Home Cooking and the Life of a Judge

A school project by my youngest involves the character pictured above.



Here we sit in the land of money. There was a time, not so long ago, that a handful of $100 bills equated to at least a modicum of wealth, in the global context. No longer. Ten of these won't take you far in most places around the world nowadays.

It is axiomatic that middle class Americans are struggling right now, but why? As I have noted before, all of us have much more money than the great majority of others around this world.

IMHO, what we lack is impulse control. Why buy something just to feel better about yourself in the moment? Our federal government is gambling on your inability to resist that kind of impulse. That's why you are getting rebate checks this spring. The idea is that you are so clueless as to your actual economic status that you'll spend money you really should be saving, or using to pay down any debts you may have.

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If you've read this far, you must be wondering what the hell the title of this post has to do with its content. Here you go: I spent three hours this afternoon cooking a version of Afghan lamb pilau. Of course, I had no rogan, so the taste was not quite right.

Meanwhile, I've been reading more than 100 articles this spring by journalists all over the country, in my capacity as a judge in three national competitions. It is a sobering experience reading these pieces. Even as the headlines declare that journalism is dying in this country, my living room is filled with evidence to the contrary.

So long as there are people willing to tell it as it actually is, journalism will not die. But, thinking back to Plato's Cave, maybe in fact all of the messengers will eventually be killed. If so, consumers will actually buy the bullshit when their government sends them a rebate check and urges them to waste it on more junk they do not need.

I hope not.

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