It had to happen: David Barton, pretend-historian, now pretend medical scientist, claims that science won't be able to cure AIDS because AIDS is a punishment for sin. David Barton didn't invent the idea that AIDS represents divine wrath but he is certainly willing to run with stupidity when he hears it.

Even ancient Pagans knew that there were things that could make people sick that weren't of divine origin, or to be explained by demonic possession. Superstition has not always held sway over every mind. How is it otherwise to be explained that Marcus Terentius Varro, writing in 36 BCE (On Agriculture) and without benefit of a microscope, could know that "there are bred certain minute creatures that cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious diseases" but David Barton, with access to all the annals of modern medicine, cannot?

Another way to frame the question might be, why appeal to the complexities of medical science when you have an angry God on hand? After all, succumbing to mundane disease doesn't make for much of a morality lesson, does it?

This is the future of American theocracy: abandonment of science and embrace of superstition, of malign divine influences, demonic possession, and prayer. Millions will die because the Inquisition won't like it if you say "germ". Don't wash your hands for 20 seconds after going to the bathroom: it will only prevent the spread of infection; it won't keep God from hating you. Get on your knees and pray: beg for forgiveness.

Seriously, there is a reason the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) publishes a page on hand-washing but not on prayer. And I am certain David Barton would condemn them for that.

As Right Wing Watch reports,

We have also pointed out before that Barton believes that everything in our society ought to be governed by what is in the Bible, even our medical practices ... and today Barton returned to this topic, claiming that science cannot create a cure or vaccine for AIDS and that abortion causes breast cancer and mental health problems, proclaiming that to be "good news" because it proves that the Bible is correct.

So forget Marcus Terentius Varro, forget Madame Curie, forget Louis Pasteur, and forget the father of microbiology, Anton van Leeuwenhoek. Forget Philippe Gaucher, the first to identify the disease named after him in 1882. It is easy to see a Republican theocracy prescribing prayer for my son rather than enzyme replacement treatment.

But prayer won't break down the waste material in his blood or keep it from accumulating in his spleen and liver. Prayer won't keep him alive if the source of Cerezyme dries up. Prayer won't keep an AIDS patient alive and it doesn't promise a cure anymore than it will drive away a drought, return gasoline to a dollar a gallon or kill the women of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

Prayer, as Karl Marx correctly identified religion, is the opium of the people ("Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes").

Yet that is what pseudo-historian/pseudo-scientist David Barton wants you to believe. Forget everything after the first century that isn't Christian:

There's a passage that I love in Romans 1 - I don't love what the topic is - but it talks about homosexuality and it says that they will receive in their bodies the penalties of their behavior. And the Bible again, it's right every time, and studies keep proving that and that's why AIDS has been something they haven't discovered a cure for or a vaccine for, because it's the fastest self-mutating virus known to mankind. Every time they just about get a vaccine discovered for it, it transmutes into something new and they have to start over again. And that goes to what God says, hey you're going to bear in your body the consequences of this homosexual behavior.

The same thing goes with abortion and now we're getting studies, and these are somewhat negative studies, but they're positive studies in that they prove that the Bible is right. So I want to read you the results of a couple of new studies that are out. Here's a new study that out, now this is the second study that shows that women who have abortions double the risk of mental health problems ... Now that's not good news; the good news in this is God says "don't kill unborn babies."

Now, along the same thing, here's another study, a new study now shows those who have abortions nearly triple the risk of breast cancer. It's bad news, but it's good news in the sense that it does show that the Bible is right. When God says don't kill those unborn babies, there's a reason. And He tells us in Deuteronomy 6:24 and Joshua 1:8, everything I tell you to do is for your good, for your benefit, so that you can prosper and you can have success. So when he tells us not to do this stuff, whether it's homosexual behavior or whether its abortion, hey it's for our benefit he tells us not to do it and now studies prove that to be true.

The first, by Julia Steinberg of the University of California at San Francisco and Lawrence Finer of the Guttmacher Institute and also published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, "found what they called, in a letter to the journal's editors, 'untrue statements about the nature of the dependent variables and associated false claims about the nature of the findings.'" Dr. Steinberg dismisses the first report's findings in no-nonsense terms:

"This is not a scholarly difference of opinion," Dr. Steinberg said. "Their facts were flatly wrong. This was an abuse of the scientific process to reach conclusions that are not supported by the data."

