I recently finished watching Season 3 of Mad Men (I know, I know, I’m was behind the times, but I’ve been watching DVD and am now all caught up).

As everyone who follows the show knows, the next to last episode of of that season deals with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Having not been alive during that time, I was struck by the depiction of everyone’s response–glued to the TV, crying, a personal sense of devastation–and how the only event in my lifetime that ever generated a similar response was the 9/11 attacks (with Hurricane Katrina the only other event even in the ballpark).

The L.A. Times reported how several nuns at the Sister of Bethany house in Santa Barbara were informed by the Los Angeles Archdiocese that their convent will be sold to help pay for the Archdiocese’s recent $660-million priest sex abuse settlement.

The number of innocent victims of the sex abuse scandal continue to rise.

Due to the high cost of rent, the three nuns who make up the convent will most likely be forced to move away from the area where they have lived for years serving the people. The youngest of the three is 49; all are still active in the community.

What the priests did was horrible; the cover-up, inexcusable. Unfortunately a few bad apples have sullied the good work that the majority of the clergy do. What’s worse is that the pain caused could have been minimized if a few people in charge had done the right thing in the first place. Who should we as a society be more angry at–the priests or those who let them continue?

It’s a lesson in responsibility that our society as a whole needs to learn. The lack of action taken by Church officials reflects the raging epidemic of abdication of responsibility by parents with their children, by corporate officers with their companies, and by public officials with our government. Considering the overall good done by the Church, its thrashing in the media has been particularly harsh, but perhaps that’s because we expect more of our religious leaders than these other societal elements.

Like most abuse crimes, the number of victims extended far beyond those directly abused. The victims’ families… the perpetrators’ families.. the community at large… and, in this case, three honest nuns, beloved by the community, who pay a steep penalty by way of association.

For those who haven’t heard, The Washington Post, home newspaper of Berkeley Breathed’s “Opus” comic strip, has refused to run two installments of the popular comic in its print editions because of a bandwagon-crazy character who becomes a radical Islamist as her latest fad. Several other newspapers have joined the Post in banning the two strips, although some (the Post included) are distributing them on their websites.

Besides the obvious censorship concerns that banning the strip brings up, there is a second, perhaps even more important, issue at sake–inconsistent, unequal application of said censorship. Christianity in general and Catholicism in specific (with regards to the Church child molestation scandals) are frequently raked over the coals in comic strips and newspapers in general. By not running these Opus strips, the Washington Post is in effect saying it is okay to poke fun of Christianity but not to do the same of Islam. Quite a double-standard.

I seriously doubt the Post is pro-Islam and anti-Christianity. But such extreme inconsistency raises great concern over the papers’ potential biases in running other stories. If they are willing to censor these comics strips, what more important information may they withhold for unspoken reasons?

I’m sure no one believes that a paper should censor any and all material that some subgroup might find offensive. Besides being a moral and ethical quagmire, doing so goes against the very tenets of free speech. That leaves as the only fair solution (and perhaps the only one in true accord with the US Constitution) running all comic strips and articles no matter whom is the target of humor or criticism.

So as the NFL continues to stall on taking any actions to suspend and/or otherwise punish Michael Vick for illegal dogfighting, the question that remains to be answered is why?

Waiting for the legal proceedings to play out, as the NFL “claims” it is doing, has never stopped the league from suspending players before. Regardless of trial outcomes, suspensions are the NFL norm in substance abuse cases. Even more precedent under which the league should punish Michael Vick immediately lies in the recent suspension of Pacman Jones — without a criminal conviction — for his off-the-field behavior.

So why does the league fail to act? One possible answer is that new commissioner Roger Goodell, facing his first major controversy as the NFL chief executive, simply doesn’t have the mettle of his predecessor, the great Paul Tagliabue.

A second, more insidious, answer is that the NFL is already well-aware how deep dogfighting runs inside the league and its players. Punishing Vick would mean publicly acknowledging the issue, an issue which the league would rather see simply disappear. Having set a dogfighting precedent, the league’s hands would be tied in any further cases–whether they came to light on their own accord or by Vick naming names to lessen his own legal woes.

And there is definite reason to believe that dogfighting is extremely prevalent inside the NFL. Take for example, Clinton Portis’s despicable defense of Vick in an interview on WAVY-TV, “I know a lot of back roads that got a dog fight if you want to go see it. But they’re not bothering those people because those people are not big names. I’m sure there’s some police got some dogs that are fighting them, some judges got dogs and everything else.” Portis went on to say he saw nothing criminal about dog fighting. Portis’s fellow interviewee laughed at his statements.

And in ESPN’s recent “Outside the Lines”, the net’s informant inside the dogfighting world “says Vick is not the only professional athlete deeply involved in the blood sport, estimating that at least 20 to 30 others, mostly football players, are in the dogfight game.”

If this were an isolated incident, would the NFL be afraid to act? Probably not. Why risk tarnishing the league’s image over one player? But if the NFL is already aware of wide-spread dogfighting amongst its players, it is very easy to see why league might be unwilling to act. In ignoring the issue, the NFL itself may very well be complicit in Vick’s and other players’ guilt.

Now that the case is out in the open, there will assuredly be leaks about who else has been involved in dogfighting… and who else knew about it and looked the other way. I, for one, hope the NFL does come to the conclusion that the Vick charges are severe enough to warrant immediate suspension. Otherwise, I will only be watching college football this fall.

On Wednesday The Hollywood Reporter ran an article by Andrew Wallenstein criticizing Andrew Keen’s upcoming book, “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture”, to be published in June. For those of you unfamiliar with this upcoming book, Keen argues that user-generated content is overwhelming traditional media, the eventual consequence of which will be that “quality” content shall disappear among a sea of poor and/or false consumer content.

I look forward to reading this book so that I can make my own judgments without the filter of subjectivity from another commentator. Wallenstein’s criticism, however, is echoed by the Publisher’s Weekly blurb quoted on Amazon.com, perhaps adding more credence (at least Wallenstein is not a lone objector). My own gut reaction to what I’ve seen so far is disagreement. Regardless, it is worthwhile to comment now on the question as a whole, even if discussion as to the specific arguments laid out needs to wait.

I believe technology has a democratizing effect that is ultimately good for society. It takes the power of out the hands of the few and puts it into the hands of the many. Why should only those with money be able to dictate what the rest see and hear, and thus potentially influence how the rest think?

What is occurring with the Internet and content (both video and otherwise) reflects what has already happened with the digital video revolution in filmmaking. One frequent argument against the influx of DV was that a lot more garbage would be made, since money was no longer a major obstacle to entering the filmmaking market. Such an argument ignores the fact that a diamond in the rough that might never have been otherwise produced due to the high-cost of shooting on film could now be made. In the long run, quality always seems to rise to the top, no matter how large the sea of mediocrity from which it has to rise. Big media does not necessarily equate with quality or veracity (e.g. schlock mega-flops and falsified news reports) anymore than consumer content necessarily equates with garbage or rumors and lie. The virtues of quality and truth can be found anywhere. In fact, they are all the more likely to arise when more people are capable of creating and/or seeking them.

The ultimate irony of this book is that Keen is a former dot-com entrepreneur, and Wallenstein writes for The Hollywood Reporter, which, for the most part, covers big media. One must wonder if Keen’s book is a case of the scientist realizing just how dangerous the monster is that he has created… or a case of the young growing old, the liberal becoming conservative, or, most insidious, the old guard paying off the new. It’s very easy to turn against your own road to fortune once you’ve already profited from it.