By Michel Martin

The headline writers are trying to come up with ways to describe the snow emergency in DC. My personal favorite is: SNOWPOCALYPSE!

I love it.

I love that interplay between acknowledging your own personal hysteria and your responsibility as a news person to keep it together.

Frankly, as major situations go, this is a SITUATION. But let's be clear; it's NOT a disaster. Now, it's not the most fun I've ever had, especially now that the weekend is over and I have to truck in to work. Certainly, it's not fun if you've lost heat or power. It's demanding and perhaps frightening if you are vulnerable in some way -- physically challenged, elderly and in need of special equipment or services, such as dialysis. But for the most part -- how can we say this? -- It's not so bad. It isn't Haiti, it's not even a hurricane.

But still, it's kind of fun to be all over the top about it. Many of the roads are not great but there are more people out than one might expect. I still have not managed to make it to Starbucks and it's affecting my attitude. Thankfully, Matina and Oscar and Antonio and the crew are taking care of business in our little cafeteria upstairs. So there's hot coffee and sandwiches and I even saw Oscar making some waffles.

One group of people I find myself having sympathy for are the school superintendents, or whoever it is who has to make the decision to close schools, open them late, or keep them open. Sure, these decisions can wreak havoc with child care and so forth. But sometimes, I think some people forget that school is the safest place for many kids to be.

I'll tell you a story:

Years ago I got close to a young lady who was attending one of the premier charter schools in DC. Getting in was a very lucky break for her and her younger sister (in DC, admission to all but two charter schools is by lottery). Her mother loved her and her other kids and clearly meant well, but she was also a stone cold addict and had not gotten ahold of her addiction at that time. She was on and off the wagon. That left this young lady often in the position of caring for younger siblings, not to mention trying to get through her own life. Well, after a big snow storm one January a couple of years ago, school was closed off and on for most of three weeks, and I couldn't reach her. At that time, I was in the early stages of pregnancy, at that awkward point where you might be throwing up all the time but not telling anybody...trying to keep it quiet. I found out later that her mom had disappeared for much of that time. So, nine months later, guess what? That young lady had dropped out of that excellent school, where she was one of the top math students. And the boy who she turned to for comfort? He went to college.

Of course I ask myself, what could I have done? What if I had just gone across town and picked her and her sister up and brought them over? Would that have been right? But wouldn't it all have turned out differently had she been in school?

That's what I'm talking about. And that's another reason I am so interested in today's story about abstinence education. What would have helped this young lady put herself first?

Read a recent story about that study and a piece by NPR's Brenda Wilson. And here's the study itself.

You probably heard, we got a lot of snow this weekend.

Ha! I know all you haters out there in both warmer and colder climates have no sympathy. I can hear it now:

What is UP with you people who can't handle some precipitation?

Well, let me tell you. Two feet of snow is no joke, okay?

I lived in New England back in the day but, I have to tell you, I was living in dorms then, responsible for no one but myself. I remember one year when Harvard cancelled classes for the first time in 35 years and we were like, yay ... sleep in, catch up on some work, play scrabble.

The cafeteria was still open, the heat was on. No worries.

Not so this time. The big issue for us: would the power stay on? Yes or no?

The issue is that the very thing many of us love about living here in the D.C. area -- all the trees -- are the enemy when it comes to this kind of weather. Some of them just could not handle the heavy heavy snow. They were cracking and knocking down power lines all over the place. We were all e-mailing each other. .... Do you have heat? Do you have power? (Some people had lights but no heat, some people had heat but no lights.) You get the idea.

And I was wondering what happened to all the Super Bowl parties? I have a couple of friends who were planning BLOWOUTS. What did they do with all the andouille and chicken wings? (I volunteer to help dispose of it. I'm just trying to be neighborly.)

I am telling you all this because we are here anyway and I think our staff deserves at least a little gold star.

Yay team!

I meant this team.

Oh, and of course, Who Dat?

Why would any woman stay married to a husband who cheated on her with another man?

That's the question that Gayle Haggard said she wanted to answer with her book Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour. She talked about it with Michel Martin for our Faith Matters conversation Friday.

Back in 2006, Haggard gained the kind of fame that no woman wants. A male prostitute claimed to have had sex and done drugs with her husband, Ted Haggard, a then-national evangelical leader. After the core of the scandal proved true, no one (NO ONE) would've blamed Gayle Haggard for walking out.