The second critique, an analysis of data in Denmark (reported last year in the British Journal of Medicine), also "found no support for the hypothesis that abortion increased the risk of mental disorders." The American Cancer Association says that abortion does not cause an increased risk of breast cancer: "After adjusting for known breast cancer risk factors, the researchers found that induced abortion(s) had no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer. The size of this study and the manner in which it was done provide good evidence that induced abortion does not affect a woman's risk of developing breast cancer."

In 2003, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) Committee on Gynecologic Practice concluded that "Early studies of the relationship between prior induced abortion and breast cancer risk were methodologically flawed. More rigorous recent studies demonstrate no causal relationship between induced abortion and a subsequent increase in breast cancer risk."

The American Cancer Society does not rest its anti-Barton case there:

In 2004, the Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer, based out of Oxford University in England, put together the results from 53 separate studies done in 16 different countries. These studies included about 83,000 women with breast cancer. After combining and reviewing the results from these studies, the researchers concluded that "the totality of worldwide epidemiological evidence indicates that pregnancies ending as either spontaneous or induced abortions do not have adverse effects on women's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer."

But David Barton does not care what scientists say; he doesn't even care what the Bible says, really, since the Bible doesn't talk about mental health problems or breast cancer resulting from abortion. And in fact, God does kill unborn babies, according to the Old Testament: God repeatedly commands that the Israelites kill men, women, and children, even pregnant women - hell, they even have to kill the livestock! That doesn't sound like a pro-life God to me.

But misinterpretations of Scripture and dishonesty aside, theology does not explain disease - wallowing in ancient superstition is not going to save lives. Scientists may not so far have a cure for AIDS but they don't have a cure for my son's Gaucher Disease, or a cure for cancer, either. They also once upon a time did not have cures for many diseases that are now curable. Now, in other words, is not forever. Scientists do know what causes AIDS. As the Mayo Clinic explains:

"AIDS is a chronic, potentially life-threatening condition caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). By damaging your immune system, HIV interferes with your body's ability to fight the organisms that cause disease."

AIDS, in other words, is not a theological problem. It is a medical problem, just as female contraception is a medical, not a religious issue.

David Barton claims to be a historian but a historian cannot indulge in fantasies of prayer and miracle. As Bart Ehrman explains, "the natural sciences use repeated experimentation to establish predictive probabilities based on past occurrences." A hundred times out of a hundred a bar of soap will float in water; a bar of iron will sink. This provides "an extremely high level of...presumptive probability" that all future bars of soap and iron will behave in this fashion, whereas a miracle involves "a violation of this known working of nature" - floating bar of iron, for example. A historian cannot disprove a miracle took place but a historian must establish "only what probably happened in the past" and miracles are "at odds with how the natural world typically works."[1]

The germ theory of disease freed humankind from dark superstition and science is indeed a candle in the dark, as Carl Sagan said, holding back the demon-haunted world.[2] Republicans hate science and conservative Christian Republicans most of all: science is inconvenient: it impedes the spread of ideology and it impedes the spread of religious doctrine. When Stephen Colbert said that reality has a liberal bias he was speaking truth, and the literature is abundant on this score.[3]

The sin of science is that it tries to explain the world as it is, now how it should be, not to buttress this or that ideology or this or that religion. Science is the facts on the ground, an object not of belief but of fact. Medical science is the same.

David Barton and pseudo-scholars like him (and dark disciples like Glenn Beck and Republican politicians who trumpet their claims) should be seen for what they are: agents of destruction. If you are a fan of Thomas Hobbes' "nasty, brutish and short"[4] then their gospel of destruction will no doubt find favor with you and in fact Christian Scientists are free to dismiss the germ theory of disease if they wish and if you want to think your cold is caused by demonic possession I suppose you are free to do so.

But this sort of Bronze Age thinking, promoted at the expense of centuries of scientific and medical advances, should not become public policy to inflict all humankind. Penicillin is a cure but prayer is a panacea, and disease as a divine punishment should hold no more allure in the 21st century than the philosopher's stone.

[1] Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, Third Edition (Oxford University Press, 2004), 227-29.

[2] Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Ballantine Books, 1996).

