McWilliams died last month, which I never noted here. I used to love her in Soap and Benson.
Corey Haim died, and I don’t know that I ever saw him in anything.
***
Ah, nuts. Time’s up
***
EDIT:
Roger Ebert on Glenn Beck and Beck’s “I beg you, look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can.”
***
Bummer: Alex Chilton died at the age of 59.
ROG

No Salt

New York Assemblyman Felix Ortiz has recently introduced a bill that would ban the use of salt in the preparation of restaurant food. I appreciate the import of a low-sodium diet, I must agree with virtually all of the comments that this is one of the dumbest, most overreaching pieces of legislation to come down the pike. Unenforceable, too. Chef secretly throws some substance in the pot – what was THAT?

Besides, it says here: Larousse Gastronomique insists that “seasoning includes a large or small amount of salt being added to a preparation. Salt may be used to draw out water, or to magnify a natural flavor of a food making it richer or more delicate, depending on the dish. This type of procedure is akin to curing.” I can imagine that some foods would end up so unsatisfying that the customer might well use too much NaCl from the shaker.

What I DO favor, whenever possible, is for restaurants to indicate the nutritional breakdown. We have gone to both Friendly’s, the Massachusetts restaurant chain, and McDonald’s this month, and it was startling. The menu at Friendly’s now indicates the calorie count on all its foods, much to the dismay of our waitress, who has noticed people deciding that the 1400-calorie banana split may just not be worth it. On the McDonald’s food wrapper, not only are calories listed, but like any food you’d find on the grocery shelf or in a vending machine, it ALSO has information on protein, fat and sodium. And there seems to be a LOT of sodium.

Cutting back on salt wouldn’t be such a bad thing. One can, for some items, season without salt. There are only two items that I actually add salt to: popcorn and chicken giblets. I should make sure I don’t consume them at the same meal.
***
The Meatrix.

ROG

I is for Irish Migration

One of the cliches one hears in the United States this week is that “Everyone’s Irish!” People who couldn’t find Ireland on a map of the British Isles will be doing the Wearing of the Green, to the delight or irritation of many.

So how many Americans ARE Irish? According to the 2000 Census, of the 281.4 million people in the country, 30.5 million, or 10.8% self-identify as Irish. In a more recent calculation, 36.3 million U.S. residents claimed “Irish ancestry in 2008. This number was more than eight times the population of Ireland itself (4.4 million). Irish was the nation’s second most frequently reported ancestry, trailing only German.”

Most people are familiar with the potato famine of the 1840s which generated much of the emigration from Ireland to the US. But in fact, the trend started earlier than that.

“Between 1820 and 1860, the Irish constituted over one third of all immigrants to the United States. In the 1840s, they comprised nearly half of all immigrants to this nation. Interestingly, pre-famine immigrants from Ireland were predominately male, while in the famine years and their aftermath, entire families left the country. In later years, the majority of Irish immigrants were women.”

The Irish-Americans suffered some definite hostility. For instance: “In the Questions for Admittance to the American Party (1854), inductees committed to ‘…elect to all offices of Honor, Profit, or Trust, no one but native born citizens of America, of this Country to the exclusion of all Foreigners, and to all Roman Catholics, whether they be of native or Foreign Birth, regardless of all party predilections whatever’.” There were also racial pressures: “…the Irish and Blacks had reason to feel they were treated unfairly in the workforce, and often at one another’s expense.”

Eventually, though the “Irish influence resulted in increased power for the Democratic Party as well as the Catholic Church. William R. Grace became New York City’s first Irish-Catholic mayor in 1880. Four years later, Hugh O’Brien won the same position in Boston.

“Irish-American political clout led to increased opportunities for the Irish-American. Looking out for their own, the political machines made it possible for the Irish to get jobs, to deal with naturalization issues, even to get food or heating fuel in emergencies. The political machines also rewarded their own through political appointments.”

I happen to think that there are actually more Irish in America than have been reported. The mixing of the races has probably made tracking lineage difficult in some cases. A prime example is delineated in the book The Sweeter The Juice about an Irish woman and a mulatto man marrying after the Civil War. Many of the descendants, especially those living as black, have holes in their family trees.

Where are the Irish-American enclaves in the US? According to the ePodunk site, the concentration is in the Northeast, plus in and around the state of Illinois. Interestingly, Albany, NY is NOT on the list; given the partying that goes on after every St. Patrick’s Day parade, such as the one from Saturday past, maybe it’s the faux green wearers who are the most vigorous celebrants.

(A not so subtle reminder for Americans to fill out the Census forms they received this week.)

ABC Wednesday

ROG