I’m never one to credit evil as an explanation where stupidity will do nicely, but as this post points out, this is starting to surpass the “wishful thinking” phase: You pushed faculty to offer in-person classes or classes that could at least have an in-person component. Classes that drew students to campus and put butts in classroom seats were valued. You created all sorts of untested hybrid options with the idea that some personal interaction was better than none. Faculty objected and students went with online options when possible, but still you persisted. You created pokazukha websites and plans and fliers for … Continue reading Maliciousness
The tropics have been busy this week. There are two named storms in the Gulf. Neither is headed our way, but it’s been a wet week. Oh, to be on the dry side of a storm.
It was qualifying week for the 2020 election in the Gret Stet of Louisiana. Senator Double Bill Cassidy gained a name opponent when Democratic Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins filed to challenge him. He has his work cut out for him: he’s not well known in South Louisiana. The spineless incumbent remains a heavy favorite.
The most interesting local race is for Orleans Parish District Attorney. Incumbent Leon Cannizzaro is retiring, which makes it a wide-open race. City Council President Jason Williams looked like a very strong candidate until he was indicted on federal tax charges. The funniest moment of qualifying week was when Williams told us not to be distracted by his indictment. Dude, you’re running for DA. You need a better argument than that.
This week’s theme song was written by Stevie Wonder for his smash hit 1973 album Innervisions. It’s about reincarnation or some such shit but I like it for the funky groove.
We have two versions of Higher Ground for your listening pleasure: Stevie’s original and a 1989 cover by Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Glad I was able to funkify your lives today. I took lessons from the Meters:
That George Porter Jr. bass line makes me want to jump…to the break. See you on the other side.
Read this and think about what you learned about history, and why: Here’s another example: Teenagers in both states will learn about the Harlem Renaissance and debates about the movement’s impact on African-American life. But Texas students will read that some critics “dismissed the quality of literature produced.” I get frustrated day after day after day listening to Our Thought Leaders lamenting how divided we “have become” and how polarized “things are” like a storm just moved in and nobody knows why. Children for decades have been deliberately taught different stories, for a very specific reason, and the article presents … Continue reading They Did This On Purpose
I dunno if anybody else is struggling right now but I AM. Holy balls, am I ever.
The world is a dark miserable shitass place and being on Twitter is losing its goddamn charm as all I ever see is people attacking each other over who’s really a Bernie bro and who humped their cat and who has the WORST ideas for revamping local news and who I used to love yesterday who now has to be cancelled because he has revenge or rape or race-war fantasies.
And I do not have a hot take on any of it. I’m just annoyed by everything. Once upon a time I would have enjoyed laughing at Cat Humper Twitter as much as I did David Cameron Dead Pig Humper Twitter, but lately my overarching reaction is just to be really, really tired by everyone’s antics. Which is not productive. Or helpful.
Ugh: As college admissions become ever more competitive, with the most elite schools admitting only 4 percent or 5 percent of applicants, the pressure to exaggerate, embellish, lie and cheat on college applications has intensified, admissions officials say. The high-stakes process remains largely based on trust: Very little is done in the way of fact-checking, and on the few occasions officials do catch outright lies, they often do so by chance. How about we stop making it heartwarming that people basically have to beg in public for everything now? A good education, a way to get to and from work, … Continue reading Stop Asking People to Prostitute Their Experiences for You
Shot: I saw this growing up with kids in private high schools who had never been to public school. They really thought public school kids spent their days drinking paint before inevitably heading off to juvenile hall for an extended stay. This is a slight exaggeration, of course, but if the base assumption is that your private school is better, and some of your classmates aren’t exactly perfect, then Those Other Kids must be soooooo bad. Chaser: So imagine my surprise when, thanks to the Facebook page for an upcoming high school reunion, I learned the school is getting a … Continue reading School Segregation and Brett Kavanaugh’s Entitlement Complex
We’ll take away every civil right you have, in the name of safety, before we pass some fucking gun laws that make sense in this country: Under the Salem method, threats are evaluated at a Level One stage by a school-based team that may include school police. If it is determined that parents would be constructive, they can be brought in during the process, the handbook says. The handbook outlining the Salem method that Parkrose uses advises that aggression exists on a continuum, from a low end of “scratch, bite, hit” up to “rape, strangle, stab, shoot, bomb, kill.” If … Continue reading All This … Or The Guns
I’ve written before here about the fundamental misunderstanding most people have about tenure, including why it matters, how it works and what it’s supposed to provide. The simplest explanation is that tenure guarantees educators and scholars at institutions of higher education the right to fearlessly challenge convention within a field, seek scholarship in areas that might not jibe with social norms and conduct research in ways their expertise dictates is necessary and valuable. It’s not meant to protect you when you act like a dick. Unfortunately, the public seems to think that tenure does this, which is why they’re constantly … Continue reading Tenure: Thanks for fucking it up for everybody else
