ANGELA writes:

It seems pretty ironic, but telling, in many ways that a “thinking housewife” seems to be totally sheltered and oblivious to the genocide and slow poisoning that is taking place of women and children on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Have you, the “thinking housewife” even thought about it? The dead zones, the illness? Any of it? Really, you should be writing about nothing else, if you were actually “thinking.”

Laura writes:

Genocide?

Angela writes:

What does that mean? I am not trying to be nasty, but I know a lot of women who love your blog and there is nothing written by you or hardly anyone on the so called “right” about the magnitude of this thing. Of all the news shows I watched last night it did not lead one story. It seems to me to just be business as usual and another day in the sunshine. Well the Gulf is going to become a dead zone, people are going to get really sick, and I guess we’ll just sit around while teenaged girls string pictures together played to the latest Justin Bieber (or however you spell his name) song….If anything was going to come as a mass conscious changing event, and event that catapulted us to change the way we live, this should be it, but noooooooooo.

Laura writes:

If your intention was not to be nasty, you could have fooled me.

You may notice that there are many subjects of high importance, such as American involvement in Afghanistan, Israel and the so-called “peace flotilla,” the economy, recent elections, the new immigration law in Arizona, that I do not cover. This is not a comprehensive news site and I doubt there is a single person on the planet who is relying on The Thinking Housewife for all their news.

I asked you a reasonable question and you did not answer. What is the genocide to which you are referring? The events in the Gulf have not been neglected in the news, although much of this coverage was lacking. Nor has the issue been ignored by conservative news sites.

I would like to suggest you read something that may help you calm down. This event is very important, but it is not the end of the world. I recommend this article about the Ixtoc oil spill that occurred 31 years ago in the Gulf of Mexico. The leak spilled 140 million gallons into the Gulf over 290 days. It is possible the BP spill will surpass that, but that is not certain. While not trying at all to downplay the serious short-term economic and environmental damage of the BP spill, I find it interesting how soon the wildlife in the Gulf recovered from Ixtoc.

If I were a petroleum engineer or if no one else were covering this event, I assure you I would be informing my readers on a daily basis of events in the Gulf. But many people are not petroleum engineers and many writers are not writing about the BP spill. That doesn’t mean we’re “sheltered and oblivious.”

                                                   — Comments —

Alkibiades writes:

Nice response to Angela. AP is reporting just now that the current spill is the largest in the Gulf.

Laura writes:

It is only the biggest spill if one accepts the very highest of the federal estimates. The government estimates now range from 71 to 140 millions gallons. The very large spread between the lowest and highest estimates suggest we are still far from ascertaining the total.

Lisa writes:

As a regular reader of your blog, and as one with family and friends directly affected with the terrible Gulf oil spill, here is some Humor From the Trenches:

My brother lives way out in the sticks on our family farm where I grew up right across a little country road from the BP headquarters for the BP Gulf spill crisis (a massively expanded Shell Oil training facility for off-shore workers). He said some of the good old boys in the neighborhood we went to grade school with like their guns and and small cannons… a normal country boy thing where I grew up. When they light off one of the 2′ cannons with powder, he said “it rattles all the windows in Robert.” Well, one day when Janet Napolitano was visiting, along with Homeland Security, the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the US Marines, they let it go and then left in their pick-up truck. Homeland Security swarmed the neighborhood looking for terrorists or something or other.

Yes, what is going on in the Gulf states is criminal, and genocidal, but I appreciate that you blog about topics than can affect for good the behaviors and choices of women and men in a cultural wasteland, the conditions of which demand radical choices if we are to see a turnaround in the cultural and moral decline.

Karen I. writes:

You should not cover the oil spill. It is already being covered to no end by the major news networks. It is a tragedy and we all know it. One cannot turn on the television or read the newspaper and avoid a story about it. It gets worse by the day and we all feel bad about it. But, still, you should not cover it. It is getting more than enough coverage as every big story does. 

