Rabbi Steven Pruzansky writes:
But what is intolerable is Newsweek’s celebration of decadence and its advocacy of the overturning of the social order. Scarcely a week goes by without some crack about religion or an opinion piece denigrating traditional morality and those who live their lives accordingly.
A recent cover presentation touting “A Case Against Marriage” amounted to a tendentious and saddening portrayal of an allegedly “growing movement” among educated women against marriage, an institution they find irrelevant and unnecessary in their lives. The magazine cited “studies” that little accord with real life, and presented women who are unable to project the dire loneliness they will feel in years to come or who deny the obvious harm caused to children who are raised by single mothers by choice.
Well, it is certainly a viewpoint, but in typical Newsweek fashion no attempt was made to present the “other side” – the Case for Marriage, how or why marriage has been the bedrock of civilization and family since ancient times, and how marriage is the foundation of one’s personal happiness according to every study. No balance at all.
Contrast that with two other Newsweek classics – the December 2008 and January 2010 Cases for Gay Marriage. (It obviously did not suffice to share this viewpoint only once, and the latter was even a cover story.) Again, no attempt at balance, no presentation of the case why homosexual marriage is detrimental to civil society.
It is not merely the debauchery, which is still just an opinion, that is killing Newsweek, but even more so the magazine’s pretense that its views reflect the coming attractions of American life. In fact, its celebration of these alternate lifestyles is an effort not to report the news or even modern social trends, but to influence those very trends – as if regularly reading about them will make them appear normal and conventional to its readership. Perhaps it does, and undoubtedly that is why its readership is disappearing faster than Obama’s popularity. But its moral stain and ethical pollution linger, like the oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