(Posting a bit early because of a sad bit of news. Hope it’s acceptable. – Doc.) Of all the baubles and trinkets I’ve collected over the years that adorn my office, one of my favorite ones is a baseball signed by Jack Hamilton, who died earlier today. The reason I got it was that I taught one of his grandchildren during one of my many stops in journalism education. I still remember her approaching me during our introductory reporting course to ask for special dispensation when it came to her profile. “I know you said that we can’t do this … Continue reading Good night, Jack Hamilton
Yes, even at the Jesus H. Christ School of Journalism Gods, people can be total dipshits: Ten women released an open letter on Wednesday accusing Northwestern University Professor Alec Klein of persistent sexual harassment and bullying since he has been at the helm of the school’s “crown jewel” investigative journalism program. Calling it the storied journalism school’s “#MeToo Moment,” the eight former students and two former staffers of the Medill Justice Project wrote that Klein’s “controlling, discriminatory, emotionally and verbally abusive behavior has to end.” Klein, who has been at Northwestern for a decade and in charge of the Justice … Continue reading Parsing the Medill #MeToo Debacle
Somehow, she thought this was OK. Something, somewhere in her life convinced Harley Barber that it was OK to open her mouth and pour forth a river of vile, putrid, ignorant racism. Somehow, she figured she’d get away with it. Maybe it was her “finsta” profile, a fake Instagram account that she erroneously thought would provide her with the anonymity to act with impunity. Maybe it was alcohol or the invincibility that comes with youth that told her nothing bad would happen because nobody knew her or nobody took this stuff seriously. Maybe it was a life of privilege or … Continue reading There are always people like this.
Look how they’ve exceeded their goal: I am Samierra Jones, a Senior at Coppin State University and a graduate of Baltimore City Public School system. Baltimore City Public Schools are currently operating with an inadequate heating system. Students are still required to attend classes that are freezing and expected wear their coats to assist in keeping them warm. How can you teach a child in these conditions? This fund raiser will help in purchasing space heaters and outerwear to assist in keeping these students warm. To raise $20,000 would be enough to cover the fees of Go fund Me and … Continue reading We Want To Be Good
Learn to diagram sentences properly because SLJKFL’SKJDFDL;KFSJARGLEBLARGE: The ancestral lineage of fake news is easy to trace. It winds back through the birther movement and Benghazi, as a tool for weakening political opponents. It filtered through Sarah Palin, who never said she could see Russia from her house, and Al Gore, who never said he invented the internet — myths that hardened into seeming truths due to repeated retelling. It has silly origins, as networks begged us to believe that reality TV was real. It had sinister origins, as W. begged us to believe that weapons of mass destruction existed … Continue reading Fake News Happens Because of YOU, Kids!
“Scars are souvenirs you never lose. The past is never far.” – Goo Goo Dolls, “Name” “My parents’ basement.” Those three words kept coming up this week as I met with student after student who planned to graduate Saturday. The phrase has become a metaphor that indicates success or failure, with fear driving 20-somethings desperately away from it. Am I going to find a job or will I have to live there? Will this job pay me enough or will I have to stay there? My dad keeps telling me I can’t move back in there, so I need to … Continue reading Graduation Day
A while back I asked some family members and white childhood friends who they remember as the first person of authority — a person whose opinions they were expected to respect even if they didn’t agree — who wasn’t white, in their lives. Very few remembered anyone at all. I grew up in a fairly segregated town and went to Catholic schools. All my elementary school teachers were white. In high school I had one black teacher and one Hispanic teacher. In college (state school) I had two professors of color, though there were more professors of color teaching, mostly … Continue reading Who Teaches
The plane touched down at O’Hare early Sunday morning, jolting me awake. I looked around to see other passengers in varying states of awareness. I flipped my phone off airplane mode and noticed I had no messages. I checked my email quickly. Same thing. Everything was quiet. What a difference two years makes. The last time I touched down on the first leg of a trip back from a college media convention in this metropolis, my life had gone from bad to worse. I had just traded some labor for airfare and a room so I could head to Austin, … Continue reading My Hill
It’s fashionable to describe public universities as money-sucks that educate the elite and prop up liberalism, but they also, you know, CREATE JOBS: Trump’s cuts would affect all research universities, but not equally. The problem is more pronounced at public universities than private ones, and especially at public institutions in the Midwest, which have historically conducted some of the nation’s most important research. These schools are desperately needed to diversify economies that rely disproportionately on manufacturing and agriculture and lack the wealthy private institutions that fuel the knowledge industries found in Silicon Valley or along Boston’s 128/I-95 corridor. Yet many … Continue reading They’re The Economy, Stupid
