Lesson of ‘Lasso’: Don’t Assume You Know Their Story

One of the reasons I became a fan (in relatively recent years, it was long after it aired that I got around to watching it) of the old TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was the way that it played with and inverted tropes. The monster and the pretty blonde head down an alley—but in the end, it’s the Boss Ass Bitch Blonde who emerges and the monster who gets dusted.

The show was of uneven quality, as all, even good, long-lasting TV shows are, so it’s been a joy in recent years to see creators playing with trope-inverting or avoiding scenarios in series that are designed to be contained in a short run. Think “Derry Girls” or “The Good Place,” shows that reached a planned destination, destined to let the arc of their story burn out in a pleasant way.

No jumping the shark for these quick series. The experience of binging them is a bit akin to reading a good book—you get engaged, you grow to love somebody, and then, too soon, it all ends. Better too soon than too stale, however.

I don’t know exactly where she heard about it, but my wife, before her birthday this year, expressed a desire to experience the 2020 Apple TV show, available on DVD, “Ted Lasso.” It’s origin is a little weird because it is a series based on the premise of a humorous Super Bowl commercial, about an American football coach who heads to England to coach a soccer team.

Coaches from Los Angeles Times story, Apple image: Brendan Hunt, from left, Jason Sudeikis, Brett Goldstein and Nick Mohammed in “Ted Lasso.” https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-09-01/ted-lasso-apple-tv-cast-episodes-guide

Well, the watching of the three seasons of this short series turned into its own minor saga. We started, and loved, season one in November shortly after Audrey’s birthday—but the DVDs, that I had purchased online from Wal-Mart, proved flawed—at the end of each disk, the final episodes would deteriorate into a pixelated jumble like someone was drinking too much of Coach Beard’s girlfriend’s tea (opps, yes, on this blog post there may be some minor spoilers).

We made it mostly through season one, but decided not to proceed, instead returning the DVDs to their source and getting a refund (to Wal-Mart’s credit, that was not a difficult process). And then my wife, shortly before our anniversary, found copies locally—a different edition, but that gave us some hope. Anyway, I was trying to figure out what to get her for Christmas and suggested I would find a different source for “Ted Lasso,” when she fessed up that she had already bought me an anniversary present.

Yup. The day before our anniversary (Dec. 18 is when we got married), we jumped the gun and inserted the new DVDs, which proved less jumpy. And so, the first half of my Christmas break from university teaching this year consisted of a marathon, watching “Ted Lasso.”

From “Deadline” review, Apple TV image of Keeley Jones (Juno Temple), Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddigham) and Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) watching the final game in the final show. Use Google and check out the cast, it’s amazing. https://deadline.com/2023/05/ted-lasso-hannah-waddingham-season-3-series-finale-interview-spoilers-1235383916/

And, liked Sam and Rebecca, although in a less doomed way, I and my wife fell in love. “Ted Lasso,” TL from now on, is marvelous. It you enjoy a sometimes funny, sometimes deeply poignant TV show, full of interesting, quirky characters and emotion, TL is for you.

TL succeeds for many reasons—an excellent cast, of course. But mostly, excellent writing that inverts tropes and expands the premise of a Super Bowl ad into a fully imagined, fantastical, fictional but real feeling, story.

A short summary of just some of the trope inverting: There is the optimistic, clueless football coach who knows nothing of soccer—who turns out to be an insightful, talented, intelligent man whose cheery demeanor can’t hide his intellectual depth, and who has his own complex back story that explains some of his quirks. There is the pretty model girlfriend, who turns out to be a scrappy, smart, hard-working, creative business woman whose sunny disposition again can’t hide street smarts and drive. The statuesque “Boss Ass Bitch” who begins the series intent on destroying the soccer club as revenge against her philandering ex husband (and who is inevitably converted to an ally, partly through the unexpected power of Ted Lasso’s baking skills).

The soccer players are self-absorbed pretty boys—who each has a real life and unexpectedly complex motivations. You hate the pretty boy bully at first, and later you don’t love him, but I felt way more empathy for him after you see him grow up a bit and you meet his disappointing, disapproving dad.

