Dennis Prager

3-17-98

Prager discussed the cover of this week's People magazine, which featured actress Jodie Foster. The title: "Mom to be: Jodie prepares for life as a single mother."

Jodie is pregnant and won't say how. She is widely reputed to be a lesbian.

Only one person is quoted who worries about single parenthood. Just two sentences on the lack of a support system.

FOSTER MOM

Jodie Foster, Hollywood's most successful one-woman show, decides two's company after all

At first, producer Leonard Goldberg was more than a little worried -- and then he got mad. After all, landing two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster for the lead in his upcoming thriller Double Jeopardy had been a coup. He hadn't blinked at Foster's requests to rewrite her part, and they'd met several times to go over her changes. She was, he says, thrilled with the final product, and they were all ready to go -- until a few days before shooting was scheduled to begin in December.

Goldberg says he was stunned, and very concerned, to get a note from Foster telling him she was dropping out of the movie "for medical reasons." She offered no further explanation -- and he didn't ask. "Jodie is a very private person. [She made] it very clear she didn't care to elaborate." Goldberg had no choice but to swallow both his fears and his frustration and wish her the best. "Well,"he told her, "I hope it [turns out] positive."

It has -- and for the record, Goldberg has forgiven his ex-leading lady. Last week, Hollywood's 35-year-old wunderkind -- whose résumé includes credits as director and producer, magna cum laude graduate of Yale University, not to mention her bare-bottomed breakthrough in a Coppertone commercial at age 3 -- announced what was about to become obvious anyway: Come September, the actress, who is single, is expecting a little wunderkind of her own. She says she doesn't know (or care) if it's a boy or girl. Within hours any hopes for a quiet pregnancy were swept aside as friends and fans -- most as surprised as they were delighted -- buzzed with the news.

"I had no idea this was on her mind," says her friend Michael Apted, who directed her critically acclaimed performance in 1994's Nell, which she also produced. "Whenever we talked it was about work. It never occurred to me to just say to her, `Are you going to do the womanly thing and have a child?'"

According to Foster's best friend, Randy Stone, who produced her 1991 directorial debut, Little Man Tate, there were only two challenges left. "I guess she could be President if she wanted to," he says. But since politics doesn't seem a top priority, "it is the most natural thing in the world that she will be a mother. She's a kind and generous human being. She's a great listener. This kid is very lucky."

Unless, of course, the kid happens to be a stickler for propriety. Foster has no comment on the paternity of her child, or, for that matter, the manner of conception. "I'm not going to discuss the father, the method or anything of that nature," she told gossip columnist Liz Smith, who broke the story on March 5. Two days later, Foster sat in the audience as an honorary guest at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, listening to master of ceremonies James Woods laud the mother-to-be and quip that her unborn child's father is "one of the L.A. Lakers." Famous for keeping her private life private, Foster just laughed -- and then, remarkably, she cried. "I know everybody's been through pregnancy, but it's still a big deal,"she told PEOPLE. "I'm just very happy."

She's also joining a growing club of celebrities who knowingly go into motherhood alone. The roster includes Diane Keaton, Rosie O'Donnell, ex-Charlie's Angel Kate Jackson and former Knots Landing star Donna Mills. Unlike Foster, each of those women adopted their babies. But, whether by adoption or not, planned single parenthood sends up some red flags, and not just from Dan Quayle's camp. "We worry about single parents," says Dr. Richard Paulson, director of the fertility clinic at the University of Southern California. "We want to see a support system -- [at least] one other individual who is going to help parent the child."

Foster, who earned a reported $9.5 million for her last film, Contact, will have plenty of support -- and not just from nannies, family members and friends. "Pretty much the entire planet has been giving me advice as of the last few days," a laughing Foster told PEOPLE. But those who know her best believe she doesn't really need it. "Jodie's an innate mom," says her close friend Jon Hutman, who was production designer on Little Man Tate. When his own daughter was born in France in 1994, Foster not only sent "the most exquisite flowers we've ever gotten in our lives," she hopped on a plane to help change diapers. "She very intuitively understood the process of having a newborn," he says. "She in many ways was my mother for a period of time. That's just her nature -- to take care of other people."

As the child of a single mother herself, Foster has had plenty of opportunity to think the issue through. "A single parent has to be everything to a child," she said to Redbook in 1991. "And the needs a parent has, which might have been fulfilled by a partner, are fulfilled by you or your siblings." And yet, as her friend Jon Hutman points out, "she can think all she wants, but everything she thinks is going to go out the window when she's holding that little creature in her hands." Last week, reflecting on the matter, she expressed optimism. "There was just a genuine respect between my mother and me," she said, "and I hope I can bring that to my child."

For now she is concentrating on more immediate demands:running her production company, cooking dinners for friends in her L.A. home, taking her 2-year-old boxer, Lucy, for walks, and reading -- not scripts for a change, but that pragmatic classic What to Expect When You're Expecting. "That's what you're supposed to read, right?" she asks.

