By Dave Andrusko

Please send your thoughts and comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you'd like, follow me on http://twitter.com/daveha.

I hope you had a wonderful and blessed Christmas and that things are calming down for you as we approach the New Year. Let me begin by thanking all of you who wrote kind words about my annual Christmas Eve TN&V: "Do You See What I See?" It was both very gratifying and very humbling.

Over the next few days, TN&V will be composites, cobbling together news and reflections. I hope they are helpful.
First, some very good news from Mexico. As I always do with news from outside the United States, I begin with an acknowledgement I am by no means an expert. But there is this encouraging headline from the Los Angeles Times, "Mexico antiabortion forces swaying state legislatures." As you get into the story the news is strikingly good.

A photo taken by the Associated Press August 27, 2008. Pro-Lifers covered Mexico City's central plaza with paper crosses to protest a law allowing abortions through the first twelve weeks.

Understandably, the hopes and expectations of pro-abortion forces soared when the Mexican Supreme Court upheld a law in Mexico City that legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Dreams of anti-life sugarplums danced in their heads: First Mexico City, then onto victories in the states.

"Instead, the opposite has happened," writes Ken Ellingwood. "In state after state, antiabortion forces have won changes to local constitutions declaring that life begins at conception and explicitly granting legal rights to the unborn. In all, 17 state legislatures have approved such measures, often with minimal debate, since the August 2008 court decision validating Mexico City's law."

There is lots of inside stuff that makes for fascinating reading. Obviously the bad guys are not laying down their curettes. You can find the article at www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-mexico-abortion27-2009dec27,0,6754950.story.

Speaking of other things about which I am not an expert, there's a piece in the Washington Post today, titled, "As books go beyond printed page to multisensory experience, what about reading?" Monica Hesse is writing about something called "Vooks," which is a sort of blend of traditional book reading and highly interactive video technology.

Vooks are intriguing hybrids you find online. "Interspersed throughout the text are videos and links that supplement the narrative," according to Hesse. To mention just one extension, "In one chapter, the Greek ambassador receives a mysterious DVD, and readers must click on an embedded video to learn what's on it."

Vooks are geared toward a younger audience. Those of us of a certain age (me!) have to remember that most kids nowadays are never more than about 5 seconds away from online access. We think in terms of going to someplace; they think in terms of we-are-already-there via [for example] iPhones.

Beyond the intriguing fact that "If readers visit every hyperlink, watch every video and play every game, it is possible for the experience of consuming a single book to become limitless--a literal neverending story," just imagine what life-affirming content such a hybrid composite could contain and link to?!

A young woman, troubled and unsettled by an unplanned pregnancy, goes online (as kids do for everything). Beginning with the Vook, she links to everything from 4-color real-time ultrasounds, to real-life stories of women who refused to buckle under the pressure to abort [www.standupgirl.com], to a video by Jaime Thietten that laments the loss of "My Chance" [www.jtmusic.net/home], to just scratch the surface.

I understand that technology can always cut both ways. But consider that when a young woman accesses the Internet and looks under the search item "abortion," she already sees, for instance, an ad that reads, "Gentle Abortions 4-24 wks. No pain. No memory."

She needs alternative resources, as does the young man involved! By the way, according to the article, this "new genre" has been "alternatively dubbed v-books, digi-books, multimedia books and Cydecks." You can read this fascinating essay at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/27/AR2009122701973.html.

One other quick note. In the same issue of the Washington Post, media writer Howard Kurtz tells us he is not interested in "return[ing] to the days before instantaneous search, smartphones, online video, Wikipedia and the rowdy, raucous arena known as the blogosphere. This eruption has drawn the masses into the maelstrom, enabling them to do what the pros do, sometimes faster and better." [I love it when the media elite types talk about the "masses," don't you?]

I think a fair reading of the piece would leave the average reader highly skeptical that he actually means this. [See www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/27/AR2009122701822.html.] But let's briefly talk about the two points that matters most to us.

Kurtz uses his column to bash Established Media outlets for not catching the "sins" he believes they ought to have caught. Guess what? They all occurred during the presidency of George W. Bush. No surprise there.

By contrast Kurtz (equally unsurprising) also thinks that same Established Media has done a wonderful job debunking myths and distortions about the Democrats massive health care restructuring proposal. Needless to say the "high-decibel charges" all come from conservatives whose criticisms reflect their disconnect with reality and are akin to those who deny President Obama was born in Hawaii.

Not a word from Kurtz that suggests how dangerous the bills are on abortion and rationing which are our immediate concerns, not to mention a host of concerns beyond those. The irony is, of course, that he is buying into Obama's blather in exactly the same uncritical way Kurtz alleges the Establishment Media did with various assertions made by President Bush.

But the more important point is not Kurtz's blindness but that fact that because of the Net in general, the blogosphere (of which TN&V is one small piece) in particular, we don't have to rely on Kurtz or the Post or the New York Times or a handful of television networks for our information. You can come to genuinely reliable sources, such as National Right to Life--www.nrlc.org.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Please send your thoughts and comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

Part Two