The state of Wisconsin is in the process of considering a bill that would allow for higher levels of punishment against UW folk who “disrupt” the free speech of others. On its face, the idea seems good: Everyone has a right to speak, so let’s make sure that we let all voices be heard. Naturally, that’s not the point of this, as previous writers have pointed out. Republicans who supported this bill (all but one of them voted for it; naturally all the Democrats opposed it) believe college campuses are filled with weed-smoking hippies who hate anyone conservative enough to … Continue reading How trying to make free speech free can really not do that
Dear Sen. Darling, Rep. Nygren and other members of the Joint Finance Committee, News reports have indicated that your group has included in its most recent version of the state budget some “controversial language” that would “require the University of Wisconsin System to monitor the teaching workload of every professor and adjunct instructor on campuses.” As a faculty member of one of these institutions, I can assure you that this is definitely an important measure and a valuable first step in eliminating governmental waste and employee sloth. As many of you know, having received degrees from some of these state … Continue reading An open letter to the Wisconsin JFC in support of counting professors’ hours and trimming waste
I spent the past week at our annual journalism conference, taking the chance to eat a lot of good food on my publisher’s dime and catching up with old friends. The funny thing? None of us seemed to age a bit. I caught up with what was left of my doctoral cohort. Tracy, Andrea and I were among 17 Ph.D.-hopefuls who spent a chunk of our lives in a basement office loving dubbed “The Pit.” The place was so subterranean that you had to climb on somebody’s desk to open a grass-level window. The joke always was that they put … Continue reading Only the kids have aged…
I’m asking for help from the hivemind, given the wide array of experience you have in writing for blogs, reading blogs and probably eviscerating shitty blogs. I was on the phone with my publisher the other day when she made an obvious statement that had previously had no answer other than, “No shit.” “The problem most of your reviewers had was that by the time the book comes out, the examples you list for the students are dated,” she noted. “That’s a problem with this book that we need to address…” My answer was the more professional version of “No … Continue reading It’s Blog, It’s Blog! Help me not to suck…
At this time of year, most of us educators give up all hope on humanity. Between the students who are “just starting” the final projects they had six weeks to finish and the constant stream of “So, I was looking … Continue reading Amazing Grace
I was working the newsroom this week, when my wife sent me a photo with the caption, “Who are these people?” It turned out to be a “Save the Date” card from two of my former students who found love while finishing off their degrees here. The editor in chief of the paper poked her head over my shoulder and asked what was up. “I just got a Save the Date card from Ashley and Isaac,” I explained. She had a blank stare on her face. “You were here when Isaac was the managing editor, weren’t you?” Again, a total … Continue reading Remember the 32
Every two years, Wisconsin Republicans come home and see that the UW burned the roast. Or left a mess in the kitchen… Or didn’t buy more beer… Or forgot to pick up the dry cleaning… There’s always a reason that when the budget comes along, and the UW System leaders ask for money, Republicans decide instead to smack it around and then cut higher ed in the state. Four years ago, it was the allegation that the UW had stockpiled more than $1 billion in its coffers without telling anyone. (Of course, that wasn’t true, but it was more than … Continue reading UW Budget Cuts: There’s always a reason…
The young woman sitting next to me scrunched up her face as she looked at a resume I would have killed for at her age. She had three internships, including one at a major media outlet and a second at a center for investigative journalism. She was the editor of her paper and had earned honors and awards along the way. Still, she had that look. “I just hope I get a job,” she said. “It’s rough out there…” I half smiled as I shook my head and told her, “You’re going to be fine. You have a ton of … Continue reading Seeds of Hope
One of my former students became a science reporter a few years out of school and once found himself on a trip to Chernobyl. A group of researchers were collecting stool samples from people who lived adjacent to the old Russian nuclear reactor, trying to see if they were suffering from any radioactive poisoning nearly three decades after the meltdown. He sent me a post card from the area with a final line I still love: “Journalism. It’s a shitty job but somebody has to do it.” I thought about him and that trip today when I was trying to … Continue reading Journalism: A shitty job in a nuclear winter
Oh for fuck’s sake: A Central Michigan University registered student organization apologized via social media late Wednesday night after an anti-Semitic Valentine’s Day card apparently handed out by a member of the group sparked anger among students and community members. The Valentine features a photo of Adolph Hitler on the front and the words, “My love 4 u burns like 6,000 Jews,” and is signed “XOXO, Courtney.” I’m waiting for Sean Duffy to find the “good things” that came out of this whole Holocaust deal, now that it’s clear we can always find a silver lining in whatever stupid shit … Continue reading Dear CMU Republicans, Hitler was never fucking funny.
