Chicago Daily Observer

Finally, it’s over – the school year that is. Today is the last day for elementary school in my western suburb.

I’m looking forward to a much more laid back summer schedule.

I’m also looking forward to the end of “appreciating the teachers” every time I turn around.

Christmas, teacher birthdays, the beginning of the school year, “Teacher Appreciation Week,” and of course, the end of the year when the “big” gifts are due. And it’s not just the teachers, but all the aids, assistants, and on it goes.

This year’s instructions for “teacher appreciation” week, along with money and cards and anything else one can think of, asked me to, among other things, “send in flowers from my garden” to the teachers, teachers aides, etc. What garden? I’m too busy to plant a garden. I’m busy working to pay my exorbitant property taxes, which even on my little house ... Read More...

Okay look, if Annie Leibovitz wanted to take my photo, I’d let her. I admit it.

But I wouldn’t let her or Vanity Fair near my kids.

I used to like Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus. I have three young girls, so of course the wholesome star was high on my list.

Actually, I still like Miley Cyrus. What I can’t stand is our elite culture and how incredibly blind it is. Wow, did it fail her.

This week, Vanity Fair featured very sexually suggestive photos of Miley Cyrus, the 15-year-old Disney sensation, apparently wrapped in nothing but a silk sheet, complete with naked back, rumpled hair, and slightly pouty look.

The photos of G-rated star, who earned Disney one billion dollars last year, give new meaning to the expression, “what were these people thinking?”

Disney executives, who are waking up with heart burn and will be for several days come, are ... Read More...

I went to see “Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed” the new Ben Stein Documentary, last Friday.

But this isn’t about the movie, though it is well done. (The purpose of the film is to show how utterly closed the scientific community is to any notion of “Intelligent Design.”)

This is about the fact that I apparently took a big risk in going to the theater to see it with my kids in tow.

Why? The movie was rated “PG” for thematic material, some disturbing images. . . and “brief smoking.”

Brief smoking? Yes, be prepared for what any little eyes might see. Two clips of Edward R. Murrow from the 1950s are included in which he is, well, actually smoking a cigarette.

Now, let the record show I don’t smoke, and for the most part I think people who do are kinda kooky. (Though for me, as bad as the health ... Read More...

My kids and I just got back from Disney World. It was my Christmas present to my kids. (I thought the folks who told me they’d gone more than once were crazy. I figured I’d get my Disney “card” punched – and be done! I was wrong. I’d go again for a week, but that’s a different column.)

Anyway, our favorite attraction? The “safari” ride at the Animal Kingdom. In open air African-style vehicles, or at least like the ones you see in the movies, we moved through open ranges featuring elephants, hippos, crocodiles, giraffes, antelope and even lions. Given recent events, when I saw the lion I clutched my two littlest ones – as if that would do any good.

In any event, the animals seemed pretty darn happy.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), probably the most well known and certainly the most publicly celebrated ... Read More...

I have a few Christmas traditions that are strictly followed. A live tree; I “hide” candy in plain site, say on the roof of the gingerbread house, and see how long it takes for my kids to find it; and from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day, we only watch Christmas movies, and we watch lots of them. That’s probably our most significant tradition of all.

A brief point of disclaimer: though I’m an evangelical, and while I think the move from calling “Christmas” to “the holidays” is as silly and unnecessary as the next person, I’ve long more or less followed the Puritans and I’ve not really thought of Christmas as a religious holiday anyway. (Actually, for a host of reasons many early puritan communities actually forbade its celebration altogether but that’s another column.)

That’s a long way of saying I love having secular fun during the season. And there’s not ... Read More...

When Hollywood gets it right – they really get it right.

Does anybody in Hollywood “get” that?

After two weeks in theaters, the Disney feature “Enchanted” is still enchanting theater goers and crushing the competition.

Here’s why: it’s a delightful, thoroughly pro-family film. Throw in a little sexual innocence, mix with some pro-femininity and anti-divorce messages – and lots of great humor and acting – and you have great family fare.