But she didn't.

In her book -- and in her conversation with Tell Me More -- she said she loved her husband, forgave him, and felt her marriage was worth fighting for.

Now I'm a feminist. It's a label I wear proudly. And I know I'm stepping out on a limb here, but feminism was one of the first words that leapt to my mind while listening to Gayle Haggard tell her story.
Despite her husband's infidelity, and the resulting exile from the church that she loved, she never spoke as if she were a victim. She insisted that staying with her husband Ted wasn't just the right thing for him, or her children, or her church ... but that it was the right decision of her, as well.

It strikes me that, across gender lines, we respect the choices women make, as long as we agree them. We seem to have evolved from a society that believes a good woman should stay in a bad marriage, to one where we now often pity, ridicule or even condemn a wife who chooses to stay with a husband who has wronged her.

But listening to Gayle Haggard made me wonder whether that's really evolution at all.

Here in D.C., we are awaiting snow this weekend. And that means the pre-snow HYSTERIA has begun. Folks are canceling stuff all over town, stocking up on groceries, sidewalk salt, shovels, etc.

I am not hating. In fact, I texted my husband a list today: there must be chocolate (for s'mores). There must be popcorn. There must be spaghetti sauce or chili or soup.

There will be sledding. (We live near a hill.)

What there will NOT be is a Superbowl party. I am on strike.

I won't go into the details, but let me put it this way: ONE member of the household is heading to Miami; others were not -- ahem -- invited.

So we have other fish to fry. HOOPS for one thing.

We are looking ahead to the NBA ALL-STAR game, which is on VALENTINES DAY.

(Okay, now ladies, don't be mad. That actually WOULD be my idea of a fabulous V-day date. It's in Dallas, though, so that's not going to happen. It was in D.C. one year. We have not been the same since. I did not know Louis Vuitton actually made some of those clothing items ... did you?)

And, of course, MARCH MADNESS.

So I'm thinking about hoops, and that got us to thinking about basketball's past and future. So we had two stories today that speak to both ends of the continuum: to the past, a new documentary explores the important role Jewish Americans played in the development of B-ball.

I'm from New York, so how did I not know this? Well, thanks to David Vyorst and his film The First Basket, now I do.

And, we tell you about a new face in the game: Jeremy Lin, of Harvard. The school has not EXACTLY been known as a basketball powerhouse, until now. His is a new face in this increasingly global and diverse sport.

And if you DO find yourself snowed in this weekend maybe you'll want to check out this new documentary about SOUL TRAIN.

Break out the Afro Sheen!

By Michel Martin

There's been a big change here, although it may not be noticeable to most of you. We are changing the time we record our live program -- from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

That means we get to come in a bit later.

So, why are we doing this?

I'll let Tell Me More Supervising Senior Producer Teshima Walker explain ...

Thanks, Michel. Teshima Walker, here.

The reason we changed our broadcast time is simple: the later feed will allow us to attract more West Coast guests and regular contributors (commentators, analysts, reporters, etc.). We'll also have more time to pursue the program's mission and craft "distinct" conversations when breaking news happens.

There will be more sound-rich, pre-produced segments to grab listener attention. And, we're aiming to make Tell Me More with Michel Martin a listening destination at mid-day.

So, please keep listening and tell us what you think.

You might have been following the story out of Haiti, where ten Americans have been detained for trying to transport 33 children to a planned orphanage in the Dominican Republic. Yesterday, we talked with the associate pastor at the church where many of these Americans worship, and he insisted that they had no ill intent; they were merely trying to help children --who had already been identified as being in need--by moving them to safer circumstances. But the Haitian government is worried that these Americans were spiriting the children out of the country without permission and may have been "trafficking" these children.

Well, we had our first pass at trying to unpack this story yesterday when we spoke with Drew Ham, associate pastor of one of the churches where some of the Americans worship. Today we took another pass at it with a conversation with two women with experience in the area. We spoke with the director of communications with World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization with long history in Haiti. We also spoke with Kim Batts of Bethany Christian Services, a group with a long history in facilitating international adoptions. Both tried to explain the reasons behind holding up adoptions: fear of making a mistake being the obvious one; fear that children who happen to be unaccompanied really do have parents or guardians willing to care for them; fear of prospective parents rushing in because of emotion, without having considered the life-long demands of being an adoptive parent; and, of course, fear that children will be removed from Haiti and handed over to people with the worst of intentions.

