The Dozen Lawsuits Filed Today Garnered all of 15 Seconds on CBS News. We Shall Overcome.

Calvin and Hobbes are at it again, making great points in less than 10 seconds.

Thinking along these lines then, I can’t remember the last time I actually watched the evening news. Too many ads from pharmaceutical companies and not enough real news as I recall. But tonight, what with the news that 40+ Catholic organizations sued the government by simultaneously filing a dozen lawsuits across the country, I decided to take a look, and realized pretty quickly that I’m never going to get back that half hour of my life.

I didn’t bother with CNN, or Fox, but I informally surveyed what used to be the Big Three, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Of those three networks, only CBS mentioned the story at all. Deep into the program, ’round about the 25 minute mark, Scott Pelley spent 10 to 15 seconds on the story, er blurb. ABC and NBC? Nothing at all. Nada, zilch, zippo.

Checking their websites, NBC has nothing on the story at all. CBS has a pretty good article, except they give quite a lot of ink to Planned Parenthoods’ president Cecile Richards, though they wrap it up with a wee snippet from Fr. John Jenkin’s of the University of Notre Dame. The article by ABC News included quotes from Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Fr. Jenkins, and much better background information about what has brought us to this point.

This probably is shocking to no one, but the mainstream media doesn’t seem to be very excited about sharing the wealth of information about this story with the general public. And maybe the public doesn’t want to know, just like Calvin, though in the end Hobbes seems a little underwhelmed by the choice his pal takes. When the media do mention the lawsuit, care will be taken to show photographs of birth control pill packages, and include the dominant paradigm references to the alleged “war on women,” etc.  All the links to more information straight from the horses mouth for the benefit of readers? Those are going to be missing in action, as they were in the articles I shared above, as well as on this one that was published today over on Yahoo! Who’s got time to add all those pesky links to stories anyway? *cough*

But the really best news about this whole mess is this: the young people in our country are wise to this silliness. Here on the Patheos Catholic portal, for example, we’ve got Marc Barnes drawing pictures for folks. And other young folks are hard at work bringing to light the serial cognitive dissonance of messages like this one.

Wow. The whole time that was on I was thinking, “It’s 2012, and we’re not going to teach our daughters about how their bodies work.”  Not to mention the fact that no one is threatening to take away anyones ability to purchase contraceptives cheap and use them all they want, either. Lucy LeFever, one of the wunderkinds over at Live Action does a fantastic job deconstructing that one sided story from the Administration.

You know, that video above has over 40,000 views since it was released on May 16th. The one below that was released today from the Archdiocese of Washington? 1731 views so far, which isn’t bad, but we need to kick it into overdrive ASAP. Share it heartily, will you? Because videos like this one aren’t going to be getting any airtime on the Big Three, or on the other 250 networks either.

The Chancellor requests our prayers and we should not be stingy with them. Pray that we  are able to overcome this unconstitutional act of the Administration, as well as the other moves afoot that the powers that be have set into motion. Simple, powerful prayers work wonders in situations like these. It’s like Julian of Norwich says…

UPDATE: Kathy Schiffer is a charitable soul.