Oh, yes, then there's the baby's name. "Everybody's getting together their lists to give to me," she says. Call it a hunch: When the time comes, Foster will have the matter in hand. "She is a great director, a great producer, a great actress, a great student," says her friend Paramount production president Michelle Manning. "Why would I question if she will be a great mother? She will be fabulous."

Dennis Prager says that if Jodie appeared on the cover of the magazine with a cigarette in her mouth, she would be derided.

Women have to battle arrogance. They are so more intuitive than men, and it is easy to think that they do not need men.

DP is not sure that children raised by wealthy single women are better off than those raised in orphanages.

The same liberal crowd that says we do not need politicians and presidents to be role models, they have their fathers. But what about when kids do not have fathers?

DP suspected that many listeners felt the issue as Jolly Jodie vs. Pooper Prager.

But Jodie has beauty, brains, money, fame and success. What a lucky kid!

If you are upset about this, what do you do about it? Is the battle lost? Let us just support those who believe in raising kids with two parents.

Many Western elites at the end of the 20th Century believe that history teaches us nothing. We know better. We went to Yale.

Vatican Repents Failure to Curb Killing of Jews

By CELESTINE BOHLEN

ROME -- The Vatican issued a document on Monday that it described as an "act of repentance" for the failure of Roman Catholics to deter the mass killing of Europe's Jews during World War II. But the document skirted the painful issue of the Vatican's long silences during the Nazis' reign of terror.

The document, under preparation for 11 years, was greeted with cool appreciation and guarded disappointment by Jewish leaders, some of whom criticized the Vatican for not judging those Catholics who collaborated with the Nazis or those -- including Pope Pius XII -- who kept silent about Nazi atrocities.

Cardinal Edward Cassidy, the Australian head of the Vatican Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews, which produced the the 14-page statement, told reporters at a Vatican news conference on Monday morning that it was written as a teaching document for the worldwide church and represented "more than an apology."

"This is an act of repentance," he said.

The document said, in part: "In the lands where the Nazis undertook mass deportations, the brutality which surrounded these forced movements of helpless people should have led to suspect the worst. Did Christians give every possible assistance to those being persecuted, and in particular to the persecuted Jews? Many did, but others did not."

The delay in producing the document has been attributed by many observers to divisions in the Vatican over to what extent the church, its leaders and its teachings contributed to the vicious anti-Semitism of the Nazis. Speakers at the news conference said the process had required waiting for the church itself to 'mature."

Rabbi David Rosen, director of the Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League and its co-liaison with the Vatican, said, "It is a very important statement, but it is disappointing in certain respects." He noted that Catholic bishops' conferences in France, Germany, Hungary, Poland and other countries have gone further in acknowledging a deeper responsibility for the moral climate that allowed Nazism to dominate much of Catholic Europe.

The document carries an introductory letter from Pope John Paul II, who, as the year 2000 approaches, has been leading the church through "an examination of conscience," reviewing sins, crimes and errors that have been committed in its name through the centuries.

In his preface, the pope, who as a young man living under Nazi occupation in Poland witnessed the deportation of Jewish friends, colleagues and neighbors, referred to the Holocaust as an "unspeakable iniquity." He expressed a "fervent hope" that the Vatican document will "help to heal the wounds of past misunderstandings and injustices" committed by Christians against Jews.

The document examines the "catastrophe" of the Holocaust, when Jews were persecuted and massacred "for the sole reason that they were Jews." But it also examines the "tormented" history of Christian-Jewish relations, worsened by "erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament" -- a phrase used last year by John Paul in addressing a Vatican-sponsored symposium on the origins of anti-Semitism.

"Despite the Christian preaching of love for all, even for one's enemies, the prevailing mentality down the centuries penalized minorities and those who were in any way 'different,"' the document stated.

But to the dismay of some Jewish commentators, the document makes the distinction -- first made by the pope himself in October -- that holds that while the church in the past helped foster religious prejudice against Jews, it bore no responsibility for the racial theories that guided Nazism.

"We cannot ignore the difference which exists between anti-Semitism, based on theories contrary to the constant teaching of the church on the unity of the human race and on the equal dignity of all races and peoples, and the longstanding sentiments of mistrust and hostility that we call anti-Judaism, of which, unfortunately, Christians also have been guilty," the document said.

DP: This document is 2000 words long and took eleven years to write, that is how sensitive the issue is. What did the church do or not do, during the Holocaust. This is a bigger deal for Christians than for Jews. How could this great slaughter take place in the middle of Christendom?

The Church refers to the Holocaust with the Hebrew term SHOAH.

DP says the statement is a great step forward. This current pope visited a synagogue, recognized the state of Israel. This is good news.

