When Breastfeeding's Not Okay

Ohio police recently stopped a woman who was using her hand-held cell phone while driving. That's illegal in Ohio, but that wasn't the only reason they stopped her. She was not only driving and talking on her phone, she was breastfeeding her baby at the same time. The woman was outraged that she was stopped, and said that she did not want to let her baby go hungry. So it was concern for her child that made her endanger the kid? The baby was not strapped safely into a car seat while being nursed by the cell phone-using/car-driving mommy. All she had to do was put up with the baby's crying for a moment or two, pull over, and feed the kid. Up until now, I've never been a big fan of "three strikes" laws. However, driving, phoning, and nursing at the same time are three strikes that deserve punishment. Imagine if Octo-Mom Nadya Suleman were driving while talking on the phone to Dr. Phil and nursing all eight of her babies at the same time. Yikes!

Where I live, using a hand-held cell phone while driving was banned beginning on January 1st of this year. So my family bought hands-free equipment shortly before that. We weren't alone, so I thought I'd never see another driver trying to balance his steering wheel and cell phone while cutting me off with a left turn. Boy, was I wrong.

Not a day goes by that I don't see people driving and talking on their cell phones as if the new law had never been enacted. I called the local police departments to see what we ordinary citizens are supposed to do when we see this activity. If we are pedestrians, should we run up to the car in the intersection and make a citizen's arrest? Are we supposed to honk or yell at the driver? Should we take down the license plate number and call the police?

Answer: None of the above. The police explained that a police officer must see the person committing this offense in order to cite him. They won't just take our word for it. Why not? Can't they just give us a lie detector test so they'll know we're telling the truth about the woman in that black SUV we see every day as she drives her kids to school and talks on the phone to set up a lunch date?

One member of the police department, Sergeant Horn, said that the good news is that according to police statistics, fewer people are using their handheld phones while they drive than before the ban. His feeling is that those who are ignoring the new law and not getting caught while driving and talking will eventually be spotted by a cop. I'm not sure if this feeling is based on statistics or his views about karma.

It's very frustrating to keep seeing people drive dangerously while they talk on the phone and not be able to do anything about it. Sure, we've all seen drivers do other dangerous activities like putting on make-up, eating, reading, kissing, and doing the crossword puzzle. What is so disturbing about the Ohio mom is that she took it to a whole new level by combining cell phone use with doing something else that she shouldn't be doing while driving.

It probably shouldn't shock me. This is the era of multitasking, and I should get used to it. But things are so different now. For generations, we heard about people who had sex in their cars. But those cars were parked! I remember "Benjamin" – the Dustin Hoffman character –in "The Graduate" enjoying the fact that "Elaine" was conceived in "an old Ford." If they ever shoot a remake of that movie, they could probably say that Elaine was conceived in a Ford cruising down the highway at 70 MPH while both parents were talking on their cell phones – and maybe doing their taxes, too.

Big Money, Big Sports

Who is the highest paid state-employee of your state: The Governor? The President of the state University? The guy who decides what the slogan should be for the license plate? If you live in Connecticut, among other places, it's an athletic coach. Jim Calhoun, men's basketball coach for the University of Connecticut is paid more than any state employee in Connecticut - –$1.6 million a year.

At a recent press conference, Coach Calhoun was not particularly gracious about his salary. A reporter, Ken Krayeske started to ask Calhoun a question: "Coach, considering that you're the highest paid state employee, and there's a two billion dollar budget deficit, do you think..." "Not a dime back," Calhoun responded, before the reporter even finished his question. The coach went on, "I'd like to be able to retire someday. I'm getting tired."

Did the reporter have a valid point? Should public universities be paying that much of taxpayers' money to coaches? Should a school pay one coach the same amount that it could pay ten or twenty professors? In these tough economic times, should more money be available for things like scholarships instead of coaches' salaries?

It's not just the coaches of public colleges who earn huge salaries. Pete Carroll, USC's football coach, is the highest compensated employee among all of those employed by private universities in the United States. He earns in the neighborhood of $4.4 million a year. That's a pretty nice neighborhood.

Coach Carroll is not the only private college coach up there in the financial stratosphere. There are several coaches who earn about four times as much as the presidents of their schools. How would you like to make four times as much as your boss?

Of course, there is a difference between how public and private universities should be viewed. A private university is like a private business. Unless we're bailing out that business financially, they have a right to spend that money any way they want, even if it's paying some guy who wears a bad sports jacket and yells at kids all day.

The traditional rationalization for paying coaches so much is that athletic teams can bring huge amounts of money to schools. Connecticut's men's and women's basketball teams make about $12 million a year for the school. Successful teams also bring prestige to a college. Some young kids dream of going to college where their favorite team plays. And when those kids do go there, most of them will pay tuition. All of this probably explains why the Athletic Department at most universities has a beautiful multi-million dollar facility while a musty closet serves as the offices for the Department of Conversational Lithuanian.

But even if some schools make big bucks by paying out big bucks for their coaches, are those salaries a good idea, especially in these difficult times? Are they the moral equivalent of those auto execs taking their private planes to Washington? Is there any way the public isn't going to see those salaries as obscene these days?

Actually, there is another way to look at paying them so much. If you think of sports as entertainment, maybe people need this kind of diversion more than ever in these awful economic times. When was the era of the wonderful "screwball" movie comedies? It was in the 30s, during the Great Depression. People apparently needed something to help them stop thinking about how empty their pockets were. Isn't it possible that when a person scream his lungs out to root for his, that helps him forget momentarily that tomorrow he has to spend the day looking for a job yet again?

So maybe we need diversions like football and basketball these days. So I guess it shouldn't be so startling that a football coach is the highest paid private college employee in the land. What is startling is the guy who's Number Two. He's a dermatologist. Columbia University's David N. Silvers, professor of dermatology, earns about $4.3 million a year.

I guess this somehow must make economic sense to those who run Columbia. Maybe there are millions of boys and girls who have posters of famous skin doctors on their walls. Just as the movie character Rudy dreamt of going to and playing for Notre Dame his whole life, there must be kids who dream of going to Columbia because of Dr. Silvers. And someday those kids will be tuition-paying students. Far fetched? Maybe not. Let's face it, what is more important to college age kids than dermatology?