[3] Just a few examples: Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science (Basic Books, 2005); Russell Shorto, Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason (Doubleday, 2008); James Hoggan, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming (Greystone Books, 2009); Timothy Ferris, The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature (HarperCollins, 2010),

[4] Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan (1651).
(c) 2012 Hrafnkell Haraldsson, is a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

I AM an Optimist. Period.

No ifs. No buts. No perhapses.

Maybe it's genetic. My father was an optimist. Even when, at the age of 45, he had to flee his native Germany to a primitive little country in the Middle East, his spirits remained high. Though he had to adapt to a new country, a hot climate, hard physical labor and grinding poverty, he was happy. At least he had saved his wife and four children, the youngest of whom was I.

Today, on Israel's 64th birthday (according to the Hebrew calendar), I am still an optimist.

SOME TIME ago I bumped into the writer Amos Oz at a wedding and we talked about this curiosity, my optimism. He said that he was a pessimist. Being a pessimist, he said, was a win-win situation. If things turn to the better, you are happy. If things get worse, you are still happy, because you have been right all along.

The trouble with pessimism, I told him, was that it leads nowhere. Pessimism relieves you of any urge to do something. If things are going to get worse anyhow, why bother? Pessimism is a comfortable attitude. It even allows you to be contemptuous of the optimists, who still struggle for a better world. Optimism is for simpletons.

But this is exactly what it's all about. Only optimists can struggle. If you don't believe in a better world, a better country, a better society, you can't fight for them. You can only sit in your armchair in front of the TV, tut-tutting at the stupidity of the human race, and particularly your own people, and feel superior.

Whenever I confess to being an optimist, I am showered with disdain. Don't I see what's happening around me? Was this the state you imagined on May 14, 1948, when you listened to Ben-Gurion's speech on the radio and prepared yourself for the night's battle?

No, I did not imagine a state like this one. My comrades and I envisaged a very different state. And still I am an optimist.

WHEN TALKING about this, I am always reminded of a certain point in my life.

It was October 1942, and the world was shaking.

In Russia, the Nazi troops had reached Stalingrad and the titanic battle had been joined. There was no doubt that the Germans would take the city and move on.

Further south, the invincible Wehrmacht had broken into the Caucasus. From there, a straight line led through Turkey and Syria to Palestine.

Erwin Rommel's renowned Afrika Korps had broken the British line and reached the Egyptian village of el Alamein, just 106 km (66 miles) from Alexandria. From there to Palestine was a matter of days.

Already a year earlier, the Nazis had occupied Crete in the first airborne invasion in History.

For anyone looking at the map, the situation was clear. From North, West and South the Nazi military colossus was moving inexorably towards Palestine, with the aim of destroying the Jewish semi-state there. Adolf Hitler's mad anti-Semitism led to no other conclusion.

Our British masters obviously thought so, too. They had already sent their wives and children to Iraq. They themselves, it was rumored, were sitting on their suitcases, ready to escape at the first hint of a German breakthrough in Egypt.

The Hagana, our main secret military organization, was making frantic preparations. Like the heroes of Masada some 1900 years ago, who committed collective suicide rather than fall into Roman hands, our fighters would gather on the Carmel hills, there to fight and sell their lives dearly. I had just turned 19, and was living in Tel Aviv, a town nobody even considered defending. We knew it was the end.

After the war ended with the total collapse of Nazi Germany, many books about the course of the war appeared. It transpired that the desperate crisis of October 1942 existed only in our imaginations.

The Crete airborne invasion, far from being a brilliant victory, was in reality a disaster. German losses were so high that Hitler forbade any repetition. Not knowing this, the British launched their own airborne operation in Holland towards the end of the war, which was also an unmitigated disaster.

The German troops that had reached the Caucasus were totally exhausted and could march no further south. Of far-away Palestine they could not even dream.

And, most importantly for us, Rommel had reached el Alamein on his last drops of petrol. Hitler, who viewed the entire North African campaign as a wasteful diversion from the main effort - Russia - refused to squander his scarce petrol there. He did not give a damn about Palestine. (Even if he did, there was no way to get the petrol across the Mediterranean. The British had broken the Italian naval code and knew of every ship leaving an Italian port.)

The moral of the story: even in the middle of a completely desperate situation, one does not know enough of the facts to lose hope.

BUT THERE is no need to go back 70 years. Enough to look at recent events.