Let's skip past the group of Americans for now. That's a particular case, and I assume with all the attention being focused on it, that the facts will come out. It seems from what I can tell, this group -- right or wrong in how they went about it -- seemed to think they were saving these children from the very thing the Haitian government fears -- human traffickers, people who are buying and selling children to people who plan to exploit them as house servants or worse.

I confess we just scratched the surface of the hard questions on our program. Let's credit our guests for raising legitimate issues. But here are a few more, and they are hard ones:

1. What role is national pride playing here, and what role should it play?

3. Is ideology at work, and if so whose? In the past, it was assumed --for racist reasons-- that some children would be better off living in a Eurocentric environment, that they were being "saved" from their culture. But more recently, the custom and bias has been for intra-racial adoption in this country, under the argument that the adoptive parents would best understand the adoptee's culture. Now that pendulum is swinging again --parents of all races are being allowed to adopt children of all races. But if that's the policy that's really being resisted, one has to ask: Is having an identity crisis as a teenager in Cedar Rapids worse than going without food or living in a tent in Haiti?

4. Would the energy and resources Americans would spend adopting or moving children into orphanages be better spent on helping Haitians to adopt?

As I said these are hard questions. Is it too soon to ask them? Or is it already too late?

Did you watch the Grammy's last night? Guess what Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Rihanna and Roberta Flack all had in common.

Rihanna, Roberta Flack, Mary J. Blige and Beyonce all sported blond locks at the Grammy's.(From left to right:Gabriel Bouys, Kevork Djansezian, Christopher Polk, Robyn Beck/Getty Images)

If you said 'golden tresses' ... ding, ding, ding! You'd be correct. My first inclination is to start a Facebook protest but truth be told these locks on my head have blond tips. And when I was younger I liked my "look." I thought it brought attention to my squarish face - broad nose, full mouth, honey-colored eyes. I can't provide testimony to this whole "blonds have more fun" foolishness but I thought I was cute and sometimes that's all that matters. Now, my parents were horrified. My mother - who is Black - asked, "You know you're not a white woman, right?" My mother's comments made me cringe. I protested. I told her, "I'm proud of who I am - my brown skin, my brown hair, my race." She rolled her eyes. I know that blond hair is associated with white women and beauty. I saw how men respond to girls and women with golden hair. Men (black, white, Asian, Latino and Native American) can't get enough of Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Pink and now this Lady Gaga chick. Trust me - all women want to feel desirous and beautiful. We all want some of that. And some of us dye our hair blond to get the job interview, get a second look and get the man or woman (don't you?).

But now I think maybe Black stars should help African-American women release the hold that blond hair has had on us. It's not a natural hair color. It's not really a good look if you're over 30. It's not particularly healthy for your hair. We don't need the woes that blond hair brings. Black women, let's do something different. Hell, I'm not completely satisfied watching my crowning glory gray at the temples but I promise you, there will be no more blond dye added.

Tell me your thoughts. I want to hear it.

By Alicia Montgomery

Many women like me have been guilty of this: You've got that platonic guy friend, the one who helps you move furniture, who is always willing to take you to the airport, even for the Red Eye. He comes along when you go to the car dealership, just to make sure the salesmen don't try to get over on you. And he does all these things without ever making a pass at you. At one point, just to let him know how much you appreciate it, you pay him what you think is the ultimate compliment.

Sometimes I forget you're a man.

But instead of accepting your "praise" graciously, he looks stricken. Maybe -- at best -- he mumbles, "um...thanks?"

That's because, he probably thinks you just called him a weakling, a chump, a eunuch...and, as you tell him this, he's probably hearing his guy friends' taunts that that's EXACTLY what you think of him.

And so, keeping that in mind, I want MSNBC's Chris Matthews -- and all other well meaning white people out there -- to know: you should never tell an African-American person that sometimes he's so smart, so focused, so well-spoken, that sometimes, you forget he's black. Matthews said something to this effect after President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, and has been trying to walk that unfortunate comment back ever since.

Still, he's been lavishly mocked and laughed at across the blogosphere, on television, and today in Tell Me More's Barbershop.