Hollywood – pay attention to what people want. A film the whole family can enjoy.

Though, be aware that in one scene, the delightful Amy Adams (“Giselle”) in bath towel, innocently falls onto Patrick Dempsey whose girlfriend, Nancy, walks in at that moment. Giselle is concerned that Nancy thinks she and Dempsey have “kissed.” I loved it. Meanwhile, Nancy makes it clear that because of Dempsey’s daughter, she has never spent the night in his apartment. Way to go.

Every once in a while, one really gets what one pays for. And then some. Seriously.

There I was with my Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, and I was drawn to a column about “choice in education” initiative recently defeated in Utah. While rightly lamenting its demise, writer Adam Schaeffer of the CATO Institute in Washington pointed out that there is another effective and saleable way to go about advancing the cause of choice in education. Tax credits. Personal use tax credits for families means one receives a dollar for dollar reduction in one’s state taxes (as opposed to just a tax deduction) for some portion of private K-12 education expenses.

Donation tax credits allow businesses to fund scholarship accounts in low-income areas.

Before my eyes glazed over I noticed that once of those states is Illinois. Who knew? I didn’t.

Sure enough, I called my accountant ... Read More...

When you open your door for “Trick-or-Treat” tonight, be afraid – be very afraid.

The little vixens may be there to haunt you.

Seriously. Newsweek magazine reports that this year, the sale of sexually provocative costumes to girls as young as 7 or 8 has skyrocketed. Think I’m kidding? Try “Miss-Behaved” the “Scar-let Pirate” and the “Child’s Chamber maid” costume.

. . .

But you’ll probably get some of these little goblins at your house tonight anyway. They’ll be looking less like they want candy than. . . money.

As Newsweek reports, Americans spend some 2 billion dollars a year on Halloween costumes – and for little girls the costumes get racier, and racier gets younger, every year.

In fact forget trying to find your 10-year-old daughter a doctor costume (unless you are looking in the “boy costume” section). But if she wants ... Read More...

I was picking up my kids at their church youth group recently, and as I did they handed me a flyer: it’s the fall mission project to help save lives from the scourge of Malaria in the third world, particularly Africa, and the church has partnered with a missionary group active in the area. The mechanism for saving lives lost to the plague of malaria? Mosquito nets, with a natural insecticide on them.

I will probably buy a net or two. This is a solid evangelical church, and I want to support it in any way I can.

I just wish I could contribute to a DDT fund.

Seriously.

The charity rightly recounts that over a million lives in the third world are lost each year to Malaria. Some estimates put it at three million, and yes it’s mostly pregnant women and children. Hundreds of millions more are sickened ... Read More...

Last week, the Center on Education Progress (CEP) released a report it said shows that parents are essentially throwing their money away on private education. Their study claimed that kids in public and private schools did equally well academically, and didn’t have different outcomes in life. The variable, they showed, have more to do with parental income, and involvement and expectations, when it comes to education.

“This certainly will challenge people in the presumptions that private schools

are superior to public schools,” says Jack Jennings, the center’s president, told USA Today.

But wait a minute: CEP is an advocacy group that promotes public schools, and typically opposes any choice initiatives. There are other studies, most notably the National Assessment of Education Progress, which contradict some CEP’s findings. (See Council for Education Reform, www.edreform.com) And even the CEP shows that private school kids tend to do better ... Read More...

There I was attending the “naturallyheatlhykids.com” expo at Navy Pier held last weekend.

I’m all for healthy kids. I have four young ones, and I’d like to keep them healthy.

It’s the “naturally” part that gets me a little curious. “Natural” as in “nature.” Hmm. Isn’t “nature” what mankind has been fighting against for eons? I mean, when you think about it “nature”. . . kills people. In fact, the entire march of civilization has pretty much been one of, well, overcoming nature. Maybe that’s why people live on average about 40 years longer now than they did at the turn of the 20th century. Not only that, but even with all the “chemicals” in our culture we are healthier than ever before, and rates of virtually every kind of adult and childhood cancer are falling. Not just the rates of death but the rates of cancer occurrence itself, including ... Read More...

