Newsweek is out! And what is the news on the cover? You can read it in the image on the left: “Heaven Is Real.” What you can’t see in this image is the subtitle, “When a neurosurgeon found himself in a coma, he experienced things he never thought possible—a journey to the afterlife.” It is written by a neurosurgeon, Dr. Eben Alexander—the man with the after death experience.
This is a cover story about a thoroughly studied phenomenon—near death experiences. But this is new! It’s by a man who didn’t believe in near death experiences before he had one. Wow. This is like a man who doesn’t believe claims that people on LSD don’t in fact talk to God. He says, “They just have hallucinations and think they talk to God.” But then he takes LSD and goes around telling everyone he really did talk to God.
I can’t decide what I find most annoying about this. Take your pick! It all comes down to the same thing: they are wasting space that could have been used for actual news. I suppose I should give them a little credit for the fact that whatever they covered would have been crap. But crap about something is better than crap about crap.
It kills me that this is, like you pointed out, a [i]cover[/i] story. Jason Colavito wrote a pretty good article about this as well. You can read it here:
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/10/my-own-trip-to-newsweeks-vision-of-heaven.html
By the way, did you happen to hear about Paul Broun claiming that evolution and the big bang theory are "lies from the pit of Hell"? In case you didn’t know, Paul Broun isn’t just an elected official, but a member of the House Science Committee. Yeah, the House [i[[b]Science[/b][/i] Committee. This situation reminds me of what Todd Akin said, only not quite as contemptible.
@Mack – Polls indicate that 45% of Americans are creationists. Nothing surprises me. I knew about Broun. Among conservatives the will to power trumps all else. If they could leverage rationality for power, they’d be all for it. I fear for our culture. I’ve long felt that in the next 100 years, the rest of the world will have to go to war against the United States. It would take so very little for us to go on tilt.
FM I thought you might like this story posted on gawker. Newsweek has been going downhill for a while. Jon Stewart had a segment on how they dumb down their cover stories for the US audience. International editions have different covers and much less fluff and bullshit "human interest" stories that are neither interesting nor very humanizing (in the sense that there are no shortage of human rights abuses in the world that are neglected due to space).
http://gawker.com/5949892/newsweek-cover-story-or-internet-posting-about-dugs-a-quiz
I fear for our culture as well. I’m glad I don’t have any children of my own, but I do have a nephew who might as well be my son. He lives with me, doesn’t have a father, and I watch and care for him as much as a father would (should).
Whenever I read about the state of education, the economy, politics, food, and especially the environment, I think about the impact these issues will have on my nephew’s future. It’s depressing and alarming enough to think about this stuff in terms of my own self-preservation, but it’s even worse when I start considering the circumstances my nephew may have to endure.
@Andy – That [i]is[/i] good. Maybe I’ll add a bit of it here.
@Mack – A week and a half ago, Bill Maher noted that he couldn’t understand how people with children could just dismiss global warming. I agree.
The poor education (Based on [i]local[/i] property taxes?!) is bad enough, but these evil people want to kill funding for public libraries and everything else that I think allows us to call ourselves civilized.
I hope you’ve gotten your nephew a library card!