I have to say that President Obama seems to take this kind of thing better than most black people I know. But then again, he started cultivating that grace early, often, and VERY close to home. In his famous speech on race in April of 2008, he eluded to the fear of black men his own grandmother sometimes expressed, and how he knew that didn't diminish her love or devotion to him.

But you know what? Despite President Obama's family story, and what we've all seen in movies like The Blind Side, or classic TV sitcoms like "Webster," most black people don't have an enduring memory of an imperfect but nurturing white caretaker to soften the reaction to that kind of comment. More likely, they'll be reminded of a series of similar verbal slights dating back to elementary school, and it will provoke responses from bemused or irritated, to angry and indignant.

Having said that, it's not the end of the world. Everybody tells lies, but not everyone is a liar. And, even so, not every liar is Bernie Madoff or --yes, I'm calling him out again -- John Edwards.

Likewise, just about everyone I know -- including me -- has said something that qualifies as racist. But that doesn't mean we're all racists. And, having said that, we've got to acknowledge that not every racist is David Duke.

So I don't think Chris Matthews deserves to be taken out and flogged. After he takes the late-night jokester drubbing that he has coming, Matthews -- and the rest of us -- should be allowed to move on.

By Michel Martin

Earlier this week, I wrote a commentary on why big media matters. I was thinking about the Haiti earthquake and taking note of the fact that reporters from most of the big news organizations were on the ground before most of the so-called first responders were, including the U.S. military.

Now, I want to take a moment to talk about the local media, the community papers and news outlets, and why they matter.

Recently, I had a personal experience that hit close to home.

We lost a family member In Afghanistan earlier this month. He was Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael P. Shannon.

You can imagine what that was like. The late night phone call, so late you just know something is wrong. The scramble to round up kids in college in different cities so they could hear the news for themselves from their mother before finding out about it in a text message (believe it, people really are that stupid). Anyway, it's still a shock.

The funeral was earlier this week.

And I have to tell you an amazing source of comfort was the coverage in the local newspaper from Michael's hometown.

It's hard to believe for some people I guess but there was something about it -- the dignity, the appreciation -- I can't even tell you how much it meant to the family.

I remember when I was a local reporter and I used to cover funerals and deaths of local people and sometimes your presence was welcomed and sometimes it wasn't. And there have been other times in my own family when tragic things have happened that have come to the attention of the news media. There have been, I can tell you, different opinions about how much interest was appreciated.

But for those of you who are inclined to see the media as always intrusive and unwelcome, think again. Click here to read one of the stories from Michael's local paper.

Words can't convey how much this hurts, but this comes close:

Remember that phrase?

If you do, then you are probably a baby boomer (or a women's studies major)! I think that phrase means different things to different people, but I have always taken it to mean that the kinds of social concerns that were once -- and sometimes still are -- dismissed as "personal problems" or "soft news" or "lifestyle coverage" (or, if you really want to take it back to the day, "women's issues") are now understood to have a political and social dimension. In other words, it DOES matter, and these issues can be seen as more than a personal choice...that they're influenced by larger forces, important to everybody, not just to the few. Sure there's ideology attached to this....but either way....it is a way of saying, listen up.

Michelle Obama's campaign around childhood obesity is an example of this. People might say, what you put in your mouth or your kid's mouth is your business, and of course it is. But what if what is available to put in your or your kid's mouth is heavily influenced by government policy such as agricultural subsidies? What if what you think you WANT to put in your kid's mouth or your mouth is heavily influenced by the media environment, by what you are encouraged to want?

That's one reason I am so interested in the study on media consumption among young people that we talked about in today's parenting conversation. The study, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, shows that kids ages 8 to 18 are consuming an AVERAGE of 7.38 hours of media EACH DAY (and that includes texting, music, television and movie watching), and that the media consumption of black and Latino kids far outstrips that of white kids.

Is that inherently bad? Is that inherently a matter of community concern as opposed to an individual choice? Is this related to the achievement gap?

Read the report for yourself and decide if it's personal or political.

By Michel Martin

Speak softly today. I am still feeling a bit tender about my New York Jets who got WAXED in the playoffs over the weekend. (Sorry, I just need a minute to compose myself.) Yes, I know the Colts are all that. And Peyton Manning is the man, and I know that's a good story, too. And I'm happy for the New Orleans Saints. That NFC game was exciting.

