Do-it-yourself journalism kits for CJ editorialists: A response to David Hawpe

I never thought I'd see the day.

“Where is The Family Foundation of Kentucky when we need it?" asks David Hawpe in his editorial in last Wednesday's Louisville Courier-Journal. "Where are the outraged position papers from Family Foundation senior policy analyst Martin Cothran, denouncing this assault on traditional family values?”

It’s nice to feel wanted—particularly by Hawpe, who so seldom calls upon me to do anything except go away. But now, it seems, Hawpe is forsaking the billy club for the olive branch.

Could this be the beginning of a beautiful friendship?

Hawpe asks why The Family Foundation, instead of opposing taxpayer funding of live-in sexual partners of university staff, isn’t doing something about easy divorces in Louisville, provided by the helpful people at Legal Aid Society, who are offering “do-it-yourself” divorce kits. Well, I have thought about this suggestion by my new friend, David Hawpe, and I think I have struck upon an idea.

How about if we get some influential voice in Louisville to speak out against what the Legal Aid Society is doing? Someone who cares about the good of society, and who is willing to call a spade a spade. Someone who has the public’s ear, and who isn't shy about telling other people what he thinks.

Someone who...oh, wait. What am I thinking? This is a perfect description of my new pal, David Hawpe.

Just think, instead of mentioning efforts to make divorce easier to obtain in a tongue-in-cheek columns to make fun of groups he doesn't like, he could actually make a positive difference. I'll suggest this to him next time we go out on the town.

One of the distinguishing features of the brand of liberalism exemplified by journalists of the type that inhabit editorial offices of big city papers like the Courier-Journal is that the best way to help the poor is by ensuring that they are provided with easy access to all the vices available to the rich.

This is why, for example, so many so many of them support public funding of abortions. Without this assistance, poor women wouldn't have the same access to abortion mills that women from the class of society occupied by people who run large newspapers have. Now poor women can be exploited by the abortion industry just like more wealthy women!

Likewise, the poor don't have the same access to pricey lawyers some of the rest of us have, and this is unfair. The solution? Give the poor the same legal access to divorce as those who can afford it themselves. The prospect of women in poor families being abandoned by their husbands just as easily as middle and upper class women may not sound like much in the way of progress to you and me, but you ought to see the high-fiving it elicits down at the Legal Aid Society of Louisville!

I hate to say this about David (we're on a first name basis now), but (and since we're amigos, I know I can say this without offending him) he seems to share this attitude with the rest of his editorial friends.

The next time we get together for a vegetarian meal at his favorite non-smoking establishment, I'll gently break it to him that, by this reasoning, crack is a good thing, since, before it became widely and cheaply available, cocaine was only available to the rich.

But I know he'll receive this well. We're that close.

The Family Foundation, of course, has paid quite a bit of attention to issues involving marriage. It has been involved for several years in the Commonwealth Marriage Initiative Task Force that is trying to come up with ways to strengthen marriage in Kentucky.

It's not something The Family Foundation has talked much about publicly, but now that Hawpe...er, David and I are on such good terms, I don't see why he shouldn't know about it.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that the folks at the Courier-Journal don't know this. But I've got a way to help solve this problem of journalists who criticize groups for not being involved in issues that they should be involved with, when, in fact, they are: For David's next birthday, I'm going to buy him and his editorialist friends a "do-it-yourself" journalism kit.

Just to show how much I care.