A girl can dream, can’t she?

So I thought as I read the just released “The Cubs: The Complete Story of Chicago Cubs Baseball” by Glenn Stout (photographs by Richard Johnson), Houghton Mifflin press.

Stout opens by recounting that as the 20th century opened, the Chicago Cubs was, in fact, THE powerhouse baseball team. They had won three straight National League Pennants and two consecutive world championships. “The Cubs were kings.”

“So,” Stought asks, “. . . what the hell happened?”

What indeed? As I write, we are two down to the Diamond Backs. I just asked a knowledgeable friend if any team has come back from this far down in post-season playoffs to still win. “Yes” he said. “Against the Cubs.”

Or at least mostly against the Cubs. (One instance? 1984, the Padres. The Cubs were up 2 games in the post-season play offs, the Padres came back ... Read More...

The really marvelous thing about “The Dangerous Book for Boys” (HarperCollins 2007) isn’t that it is—in a word and as its British adherents might say of its British authors—“brilliant.”

It’s that in four months it has taken the American market by storm.

This in a market in which we seem routinely bent on turning our boys into. . . girls.

And let me be clear: Unlike what I suspect is my feminist sister’s predilection – I don’t think this is a good thing.

“Dangerous,” by British brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden (I long thought it impossible to improve on “The Brothers Grimm” when it comes to names, but I think they’ve done it) have written a book for boys and their cringing mothers everywhere.

(As a mother of 4 young kids, the oldest a 13-year-old boy, I’m convinced, by the way, that we mothers are generally supposed to cringe when ... Read More...

The really marvelous thing about “The Dangerous Book for Boys” (HarperCollins 2007) isn’t that it is—in a word and as its British adherents might say of its British authors—“brilliant.”

It’s that in four months it has taken the American market by storm.

This in a market in which we seem routinely bent on turning our boys into. . . girls.

And let me be clear: Unlike what I suspect is my feminist sister’s predilection – I don’t think this is a good thing.

“Dangerous,” by British brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden (I long thought it impossible to improve on “The Brothers Grimm” when it comes to names, but I think they’ve done it) have written a book for boys and their cringing mothers everywhere.

(As a mother of 4 young kids, the oldest a 13-year-old boy, I’m convinced, by the way, that we mothers are generally supposed to cringe when ... Read More...

Laura Ingraham’s New Book “Must Reading”—And This from A Fellow Book-Writing Fan!

Full disclosure – I’ve known and liked top-rated radio host Laura Ingraham for about 20 years. In fact, I remember from decades ago what may have been the genesis of her new best-selling book, “Power to the People” (Regnery) maybe even better than she does. She used to talk sadly about her concern that Americans were “soft.” She worried that we wouldn’t be capable of winning a World War II today, because she felt our character, as a country, might not be able to fight that battle. It was like the worry of a mother for a child she adores – but who sees some character issues that make her question sure how that child will do in life.

What comes across in “Power” is, in a sense, Laura’s incredible relief at how that concern for a country ... Read More...

Years ago I had the. . . privilege? Distinction? Experience? Of sitting until the early hours of the morning with Christopher Hitchens—debating Christianity. Apparently, I
didn’t do a very good job because his mega best –seller “God is Not Great” has done even better in the marketplace than the raft of atheist best-sellers, such as Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion,” which preceded it.

What intrigues me about “Great” is how much Hitchens gets right about the modern world and the effect of religion upon it – while still arriving at the wrong place in the end. But he takes us on a journey with words designed – as Hitchens, a brilliant contrarian and writer for Vanity Fair – always designs to them, to both elegantly and yet crudely vivisect his adversary.

Where Hitches fails is, ironically, in the same way – though of course with different content – ... Read More...