And yada yada yada. Okay, so fine.

On the bright side, I won't have to spring for all that Jets gear I was planning on to outfit myself and the twinnies.

Yes, it's a distraction, I know. I know there are more important things. And we continue to talk about those more important things ...

For starters, should more Haitians be permitted to come to the U.S.? A surprisingly diverse group of people is advocating that the U.S. liberalize immigration status for Haitians who wish to come here in the aftermath of the earthquake tragedy. Elliott Abrams, a former official in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, offered a piece in The Washington Post this weekend, as did scholar Michael Clemens, who was on the program today (Abrams was not available, in case you are wondering). We also were joined by Doris Meissner, a former INS commissioner.

We're also thinking about another story in The Washington Post by Juan Forero about how Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered cable providers Sunday to stop showing the popular television station RCTV because they violated a regulation requiring broadcasters to televise Chavez's speeches in their entirety.

As always, we are seeking the right balance and we are looking ahead to President Obama's State of the Union speech on Wednesday night, which NPR and the major nets and cable outlets will, no doubt, be airing (without coercion, I dare say ... at least I hope so).

That's what some people will tell you when infidelity turns a promising political career into a slow motion train wreck, like the one we've witnessed with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. After he confessed this week that he was the father of his ex-mistress Rielle Hunter's child, we all hope that we've heard the last shoe drop in the whole sordid business.

But today, the guys in the Barbershop couldn't resist getting a final word in.

And neither can I.

And my great wish is that this scandal leads my fellow political junkies --and Americans in general-- to admit that marital infidelity is a legitimate grounds to question the integrity of our leaders.

I think we all know the politically correct response on this. We're all human beings. We all make mistakes. Lots of people have affairs, and many marriages survive --and even thrive-- in spite of them. Who are we to judge political candidates on the basis of something so personal?

And for people who believe that, there are plenty of other legitimate reasons to condemn Edwards. He didn't just have an affair. He cheated on his cancer stricken wife, pressured his closest aides to cover for him, and pursued the presidency and then --reportedly-- the vice presidency while all this was going on. If he'd gotten his way, he'd have left the highest levels of the American democracy vulnerable to blackmail or the distraction of a scandal during a time of two wars, and the deepest economic crisis of a generation.

So the rest of the rogues gallery of cheating husbands in politics may not have come close to Edwards' level of duplicity. But that doesn't mean we should keep giving them a pass.

When a man is willing to break his marriage vows, deceive the mother of his children, and use the people closest to him to cover up that deception, it says something fundamental about his character.

And we'd be wise to listen.

By Michel Martin

My thanks to Lynn Neary for filling in while I attended a two-day training seminar that all editorial and many other staff have been requested to attend at some point--it was about multi media. Since I am the queen of all media--having worked in newspapers and television and now radio--and having used social media for reporting since the beginning of this program--I was not that jazzed about the training--other than for the opportunity to connect with colleagues from around the country. That, not surprisingly, was the best part for me. It is fun to know there are some amazing people behind the voices you hear every day--as well as the people who get us on the air. As I said to one of the audio engineers who attended, without you I am talking only to myself. And yes, I did learn some things about how some of the tools we use actually are constructed. I hope the fruits of the training session will be visible (and audible) to our audience.

Now to our coverage -- it's tricky, period. In Haiti, the misery continues as does our reporting. We turn our attention to how journalists are covering this story. All the usual rules and questions apply. Is the coverage fair? Is it accurate? Are you learning what you need to know to understand the story to the degree that we can figure it out? But this degree of tragedy seems to raise additional questions: are we seeing more misery than usual because there really is more misery? Is it because we really need to know, or because this is Haiti and because these are brown people and, thus, the usual rules of decorum do not seem to apply?

And, what about these doctor/journalists, running from reporting in the field to the operating table? Who are they in this story? They have sworn a professional oath but their role is to be present as journalists--but as a medical doctor do you remain the dispassionate journalist in the face of such overwhelming human suffering? I confess that the dilemma is not just theirs. Every time you see something happening--someone getting hurt--what do you do? Do you pick up a camera or do you "help"?

And speaking of difficult dilemmas: if people are attracted to radical movements, can that attraction be dispelled? And how?

