A Rant About Making a Difference

January 29th, 2012 No comments

One heckuva road map.

Every once in a while you get the chance to sew what other people are doing with their college experience. The goals that they’re working toward; the things they’re trying to accomplish; the lives they’re trying to touch. It’s when you’re around these people that you realize you haven’t done anything of significance yourself.

Two weekends ago I had one of those experiences.

I was asked to take part in a softball tournament, a harmless request that I though would be a good way to spend my time of a Saturday before I went into work. It wasn’t until I got there that I realized there was something tangible, important, going on.

Many of you have seen the email sent out through Imprint Express, but then again, many of your are probably like me and delete all things that don’t come directly from people you know or professors. Read more…

Categories: Society & Politics

A Rant About Apologies

January 28th, 2012 No comments

A condescending use of the ellipsis

This is getting old. Another person in the spotlight apologizes for something stupid he or she said. It was Mark Wahlberg, this time, for saying he would have done what he does in movies if he had been on one of the planes that were steered into the World Trade Center.

I don’t want him to apologize. I want him to stand up and say, “Well… really, that’s what I would have done. Call me stupid, that’s what I said and I meant it.”

But, no.

I don’t want the speaker of the Kansas House to apologize as he did for a really stupid e-mail message he sent about Michelle Obama. I want him to stand up and be proud.

You read that right. I’m sick of apologies. I’m especially sick of forced apologies. Read more…

Categories: Society & Politics

A Rant About Doing Good

November 28th, 2011 No comments

It's good!

But, can we sell that? Doing good in the world is not a lost concept, as two of my students have recently shown… fight the power!

Good news.

Well, good news to me, anyway. Two of my students made the news this week and they have something interesting in common.

Andria Enns was profiled in the Independence Examiner for her next adventure spreading the ideas of peace journalism in the world. I take no credit for this, by the way. She was inspired by my colleague Steven Youngblood to pursue this concept. He took her to Uganda a summer ago and, she says, changed her life.

I have to be honest here and admit I’m not completely comfortable with the principles of peace journalism. How can you not be comfortable with an effort for peace, you say? Well, that’s the problem. Read more…

A Rant About A Great Ranter

November 12th, 2011 No comments

Grrrrr.

I really hate to do this, but I’m going to take Joe Posnanski to task.

Joe wrote a good column at Sport Illustrated after the Penn State child rape scandal broke, but it isn’t good enough. I came to it through a couple of links — the last in the Pitchand all along the way it is being hearlded as one of his best pieces of work. It isn’t.

Posnanski is right on when he discusses how he wrote a bundle of columns in his early days about a football coach he thought was the best since sliced bread. He was shocked when the coach committed suicide. It was an awakening — the sort many reporters have along the way.
As a reporter I came to the same conclusion: There are no all-good people and there are no all-bad people.
However, from this distance I detect something in his approach to this Penn State story that he should at least consider. He is, by the way, writing a book about Joe Paterno. He is even living in State College, Penn., to write it. And, near the end of his column, he seems strangely nuanced about his feelings when it comes to the subject of the book-to-be. Read more…
Categories: Society & Politics

A Rant About Conspiracies

April 28th, 2011 No comments

*Image courtesy of New York Times

Make Hawaii a state so Obama can be elected American president… The Birthers finally unravel this mess we’re in, in 2011…

 

Conspiracy theories interest me primarily because they reveal so much about human nature. They show our need to know what can’t be known, even if we have to invent what can’t be known. As a species we are so evolved, we have time to worry about parallel universes, heaven and hell, and, of course, President Barack Obama’s birthplace.

Meanwhile, Rome burns.

The Birther phenomenon is really no surprise. Obama is black.

A chunk of America woke up the morning after the election, opened the morning newspaper and said, “What the hell?” Everything they knew about the world had changed overnight. They wanted a Mulligan. They wanted to rewind the tape. They wanted it to be 1958 again.

Of course, there are reasons for white Americans to wish for peaceful, profitable, likeable 1958 . But they were stuck with 2008, a Black president, a sour and uncertain economy, two wars, three-dollar gas, bad cholesterol, and diminishing returns on everything. Yes, and the designated hitter. Read more…

Categories: Society & Politics