Irony in the News

As someone who has studied literature at the collegiate level, I enjoy a good irony. This week our family has been reading the book of Esther, and we've been observing the interesting ironies that occur throughout that biblical plot. So I've noted that this week's news stories reveal some interesting ironies as well.

-->of course in one of the biggest news stories of the week, radio personality Don Imus's stupidly uttered racial slurs resulted in national furor, which resulted in advertisers pulling their ads, which resulted in CBS's firing him. I read the account of all of this on the CBS Website, and the theme of it all was, of course, moral outrage--and there should have been, I suppose. But on the same day that I was reading about all of the moral outrage over racial slurs directed at a women's basketball team, CBS also had a news story about the growing number of women who are pregnant when they get married. Most wedding dress makers now have a maternity wedding dress line. And not only was there no moral outrage expressed at this trend, the pregnant brides were being applauded in this story for not trying to hide their condition (as they once did, back in the morally "dark ages" of the early to mid-twentieth century), but rather being proud of the shapes of their pregnant bodies. The story noted that no one thinks anything anymore about a woman who has established her career in her twenties and realizes that in her thirties she needs to play "catch-up" and combines becoming a bride with becoming a mother. This means that now we can have one shower for both wedding and baby gifts! How efficient of modern women! And how twisted our culture for becoming so incensed over racial slurs but not over this cultural phenomenon that is an attack on God's clearly established laws for marriage and family.

-->Another irony for CBS: News anchor Katie Couric apparently read an essay on her daily Web journal about when she got her first library card, and within a short time was accused of plagiarizing from a New York Times columnist. While the producer who provided the material for Couric was fired, no one seems to be too upset with Couric herself. But here's my question: Didn't this experienced journalist, who has the responsibility of reporting news (truthfully?) to the American people, feel a little funny about reading an essay that started out, "I remember when I got my first library card" when, one would think, she must have been aware that the story she was reading wasn't an account of when she got her first library card?

-->This from a USA Today report:

A recent study on global warming has resulted in "a report by hundreds of scientists that [tries] to explain how global warming is changing life on Earth. The scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a summary of their findings on global warming last Friday and outlined details of the report focusing on various regions on Tuesday." Of course there is a great deal of gloom and doom ahead for those unfortunate ones still living on the North American continent from the middle of this century on.

It's springtime here in Michigan, and this past week (in fact the past couple of weeks) it has been like Christmas, weatherwise. In fact, people at church last week were saying, "Merry Easter!" And we had a horrible snowstorm Wednesday, resulting in many churches and schools cancelling activities, and at least one local car accident with a fatality related to weather conditions. What's more, I gather that this bizarre winter weather is affecting much of the United States. Need I say more about this irony?

-->And last for today (because I probably could go on all day with news ironies), USA Today's book editors and critics have chosen the twenty-five books from the past quarter century that have made the biggest impact on readers and the book publishing world. While The Purpose Driven Life and the first book in the Left Behind series made the top twenty-five, the one Book upon which these two are in some ways based, did not make the list.