Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Person’s age should not be deterrent to adopting pet
Dear Cathy: I read your recent column about the senior who couldn’t adopt a pet because of her age. I live in South Florida and have tried for a year to adopt an adult dog.
I am 81, walk several miles every morning, attend water aerobics daily and, due to COVID-19, have stopped traveling. I have no plans to continue traveling as I do not feel this pandemic will be under control for years to come. I manage my own financial affairs and am perfectly able to give a rescue dog a wonderful home. I live in a house with grass and trees, neighbors who walk small dogs, and friends willing to assist should I ever need help.
With this in mind, I can’t even get a home visit, let alone a visit inside the kennels to look at dogs. I was told by one rescue that I cannot request any breed of dog, even if available. I have wanted a schnauzer or schnauzer mix. I had one for 16 years. One of the rescue organizations I spoke with said, “You take what I give you.”
I have a neighbor who has been volunteering for our local shelter for 14 years. She is now in her 70s. She was rejected from adopting any dog from there. Her dog had just died. She ultimately bought a puppy from a pet store. She’s not the only one I know of who has done this. — Ruth, Boca Raton, Florida
Dear Ruth: I have gotten so many letters from people who are upset that this woman was not allowed to adopt a dog because of her age, and rightly so. People should not be discriminated against and kept from adopting because of their age. I have been friends with a 99-year-old woman for 17 years. Imagine if she had been denied the companionship of a pet because she was 82 years old at the time of adoption.
I know animal shelters and rescue groups want to ensure an animal has a forever home. But think of all the dogs and cats who need homes and all the retired people who have time to give.
Most animal shelters and rescue groups have a clause in their adoption contracts that say an animal must be returned to them if the adopter can no longer provide a home for the pet. That’s because they consider the lifetime welfare of that pet as their responsibility.
So, why don’t they just agree to take the pet back if something unforeseen happens? That’s what they would do if it were anyone else.
You sound like the perfect adopter. This nonsensical discrimination must stop.
Longtime award-winning producer Ira Rosen has written a sometimes sad, often funny, always revealing portrait of American television’s most famous and successful news show, “60 Minutes.”
Rosen certainly had reporting time for this book — he was a producer at the CBS show for nearly 25 years.
In anecdotes and conversations, he offers an engaging tutorial on how “60 Minutes’ ” signature high-quality mini-documentaries are produced, but perhaps the book’s most important contribution comes in ratifying the essential role of skilled, tenacious journalism in maintaining a democracy.
In 2007, for example, Rosen produced a piece on how members of Congress sold stock based in information learned in closed meetings — insider trading.
“The more you know about politicians, the worse they appear,” Rosen writes.
Misdeeds of our elected representatives provided a steady stream of story topics for “60 Minutes” in the Rosen years, less so now as more show segments appear to be linked to the news and fewer pieces are
investigative.
“60 Minutes” emerges as a lessthan-great place to work, at least in the era of founder Don Hewitt. He shunned staff meetings and essentially let producers and correspondents fight it out for stories and airtime. Correspondent Mike Wallace thrived in that untamed workplace, poaching stories from his fellow correspondents, berating producers and abusing female staffers.
Rosen produced for Wallace for nine years but never truly learned
to manage the star correspondent’s outbursts and general bad behavior.
Rosen related how Wallace once barged into Rosen’s office, demanding to know who was on the phone. Rosen said nothing, handed the phone to Wallace and left the room. Rosen had been talking to his mother.
Wallace never again interrupted Rosen’s phone calls.
And for critics who consider the news media as collectively left-leaning, consider this: In a post-presidency interview with Jimmy Carter, Wallace avoided asking Carter a question that, if answered, probably would have reflected badly on the Reagans. Wallace was a “friend and defender” of the Reagans, the book notes.
A fundamental journalism tenet is that a principled reporter cannot be friends or have relationships with people or institutions in his or her reporting orbit.
By contrast, Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Anderson Cooper emerge as standout reporters and polite, considerate, caring people. Ed Bradley was a producer favorite.
Rosen produced “60 Minutes” pieces into the Trump presidency, a traumatic time for journalists everywhere. He retired in 2019 and says he misses the powerful investigative pieces of the program’s glory days.
“We were not dismissed as fake news,” he said. “We solved problems … our reporting uncovered crooked congressmen … we got the wrongfully convicted out of prison” (and we) persuaded “whistleblowers, con men and mob bosses to tell their stories.”