You should continue to cover what you already do. If you don’t, who will? You are a voice for the forgotten and oppressed who lack the eloquence or ability to speak for themselves. Who are they? As you already know, they are the innocents slaughtered by abortion, the sad toddler dumped in a daycare for 10 hours, the school boy who cannot quite sit still and so is unfairly labeled learning disabled. You are the voice of the middle age man whose wife has left him with nothing for no particular reason and the housewife who takes great care of her family but is scorned by society for her efforts. You even speak for the lonely elderly. The Thinking Housewife thinks of the forgotten of this world and you are right to do so. Please do not let anyone tell you otherwise. I truly believe you are doing God’s work and I hope you continue to listen to your heart rather than your critics.

Laura writes:

Thank you very much.

David writes:

To Angela, I must echo Laura’s question: What genocide? I think this weighty claim deserves some explanation. Call me oblivious and unthinking, but I am not aware of any genocide occurring in the Gulf of Mexico, nor, for that matter, anywhere across the United States. To be clear, when I say “genocide,” I mean “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group” (dictionary.com). Do you mean that BP “deliberately” destroyed its oil rig, reputation, and sales revenues in a bid to destroy women and children living in the Gulf? That strikes me as odd. Perhaps you can elucidate your reasons for making this claim. If there is a genocide in progress, as you say, then we should all know about it. 

Additionally, I would like to suggest, at the risk of provoking those who believe this oil spill is the worst evil we face today, that in point of fact we face considerably worse evils. For example, there are the many forces ripping the American family to pieces, such as the glorification of single motherhood, no-fault divorce laws that encourage the dissolution of marriages, and legalized contraception and abortion. There is the widespread hedonism that leads people to wander from one empty and unsatisfying sexual relationship to another with hardly any concern for either the meaning of the sexual act or the children who may result therefrom. If we do not believe this sufficiently deprives the human person of his rightful happiness, we might offer him strippers, prostitutes, or porn stars, all of which are abundantly available throughout the country. There is the fall of fatherhood. There is the exaltation of freedom and the neglect of virtue. There is the ascendancy of the individual and the demise of the community. Worst of all, there is the loss of meaning. We have the odd impression that our secular world gives us more of what we want, when in fact it gives us less. 

The BP oil spill is relatively insigificant compared to the evils described above. Yes, I did just say that. First, the spill will mostly affect those living around the Gulf of Mexico, while the problems I just named affect hundreds of millions of people around the world. Second, I find it hard to believe that the spill will do nearly as much to destroy the humanity of those affected by it as the problems I described. One evil damages an ecology and an economy. The other evil — I mean in particular the loss of meaning — destroys the person. Which is worse? Which problem more urgently requires our attention? I’m voting for the evil that destroys the person. Let us thank Mrs. Wood for attending to these evils.

Laura writes:

Thank you. You have given a much better response to Angela than I did. The oil spill pales in comparison to the destruction of our culture and traditions, and the loss of meaning we see everywhere. To someone like Angela, it is a sign of being “sheltered and oblivious” to care about one’s own, to care about the climate in which children are raised, about morality, the common good, and everyday life. Real life only involves the great collective. The private life constantly stands accused of insignificance by our radical ideologues, who truly seek to obliterate the individual at the most fundamental level.  

Lawrence Auster writes: 

I think that more telling than Angela’s “genocide” reference was this: 

Really, you should be writing about nothing else [italics added], if you were actually “thinking.”

Laura writes:

Ha! You’re right.

Her point wasn’t, you should be thinking about the BP spill in addition to everything else, but you only should be thinking about BP. Forget the rest.

Lydia Sherman writes:

Any thinking housewife ought to be able to post entries about what SHE is thinking about, not what everyone in the world thinks she should be thinking about. The critics are always telling me to write about the unfairness in the world, or the tragedies. The biggest tragedy is the unfairness of sending perfectly good housewives to work. It has a generational impact.

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