Did anyone of us in Israel believe a year ago that the apathetic, "don't give a damn" youth of our country would suddenly rise in an unprecedented social protest? If somebody had said this a week before it happened, he would have been laughed out of court.

The same would have happened to anyone at the beginning of last year who prophesied that the Egyptians (the Egyptians of all people!) would arise and throw their dictator out. An Arab Spring? Ha-ha-ha!

When I happen to give a talk in Germany, I always ask: "If any one of you believed the day before it happened that the Berlin Wall would fall during his lifetime - please raise your hand." I never saw a hand rising.

And the greatest event of all, the implosion of the Soviet Union - who saw it coming? Not the US, with its giant multi-billion intelligence apparatus. Nor our Mossad, with its many collaborators among Soviet Jews.

Neither did any of them foresee the Iranian revolution that drove out the Shah.

The same is true for the many human-made catastrophes during my lifetime, from the Holocaust to Hiroshima.

WHAT DOES that prove? Nothing, except that nothing can be foreseen with any certainty. Human events are shaped by human beings, human beings shape human events. That may be a good reason for pessimism, but also for optimism.

We can prevent disasters. We can bring about a better future. And for that we need optimists who believe that it can be done. Lots of them.

On Israel's 64th Independence Day, the situation looks grim. Peace is a dirty word. Most Israelis are saying: "Peace would be wonderful. I would pay any price for peace. But unfortunately, peace is impossible. The Arabs will never accept us. Therefore the war will go on forever."

That is a very convenient pessimism, absolving us from all guilt, allowing us not to do anything.

The "Two-State solution", the only real solution there is, is receding into the background. The apartheid regime which is already established in the occupied Palestinian territories is spreading into Israel proper. In a few years we shall have full-fledged apartheid in all the historical country, with a Jewish minority lording it over an Arab Palestinian majority.

In the unlikely event that Israel is compelled to grant the Palestinians civil rights, the Jewish State in all of the historical country would rapidly become an Arab State in all of the historical country.

The United States, Israel's only remaining ally, is declining slowly and surely. The emerging power, China, has no memories of the Holocaust.

Social inequality is rampant in Israel, more than in any developed country. That is as far as one can get from the ideals of early Israel.

The democratic foundations of the "Only Democracy in the Middle East" are shaking. The Supreme Court is under enduring siege by a gang of semi-fascists nestling in our government, the Knesset is becoming a sorry caricature of a parliament, the free TV and printed media are slowly but surely becoming undergoing Gleichschaltung (sorry, no Hebrew or English word available).

Can this situation become worse? In my long life I have learned that no situation is so bad that it cannot get worse. And no leader is so detestable that his successor cannot be even more so.

That said, there may be powerful forces at work, unseen and unheard, that will change things for the better. It's like a dam on a river. Behind it, the water rises, slowly, silently, unnoticed. One day the dam bursts, quite suddenly, and the water submerges the landscape.

This will not happen without us playing our part. What we do - or do not do - is a part of the changing pattern. Hoping and believing is not enough. Doing and acting is of the essence.

Chris Christie may be fat, but he ain't Santa Claus. In fact, he seems unable to decide if he is New Jersey's governor or its caporegime, and it may be a comment on the coarsening of American discourse that his brash rudeness is often taken for charm. In February, while discussing New Jersey's newly amended income-tax law, which allows the rich to pay less (proportionally) than the middle class, Christie was asked about Warren Buffett's observation that he paid less federal income taxes than his personal secretary, and that wasn't fair. "He should just write a check and shut up," Christie responded, with his typical verve. "I'm tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he's got the ability to write a check-go ahead and write it."

Heard it all before. At a rally in Florida (to support collective bargaining and to express the socialist view that firing teachers with experience was sort of a bad idea), I pointed out that I was paying taxes of roughly 28 percent on my income. My question was, "How come I'm not paying 50?" The governor of New Jersey did not respond to this radical idea, possibly being too busy at the all-you-can-eat cheese buffet at Applebee's in Jersey City, but plenty of other people of the Christie persuasion did.

Cut a check and shut up, they said.

If you want to pay more, pay more, they said.

Tired of hearing about it, they said.

Tough shit for you guys, because I'm not tired of talking about it. I've known rich people, and why not, since I'm one of them? The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing "Disco Inferno" than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar. It's true that some rich folks put at least some of their tax savings into charitable contributions. My wife and I give away roughly $4 million a year to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts. Warren Buffett does the same; so does Bill Gates; so does Steven Spielberg; so do the Koch brothers; so did the late Steve Jobs. All fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.

