#717 CNN story

Wow...did CNN air that CF feature already? How interesting...

They had originally contacted our Houston No Kidding chapter, but the producers were very difficult to work with. They said they wanted to interview us at an actual event, so we invited them to our next 2 events but they never got back to us and never showed up.

Then suddenly they respond and say they're sending the reporter to Houston on November 29 or 30 (those are weeknights) and they want us to set up an event on one of those 2 week nights. Mind you, this was with only a week's notice! It's hard enough for our small chapter to get a decent turnout on a WEEKEND with a month's notice!

So what the hell...we send out the emails to our mailing list, and only 4 people were available that night. At least 10 wanted to participate but they just couldn't do weeknight. So I call the producer the day before to tell her this and ask if we can reschedule for a weekend, and she was like, "Oh...only 4? Well, we MIGHT have to cancel then."

OK...so the next morning I email her and ask what is going on, and she said, "Oh, we decided to cancel right after we got off the phone with you yesterday." Ummm...OK...when were you going to tell me, lady? How rude! They expect us to drop everything in our schedules to accommodate them, and they don't even have the courtesy to keep us informed about what they are doing!

I swear to god, I hate dealing with the press! I'm pissed that they never even told us that they had decided to go to another city instead...we still have members who were hoping it would get rescheduled!

Now that I hear what the actual piece they ran was like, I'm glad we didn't participate!

If anyone wants the producers's email, I still have it. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

I didn't see the CNN story, but from what you've described, it would've made me very furious also. However, what makes me furious is mainly the assumptions the "expert" you described mentioned--which are easily refuted with simple logic skills that even a spoiled now-a-days teenager has. It makes me glad to know that this "expert" isn't really representitive of all baptists, since many baptists are very liberal when it comes to issues like the childfree, etc.

Here's an email that Jerry Steinberg, founder of No Kidding, received after the piece aired. He just sent it around to the NK chapters so we could all enjoy it. Note the lovely Christian values that this person exemplifies:

> hey butt fuckers, starting a website to promote not having
>> kids seems a little fuckt up. It seems wierd that god would
>> put us on this earth with the ability, desire, and instinct to
>> recreate ourselves and yet ya'll are trying to prevent it.
>> Children are the light of the world!! ITs time you
>> people realized that, and stopped running away from the
>> most rewarding experience in life. I am watching this
>> CNN show right now, talking about
>> a lot of couples that are deciding to not have kids, and you
>> people supporting them is bullshit. I hope that the founders
>> of this organization contract an STD preventing them from
>> ever having children so that these fuckers cannot make
>> more of themselves. to tell you the truth i am glad that you
>> people are not creating children cause who knows how
>> fucked up they would be.
>>
>> PEACE BITCHES
>>
>> PS go fuck yourselves!!

Wow CF Scorpio, what an interesting letter, basically filled with the same assumptions as the "expert" the original poster posted--that is that everyone believes in the Christian God (many other assumptions too--especially assuming what that person believes is the "most rewarding experience in life" is the same as anyone else). Funny thing about that letter that person sent, it just further proves and provides more evidence that you don't become more mature just because you have a child with your DNA.

Children should be wanted instead of an obligation. How perfect a rebuttal. Anyone within their right mind would have to agree.

I for one would love the contact information for the producer of this piece. I believe you can't post it, but can you somehow lead us to a link that states the producer's name, so I can look it up?

I happen to be big fan of the letterwriting set and know, from past employment, that it really does mean something. In public relations, snail mailed letters are far more valuable than e-mails, and, the people affected pay a whole lot more attention to the antis than they do the pros.

This is not something I would expect from CNN, it is more FOX's type trick. Is there any chance they are just trying to get a reaction? Is someone being asked to show the conservative side of an issue, so they go overboard into the ridiculous?

Just thinking out loud. Maybe the producer wants a bunch of angry letters to show the boss.

what gets me is that a lot of people who beleive in the bible, catholics (whose preists dont have kids or other groups who also dont have kids, and the apostels who didnt have kids and.. and.. they are all somehow wrong..) anyway if god wanted us to have kids he wouldnt have made us CF.

"He also stated that having children is part of the definition of marriage"

There's a fun one. The logical extension is that all couples who don't stay celibate until they adopt their first child are adulterous.

Baudelaire Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I for one would love the contact information for
> the producer of this piece. I believe you can't
> post it, but can you somehow lead us to a link
> that states the producer's name, so I can look it
> up?

The producers were for Anderson Cooper 360. Does that help? Perhaps there is a way to complain on CNN.com

Interesting indeed.
I wonder when the day will come that married couples will be Required by Law to make children to maintain their married status? Are people who only have one child less married than those who have 8? What about the infertile heathens who decide to adopt, as opposed to going through dubious and expensive fertility treatments?

And, are all the unmarried women our glorious leader surrounds himself with virgins? They'd better freakin' be.

Feh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> And, are all the unmarried women our glorious
> leader surrounds himself with virgins? They'd
> better freakin' be.
>
HAHAHAHAHA!!! That's a good one. Maybe Harriet Myers and Condi Rice are lovers!

OOOOHHHHHHH MY BRAIN!! Deep hurting...DEEEEEP HURTING!

Thank you, thank you very little Scorpio. I will need a labotomy to get that image erased from my mind....or maybe I'll just pregnant, then my brain can slide out my "nest" along with the snuggly "dot".

For the people who missed the segment, there's an incomplete transcript availible here. You do have to scroll down a bit, since it's the transcript of the whole show.

Just from reading the transcript, I can see why the original poster got furious. Dr. Mohler goes into a lot of the common arguments against the childfree lifestyle, especially the oh-so-common "you have to thank goodness that your parents didn't think the same way you did!", which really isn't an argument.

I started to watch this then fell asleep. Good thing too, something else in the news to piss me off. Of course that Baptist-fuck-piece-of-shit is going to praddle on and on how everyone should breed. That's what he's been brainwashed into thinking. He's a dick. Thank fuck I march to the beat of my own drum. Assholes. And I'm Pagan to boot!

The thing that pissed me off when I read the transcript was this, "Isn't it dangerous to assume that everyone can be a good parent?" WHY WHY WHY do people think that the childfree are childfree because we feel we wouldn't make good parents????? Any article I've read has implied this and it pisses me off to no end. At least the Chilfree do their Childfree things really well, the childed usually make a mess of their kids lives.

That pissed me off, too. Usually, I ignore these assholes. Considering the source, it isn't worth getting all worked up about. What bothers me is that we're being looked at as some sort of "movement". Ever since the topic has hit the mainstream, it has that label attached to it. I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't like that. It's a choice, that's all.

Is any one of us out knocking on doors trying to "convert" people? Are we petitioning government for equal, or exceptional, rights? When is the next million childfree march? Will there be busses?

How the hell can a group of people who are simply vocal about their choice to remain child free be a movement? Jebus crisp, usually I think Anderson Cooper is pretty level headed, but to say we're a movement...what a knob.

I think they're just trying to villify us. Anything that isn't centered around "the children" is amoral, wrong, and mean- spirited. However, I'm beginning to believe that it's less about the kids, and more about their breeders. Selfish fuckers! Feh, as usual, you hit it right on the nose.