The minor hoopla about beginning my 12th year of these commentaries caused me to look through the archives of more than 2,500 ninety-second essays and review what’s gone on in the world and my private life since my first broadcast in 1997.

Reading my own commentaries reminded me of all the momentous events that have changed our world, our country, and my personal life.

Just consider some of the events that have made our world so different – cataclysmic natural disasters in the form of tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and fires; Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky; sexual scandals rocking the Catholic Church; Enron and a host of unprecedented business frauds; the mortgage crisis; steroids in sports; the contest between a woman and a black man to see who would be the Democratic candidate for President; and of course the attacks of 9/11 and the aftermath (including our search for weapons of mass destruction, our invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the controversies about interrogation and detention of suspected terrorists).

Finally, think how much our culture has been changed by IMing, text-messaging, MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube.

On the personal front, I have more children and they’re older. The joys and challenges of fathering two toddler daughters then are much different as I’m now raising four girls ages 10-15. During it all, I turned 65 and transitioned into senior-citizen status.

The world is so different. Yet, when looked at from a higher level, we see the same issues. As they say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Although the names of our natural disasters and the people and events generating new scandals are different, our need for courage, compassion, integrity, accountability, and justice is the same.

And the toughest and most important part of my job as a dad is still to give a moral compass to my children to help them traverse through a minefield of temptations that constantly pull at them to be dishonest, disrespectful, irresponsible, or self-indulgent.

In the end, it’s still all about character.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.