Click here to read a piece that got us thinking about it.

By Lee Hill

For all those wannabe thugs, die-hard Boyz N The Hood fans and connoisseurs of all things hoodlum, your moment -- via coach bus -- has finally arrived.

Reformed Los Angeles gangbanger Alfred Lomas recently debuted LA Gang Tours, which joins an already crowded bundle of offerings to L.A. tourists looking to peruse lifestyles of the rich, famous and ... infamous.

In a nutshell, Lomas promises customers "first-hand encounters" with "the top crime scene locations in South Central, Los Angeles," known for one of the most notorious street gang cultures in the world. The tour makes 11 stops that include current and former hotspots, such as the Florence District and the Firestone Sherriff Station, a hub during the 1965 Watts Riots.

The encounters are apparently so first-hand that would-be riders are asked to sign a release form. It's just in case, you know, things get out of hand (although Lomas says his group has negotiated cease fire "safe passage" zones with street gangs along tour bus routes.)

In a mission statement posted to its Web site, the company boasts its $65 ticket price has even more rewards:

Each tour bus for LA GANG TOURS will have a guide from the South Central areas who has gained hands-on knowledge and experience of the inner city lifestyle.

Lunch is also provided.

While Lomas admittedly plays into passengers' fascination with gang life -- and is being slammed by L.A. city councilmembers who fume that LA Gang Tours is as equally shoddy as it is dangerous -- the visionary behind the tours says his work is fueled by a deeper purpose. According to the company Web site:

The objective is to create jobs for the residents of South Central, Los Angeles; to give profits from the tours back to these areas for economic growth and development, provide job/entrepreneur training, micro-financing opportunities and to specialize in educating people from around the world about the Los Angeles inner city lifestyle, gang involvement and solutions.

It makes one wonder whether LA Gang Tours offers one of those good, educational community experiences or is just a bootleg, exploitative tourist "attraction."

Hopefully, we'll convince Alfred Lomas -- and his critics -- to tell us more ...

By Jasmine Garsd

In the past week, Americans have been bombarded by images of the horror that is life in Haiti following a devastating 7.0 earthquake.

I've heard a lot of legitimate concerns about the non-stop broadcast of some of these chilling images. When does news coverage cross the line from informative to sensationalist? Is this another form of exploitation of third-world people, particularly people of color?

The endless pictures and videos of the disaster are made possible by the 24-hour news cycle, and the advent of camera phones, twitter, etc. Maybe 20 years ago, the barrage of images of corpses and wailing human beings with amputated limbs would have been a shocker, but today we watch them with our morning coffee, or over dinner.

Why?

Perhaps because this event comes at the cusp of the growing culture of "gore pornography," exemplified by movies such as Saw and Hostel. That cultural phenomenon made a leap from the big screen to the little screen during Hurricane Katrina, where again, we were exposed to 24 hours of non-stop human misery.

But there is a positive aspect to the shocking images that are coming out of Haiti. It's a far away place, and had it not been for their broadcast, we might not have grasped the extent of the devastation. Hearing or reading that "there was a devastating earthquake in Haiti" doesn't have nearly the impact of seeing it. By nature we are visual beings.

I've met many people who have told me they never donated money to a cause before, but the images coming out of Haiti have motivated them to do just that.

While the images tell us a lot, they don't tell us everything. Getting wrapped up in the goose bump-inducing videos-on-a-loop of what is happening in Haiti can distract from the real, equally goose bump-inducing story of what led to that reality: Haiti suffered a natural disaster, but like a sick man that crumbles under a blow that a healthy man would endure, Haiti's total collapse comes out of decades (if not centuries) of repressive, corrupt government and disastrous foreign intervention. The imagery of immediate horror do not fully capture the fact that this tragedy was decades in the making.

At the same time, we should give American audiences some credit. Yes, the images are there, available 24 hours a day, but not everyone has given in to the non-stop voyeurism. Even if you wanted to, who has time? And surely, many in the American public have used that wonderful little thing called the "off button" (which we in media also tend to forget about). And most Americans appreciate the difference between horror flicks and a terrible reality. The fascination might be similar, but the actions -- and donations -- the Haiti images inspire are ultimately what matters ... right?

What are your thoughts? Tell us more ...