What charitable 1 percenters can't do is assume responsibility-America's national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can't fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, "OK, I'll write a $2 million bonus check to the IRS." That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry.

And hey, why don't we get real about this? Most rich folks paying 28 percent taxes do not give out another 28 percent of their income to charity. Most rich folks like to keep their dough. They don't strip their bank accounts and investment portfolios. They keep them and then pass them on to their children, their children's children. And what they do give away is-like the monies my wife and I donate-totally at their own discretion. That's the rich-guy philosophy in a nutshell: don't tell us how to use our money; we'll tell you.

The Koch brothers are right-wing creepazoids, but they're giving right-wing creepazoids. Here's an example: 68 million fine American dollars to Deerfield Academy. Which is great for Deerfield Academy. But it won't do squat for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where food fish are now showing up with black lesions. It won't pay for stronger regulations to keep BP (or some other bunch of dipshit oil drillers) from doing it again. It won't repair the levees surrounding New Orleans. It won't improve education in Mississippi or Alabama. But what the hell-them li'l crackers ain't never going to go to Deerfield Academy anyway. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

Here's another crock of fresh bullshit delivered by the right wing of the Republican Party (which has become, so far as I can see, the only wing of the Republican Party): the richer rich people get, the more jobs they create. Really? I have a total payroll of about 60 people, most of them working for the two radio stations I own in Bangor, Maine. If I hit the movie jackpot-as I have, from time to time-and own a piece of a film that grosses $200 million, what am I going to do with it? Buy another radio station? I don't think so, since I'm losing my shirt on the ones I own already. But suppose I did, and hired on an additional dozen folks. Good for them. Whoopee-ding for the rest of the economy.

Tired of hearing about it, they said. Tough shit for you guys, because I'm not tired of talking about it. I've known rich people, and why not, since I'm one of them?

At the risk of repeating myself, here's what rich folks do when they get richer: they invest. A lot of those investments are overseas, thanks to the anti-American business policies of the last four administrations. Don't think so? Check the tag on that T-shirt or gimme cap you're wearing. If it says MADE IN AMERICA, I'll ... well, I won't say I'll eat your shorts, because some of that stuff is made here, but not much of it. And what does get made here doesn't get made by America's small cadre of pluted bloatocrats; it's made, for the most part, in barely-gittin'-by factories in the Deep South, where the only unions people believe in are those solemnized at the altar of the local church (as long as they're from different sexes, that is).

The U.S. senators and representatives who refuse even to consider raising taxes on the rich-they squall like scalded babies (usually on Fox News) every time the subject comes up-are not, by and large, superrich themselves, although many are millionaires and all have had the equivalent of Obamacare for years. They simply idolize the rich. Don't ask me why; I don't get it either, since most rich people are as boring as old, dead dog shit. The Mitch McConnells and John Boehners and Eric Cantors just can't seem to help themselves. These guys and their right-wing supporters regard deep pockets like Christy Walton and Sheldon Adelson the way little girls regard Justin Bieber ... which is to say, with wide eyes, slack jaws, and the drool of adoration dripping from their chins. I've gotten the same reaction myself, even though I'm only "baby rich" compared with some of these guys, who float serenely over the lives of the struggling middle class like blimps made of thousand-dollar bills.

In America, the rich are hallowed. Even Warren Buffett, who has largely been drummed out of the club for his radical ideas about putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to patriotism, made the front pages when he announced that he had stage-1 prostate cancer. Stage 1, for God's sake! A hundred clinics can fix him up, and he can put the bill on his American Express black card! But the press made it sound like the pope's balls had just dropped off and shattered! Because it was cancer? No! Because it was Warren Buffett, he of Berkshire-Hathaway!

I guess some of this mad right-wing love comes from the idea that in America, anyone can become a Rich Guy if he just works hard and saves his pennies. Mitt Romney has said, in effect, "I'm rich and I don't apologize for it." Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want-those who aren't blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money-is for you to acknowledge that you couldn't have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it's not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It's un-fucking-American is what it is. I don't want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that-sorry, kiddies-you're on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay-not to give, not to "cut a check and shut up," in Governor Christie's words, but to pay-in the same proportion. That's called stepping up and not whining about it. That's called patriotism, a word the Tea Partiers love to throw around as long as it doesn't cost their beloved rich folks any money.

