Opinion

There are examples of children separated from parents who immigrated illegally playing out nationwide. And well-meaning people across the political spectrum have taken a stand and forced change. Unfortunately, they made their most iconic image something that wasn’t a family being separated — and ultimately undermines their cause. The photo of a nearly 2-year-old Honduran girl crying as her mother is being patted down quickly went viral. It has also been used for a Facebook fundraiser to raise more than $18 million to help reunite families that have been separated. And the whole thing culminated in its placement in a photo illustration on the cover of Time magazine. The image features the girl against a red background, with President Trump towering over her and the words, “Welcome to America.” The implication was clear: This was a girl who, like 2,300 other children, was being separated from her mother. Time and many others made a decision to suggest that this … [Read more...] about Aaron Blake: Time magazine’s major mistake on the crying-girl cover

By Peter Howell Movie Critic Thu., June 21, 2018 Fifty years ago this month, it made for the most chilling of movie posters: a black baby carriage on a hill, superimposed over the face of a resting woman played by Mia Farrow. It was for Rosemary’s Baby, the horrific Hollywood feature debut of up-and-coming Polish director Roman Polanski, who was not yet notorious for the family tragedy that would befall him — his actress wife Sharon Tate would be murdered a year later by the Manson family — and the statutory rape crime he’d commit and flee justice from in the 1970s. Just last month, Polanski, along with Bill Cosby, was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the still-unpunished crime. Ivory-skinned actress Farrow, then 23, was another newcomer, scandalized by her adulterous marriage to the decades-older singer Frank Sinatra (who would soon divorce her) but decades away from the child-abuse allegations … [Read more...] about Rosemary’s Baby is the mother of modern horror

On Sunday, a day we as a nation set aside to honor fathers and the bonds of family, I was among the millions of Americans who watched images of children who have been torn from their parents. In the six weeks between April 19 and May 31, the Department of Homeland Security has sent nearly 2,000 children to mass detention centers or foster care. More than 100 of these children are younger than 4 years old. The reason for these separations is a zero-tolerance policy for their parents, who are accused of illegally crossing our borders. I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart. Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now … [Read more...] about Laura Bush: Separating children from their parents at the border ‘breaks my heart’