The bad news is that the document did not state how little the Pope did. While as an individual he saved thousands of Jews in Italy, he kept quiet as Pope because he feared communism. He never said almost anything about the Nazi genocide of the Jews. He could've said, "If you participate in the killing of Jews, you are excommunicated from the Catholic church."

DP: It was not the Church that made the holocaust, but the Nazis, who hated organized religion.

From Dennis Prager Web Site

Tuesday, March 17, 1998

Dennis discussed the 6 page spread in People Magazine on Jodie Foster being pregnant. She is not married and won't tell how she became pregnant. In the article, People Magazine is excited for her. Dennis said that he only wishes Jodie Foster well in life but he is not excited about single women deliberately becoming single moms. He pointed out that he is not discussing women who don't choose this path, i.e. divorcees and widows. Dennis said that he commends those women because they did not choose that path but are working so hard to raise good kids. Dennis emphasized that he was only discussing single women who deliberately go out and get pregnant. Dennis said that kids deserve a mother and father. Dennis asked his audience if they thought he was conservative for that reason? Dennis said that there is no reason to think that Jodie Foster is anything but good, loving and kind. But still, he said, there is something wrong here. Children deserve to start out life with a mother and a father. They need both.

Dennis said that he is convinced he is coming off as a "party-pooper." He said that there is only one quote from the entire 6 page piece that doesn't see this as a necessarily blessed event. A doctor at a fertility clinic said that he worries about single moms because, he believes, they need a support system to help parent the child. The rest of the piece in People magazine is how great it is for Ms. Foster. Dennis said the issue isn't Ms. Foster but rather the celebration over her pregnancy by the popular magazine. Untold numbers of girls and single women will read this magazine, Dennis said. The magazine listed several other celebrity women who in recent years became pregnant while single. Dennis said this sends a message that other than supplying sperm , men are not necessary for raising children. It's arrogant, Dennis said. He said that men are necessary for bringing up kids, not one iota less than women.

With the exception of a couple of callers, everyone agreed with Dennis. One woman called in to say that she used to feel that way. She deliberately became pregnant as a single woman and after a few years she was overwhelmed at how truly difficult it was to raise a child on her own. She loves her child, but she said it was a mistake. Another woman called to say that she doesn't know where she would be without her husband's support and parenting for their children.

In the third hour Dennis discussed the Vatican's apology to the Jews for the Church's lack of action to help Jews during the Holocaust. It appeared on the front page of the major newspapers today. Dennis pointed out how sensitive this apology is because it is the length of one newspaper page but it took 11 years to write. Dennis reminded the audience that the Holocaust was a modern day event in which 9 out of every 10 Jews were massacred by the Nazis on the European continent. Dennis said that what the Church did during that time, and what it didn't do, is actually a bigger question for thoughtful Christians than for Jews. He said, if you are a believing Christian you have to ask yourself how this evil took place in the middle of the 20th century in the most Christian part of the world? Dennis noted that the Church, in the apology, refers to the Holocaust with the Hebrew term, Shoah. The Australian Cardinal who was in charge of producing this document, said that this was an act of repentance.

The documents said, in part, "in the lands where the Nazis undertook mass deportations, the brutality which surrounded these forced movements of helpless people, should have led to suspect the worst. Did Christians give every possible assistance to those being persecuted, and in particular to the many persecuted Jews? Many did, but others did not."

Dennis said that this is a great step forward and that this Pope has done an immense amount to reach out to the Jewish people and he should be commended. Dennis said that Pope John Paul II is the firs Pope in history to attend a synagogue, he has had the Vatican recognize the state of Israel (a first in Vatican history), and now this apology. Dennis said that this Pope has a "pro-Jewish sentiment" and that this is good news. Dennis went on to say that maybe we can't expect too much but the fact is Pope Pius XII did very little during the Holocaust. Dennis said that he knows the Pope personally saved thousands of Jews but he didn't speak out against what the Nazis were doing. Dennis said that what he did as an individual was beautiful but what he did as Pope was terrible. He just kept quiet.

Dennis said that he did this because he feared the Communists' anti-religion stance more than what the Nazis were doing to Jews. Since the Nazis were fighting the Communists, he kept quiet. Dennis said that Pope Pius XII didn't want to see Jews killed, but he feared Stalin more than Hitler. Dennis also noted that this Pope in the 40's had pro-German feelings. He said that the Pope never said the very simple statement: "if you participate in the killing of Jews, you are excommunicated from the Catholic Church." Dennis said that he thinks history would be different had the Pope made this statement. Dennis said that in Catholic dominated Poland, Lithuania, and in Western Europe (which was half Catholic and half Protestant) this would have been a powerful statement. Dennis said that if it had been repeated from church to church and parish to parish, many Jews would not have been so brutally murdered. But, Dennis said, not only was this not said, nothing close to it was said. Dennis said that it was great misfortune that Pope Pius XII was Pope. He said that he is convinced his predecessor would have come out with this statement as he was a remarkable anti-Nazi.