This has to happen if America is to remain strong and true to its ideals. It's a practical necessity and a moral imperative. Last year during the Occupy movement, the conservatives who oppose tax equality saw the first real ripples of discontent. Their response was either Marie Antoinette ("Let them eat cake") or Ebenezer Scrooge ("Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"). Short-sighted, gentlemen. Very short-sighted. If this situation isn't fairly addressed, last year's protests will just be the beginning. Scrooge changed his tune after the ghosts visited him. Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, lost her head.

The media regularly cover awards for their reporters, editors and producers. They regularly cover award ceremonies for movie stars, athletes, and business leaders. But they regularly ignore the far more important awards for people who ethically blow the whistle on corruption and suppression in both business and government, risking their careers and more to tell the truth to the American people.

Sure, the Pulitzers, the Academy Awards, the Heisman Trophy and the many business awards may seem exciting. But protecting the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people is important and serious. It is hard to conclude that recalling millions of defective automobiles and dangerous pharmaceuticals, exposing serious contamination of drinking water, lies about the BushObama wars and the huge subprime mortgage crimes should be outside the realm of news coverage.

But this news or features blackout consistently prevails, at least in Washington, D.C., even when the annual Ridenhour prizes are given to heroic figures before packed audiences of notables at the National Press Club. Named after the late Ron Ridenhour, a Vietnam War veteran who wrote to Congress about the horrific massacre at the village of My Lai, this year's recognitions went to truth-tellers from Countrywide Financial, Bank of America, the Pentagon, the FBI, and the Marine Corps.

Each of them delivered concise, eloquent remarks that would qualify for any "Style Page" feature that requires drama, courage, human interest, resolve and proposed reforms. C-SPAN, replete with astonishingly repetitive right-wing events, was not there. Some members of the fourth estate - reporters, columnists, editorial writers or profilers - were in attendance, but no major news outlets covered this splendid event.

The Ridenhour awardees did not indulge in sentiment and self-pity. They spoke cogently about widespread dereliction or institutional crimes, and they spoke of specific ways a democratic society can foresee and forestall further recurrences. These people know what they are talking about. They are not like the glib pundits, politicians and commentators who get abundant airtime or print column inches for their insipid, ignorant, repetitive or self-serving pontifications.

When Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis spoke about his assignment for the Army's Rapid Equipping Force which resulted in a meticulous and well-documented report from the battlefields, contrary to the official "success" claims of the generals, he provided fresh material and a sensitive mind ready to elaborate on any questions by the press.

When Ali Soufan (former FBI interrogator) spoke about the uses of torture that backfire, fail to get useful information, risk the safety of soldiers, violate the laws and stain the reputation of the U.S., he can back it up with book-length details. Soufan's New York Times op-ed was an eye-opener but the present situation is still festering and exhibiting prevarication. Extensive reporting is still needed on this subject.

Eileen Foster, hired in 2005 by Countrywide to become the executive vice president in charge of their fraud risk management division, proved that there was a "cult" of commission-hungry loan officers who created fraudulent financial papers that expanded toxic mortgages, helping to lead to the great Wall Street-U.S. economy crash of 2008. She showed the various law enforcement paths the Justice Department failed to take against any Wall Street executive, despite ample grounds for prosecution.

And when career Marine Corps Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger suspected that his nine-year-old daughter's death might have an environmental cause at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, he came upon a "cover-up by the Marine Corps of one of the largest drinking water contaminations in U.S. history." The Marine Corps learned of the carcinogenic chemicals in the groundwater at the base in 1980 and refused to officially notify the residents for another 28 years, an admission finally provoked by Sgt. Ensminger's indefatigable campaign that went national (see the documentary "Semper Fi: Always Faithful").

Now compare these heroic stands of the human spirit with the regular, rancid portrayals in the media of misbehaving actors, actresses, and professional athletes. There isn't even a semblance of balance between informing the moral and voyeuristic instincts of their readers and viewers.

Lt. Colonel Davis, still on active duty, urged the audience to go forth and expand the range of their common concerns represented by these awards to ever larger circles of Americans. He declared that "telling the truth and doing your duty are synonymous."