Bites from Edwin: February 2012

Saturday, February 25, 2012

In Praise of Allegheny College, Clinton High, Oak Ridge High

Sat. Feb. 25, 2012:

Ever noticed how, after days & days of Television as the wasteland that Marshall McLuhan had predicted,
suddenly comes a windfall of worthwhiles?

Well, it finally happened last night, within the space of about 120 minutes:
1. At about 7:35 pm E.S.T., David Brooks & Mark Shields got congratulations from PBS News Hour's Judy Woodruff for being awarded Allegheny College's "civility in public discourse" award.
For a fleeting moment, this viewer felt restored faith, that other folks -- like Allegheny College -- are out there wishing that the Bill O'Reillys, Sean Hannitys, Rush Limbaughs, Keith Olbermans, and Rupert Murdochs, would dry up & blow away.
Even better, when Judy Woodruff announced the award & looked at Brooks & Shields,
Mark Shields replied: Allegheny College's honor is gratefully received, but the credit should go to the Gold Standard of civility in public discourse, the News Hour's founding fathers Robert MacNeil & Jim Lehrer and the expectations one feels when one walks in the newsroom of PBS.
It tells you all you need to know, when trying to assess anyone who labels such broadcast journalists
"lamestream media" and "liberal elite media."
Nobody needs to be "elite" or "liberal" to appreciate last night's Allegheny College moment.

2. A little after 9:15 pm, surf to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. She is interviewing guest Karen Tumulty, another admired PBS reporter.   Maddow tries to goad Tumulty into ridiculing another set of apparent gaffes by the Romney campaign:
First, staging Mitt's "major economic speech" in Detroit's cavernous 65,000-capacity Ford Field, which naturally miniaturized (and swallowed whole!) Romney's respectable audience of 1,200 listeners. [For those of us old enough to remember Watergate revelations of 1973, the "dirty tricks" of guys like Dick Tuck and Donald Segretti come to mind -- such as, arranging for your political enemy's major campaign event to be held in a venue way too big for your audience.]
Second, Mitt's reassuring Michigan voters that his wife drives 2 GM Cadillacs of their 4 cars in 2 of their several residences -- so don't worry about those Massachusetts rumors that Governor Romney kept his foreign-bought BMW out of sight back then.
Don't get me wrong. As lefty as Maddow usually is, she frequently says so, and admits errors occasionally.
But this time, even Republicans have to be asking Maddow's question: "Is candidate Mitt Romney bad at his job?" And, to Karen Tumulty's credit, she quietly kept her PBS clothes on, and refused to ridicule Romney during her guest gig on partisan MSNBC.  Candidates make missteps, she agreed. But she would not pile on.

3. Finally, c. 9:31 pm, "World Network" aired an inspirational, obscure story, "the Clinton 12," about the 1956 self-integration of schools in Clinton, Tennessee. Black & white folks of tiny Clinton did it themselves, with virtually no help from the Feds or from state protection. "The Clinton 12," USA's first black students braving 1954 Brown v. Board implementation anywhere, were of course courageous beyond anything that any people of any race can fathom today in 2012 -- especially in the face of determined resistence led by the local White Citizens Council who burned Clinton High School to the ground. But black students got help from unexpected sources.  One of several white sympathizers was a local white Christian minister -- cheered on by none other by Billy Graham -- who did do what Jesus would do. The white Clinton minister got severely beaten for protecting as many of "the Clinton 12" as he could.
And Clinton High's bitter sports rival Oak Ridge High, welcomed Clinton's school-less students, arriving by bus, to Oak Ridge facilities. Before a huge crowd of Oak Ridge parents & students, its marching band played Clinton's alma mater, right after the Clinton kids got off their buses. [Youtube may have the aerial photograph.]

Walt Kelly's "Pogo" comic strip was right: "We have met the enemy, and they are Us."
The good news is, amidst our Fear & Ignorance, there is also the Better Angels of our Us -- even on TV.
Long Live Allegheny College, the Clinton 12-plus, and Oak Ridge High!

Friday, February 24, 2012

Valdosta, Georgia: "A Region of Opportunity"

Fri. Feb. 24, 2012:

Gentle Readers,
After the long absence during an ongoing roadtrip until March 31, this blog comes up for air, at a Residence Inn near Gainesville, Florida.
But let the record show: Yesterday, we were in Valdosta, Georgia, which its water tower's logo claimed is "A Region of Opportunity" and a "Community without Limits."

Time for a new appeal to optimism -- for Valdosta, for the USA, and for the planet:

1. Invent a "pacify chip" -- and a "schooling chip" -- to implant in every human being on the planet. Then maybe "Christian" extremists like Billy Graham's son Franklin Graham, of all people, won't accidentally discredit Jesus on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," as he did recently. There, sadly, he instinctively jumped into the same "man of faith" pit that chipless inhuman yet all-too-chipless human fundamentalist-Islamist extremists occupy. Witness the Taliban's latest dupes in Afghanistan, rampaging in fury about the burning of Korans by clueless U.S. military personnel. Here we have mindless religious zeal on both sides, plus a total lack of meaningful schooling -- among too many so-called "Christian" ministers, U.S. soldiers lacking any real world awareness from their highschool classrooms, and Taliban leaders urging poor jobless uneducated young men to kill every Western Occupier in Afghanistan that they can find. Franklin Graham is right to say that Western Leaders should demand that innocent Christians be protected from Islamic harrassment & death in places like Egypt -- contrary, by the way, to the Koran's own teachings. But "Christians" like Franklin Graham seem to ignore the countless times over the ages when "Christians" slaughtered Islamic victims just for being Islamic. Wound Jesus condone such hatred?
Only thing left is a pacifying chip.

2. As for the "schooling chip": Try sitting in on classes in nearly any high school or community college of the USA in 2012. Nearly every student has admirable courage, and at least a spark of hope for the future, or they would be absent or dropped out from high school, and not have bothered to enroll in community college.  But courage aside, most of these students have so little awareness of academic culture, and so little confidence in their brain's ability or need to study, that as a soldier in the middle east, How Will You Recognize the Koran When You Stumble Upon It?
Google Edward Banfield's The Unheavenly City Revisited [c. 1970].  He was no liberal -- President Nixon appointed him as an advisor, and Banfield scorned reformers as mostly "limousine liberals."
But over 40 years ago, Banfield recognized that for any student to advance, he/she required a "future-oriented" time horizon. For the overwhelming students you visit at a U.S. high school or community college,
these students have never had a chance to hope or plan -- and therefore care & save & work -- for the future. Dysfunctional family & middle school, have not been able to future-orient them; pre-school & elementary school may have a slightly better chance, but whatever gains happen there seem to get tsunamied in present-oriented resignation thereafter. Charter schools, Magnet schools, No Child Left Behind, brave schooling experiments of thoughtful visionaries like the late Ted Sizer [google!] -- so far, drops in a huge bucket.
Research & develop that schooling chip, and fast.

3. Meanwhile, USA's or international political systems seem totally incapable of solving global "faith-based"
violence, or global ignorance & present-orientation [climate change a "ruse" impairing "energy now," anyone?].  Can we really expect a President Romney, or a re-elected President Obama, plus a metasticized financially beholden new Congress, plus a delusionally activist ideological majority in the Supreme Court, to deliver meaningful change after November 2012? Will the United Nations suddenly hold sway to create peace and harmony, while Steve Martin's "children of the world hold hands"?
Valdosta, Georgia = "A Region of Opportunity?" "A Community without Limits?"
Valdosta, Georgia, the USA, and the Whole Wide World -- not to mention Henny Youngman -- all plead:
"Implant my chips! Please!"