brianandruby.org

I suppose it’s more accurate to say: I was so inspired by a journalist that I borrowed his name and gave it to my son. The big question on your mind must be why.

Our son is named Isidore Ellis Russell Sinreich. He was born April 3, 2009 at 11:58 am in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The journalist was Isidor Feinstein Stone aka I.F. Stone. He was a truth-telling leftist investigative journalist of the best kind. An old school newsman who refused to eat propaganda and regurgitate it as fact. I didn’t know him but I feel his writings speak to me. We hope our son will be a truth teller.

By reading I.F. Stone, I discovered hope for the future in the way new generations often give to parents. Stone’s writings prove the value of information. Not just the official word but the absolute necessity of access to a vast amount of information. When Stone wrote for newspapers, political news was less diverse. Those who owned the means to manufacture mass media controlled the flow of information. In some ways they still do. But that control is very different now.

The authors of the United States Bill of Rights understood the power of information. This must be why they put freedom of the press in the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There is a lot in that long sentence. The part that journalists most care about is making no law ‘abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press’. Ever since this was written, the freedom of the press has has been under attack.

Here in America our form of democracy is a bad compromise. It’s not really democratic. We say that we have equality here. Sometimes we even try to treat other humans fairly. But the overwhelming fact is that we are not equal and we don’t really have a civil society. I hope this changes in our son’s lifetime. I have hope that it can.

Isidore is also the first name of Ruby’s great-grandfather. But I didn’t know that when I started lobbying for us to use the name Isidore. Plus the nickname Izzy is just so damn cool.