Zava, the avocado-raising Italian soccer miracle, leads the Richmond Greyhounds in pre-game meditation. Apple TV image used on NPR review of Season 3. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/15/1170074939/ted-lasso-season-3-review

It’s nice to see a TV show that highlights a point I remind myself of in my professional life when dealing with college students. Don’t assume their motivations. You don’t know their stories—and everyone has a story.

And it’s not just that in TL tropes and stereotypical characters are often reversed—the show, under the veneer of its breezy, silly premise, explores depths most TV comedies don’t touch. One of the recurring themes in TL is the challenges of parenthood, particularly fatherhood, and the long-lasting damage or positive energy a dad can deliberately or accidentally impart. Another theme is how most villains (with the possible exception of the watcher from Buffy who grew old and grew very, very evil) are not full villains, and most heroes have flaws and make mistakes. Few people are as bad as or as good as they seem.

The other quality of this show is the way it delivers unexpected twists. It’s a sports saga that, particularly in the first season, doesn’t go where you expect a sports saga to go. Sometimes, your team, with all its heart and moxie, doesn’t achieve its goals.

How can you respond to life’s disappointments and heartbreaks? The show has some ideas. “Be a goldfish,” Ted Lasso says—get over your mistakes and move along. Well, even he is not entirely serious about that in all cases, because some setbacks are too big to forget and some require a good confidant—be it wise girlfriend or therapist or circle of Diamond Dogs—to process and get through.

There are a lot of potential coffee mug sayings from this show: Be curious, not judgmental. Grow up and get over it. Taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse—if you’re completely comfortable, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Good as they can be, these slogans aren’t TL’s main charm. Mostly it’s that, a bit like Buffy did, this is a show of consequences where the characters remember what happens to them and relationships change in lasting, transformative ways.

Ted learns to set his wife free, even though he does not want the divorce. Leslie Higgins (one of my favorite characters) has built a life with his wife and sons, but deeply misses and mourns his dead cat, Cindy Clawford.

In the end, I think the main message of the show is summed up by Roy Kent, the eternally grumpy player turned coach, when he asks the Diamond Dogs, “can anyone change?” Roy’s been trying, but feels like he is failing. The dogs bark various answers, and they aren’t simple nor straightforward. No, you can’t convert yourself into someone else, you can’t will yourself into perfection or an idealized version of yourself. But yet, the striving, the attempt to change, it can nonetheless help you build better relationships and a better life. Higgins said that, in better words, and you have to watch the final episode, or this excerpt, to get a better version of that advice.

In the end, we know Ted will come home to be more of a father himself. But we are cheered that Coach Beard fakes appendicitis to stay in England with his weird love who nobody else understands but who nonetheless completes him.

TL is, like all TV shows, a bit uneven. I felt the third season dragged a bit for me, and some of the story arcs in that season didn’t have all of the surprises nor emotional heft of seasons 1 and 2. But the seasons are short, and none are bad. You can binge the whole run of the show in a week, especially if there comes a cool winter Saturday, perhaps the shortest day of the year, where you and your wife can snuggle on the couch to watch the coach, snack on bad food and just spend that day seeing Ted and his friends and freinemies find their crooked path through this crooked world.

TL exceeds Buffy for lots of reasons. The characters are more adult, the run shorter and more condensed so it’s spicier, like chili left to simmer for a while. You can finish a 30-minute episode and be a bit off balance, startled at how much can happen in a short show. Maybe it’s the one where Coach Beard gets lost and finds himself in disco church. Or the one where Ted finally finds he needs a therapist. Or when a 13-year-old girl helps Boss Ass Bitch compose a business email. Whatever.

It's a show full of heart. It will leave you wanting more, and, paradoxically, grateful that there isn’t more because the show has logically played itself out and didn’t stay too long.

Like “Derry Girls,” TL is a TV show world that you may visit and binge again. Even if you’re not a goldfish, because you will always remember this.

Rose: A Greg by Another Name

Junior Taskmaster Rose Matefeo and assistant Mike Wozniak, from YouTube thumbnail.

One of my favorite moments in the British TV show “Junior Taskmaster” was, I think, in the second episode, where a child contestant refers to the sidekick of the host as “Alex.”

“Alex?” asks the Taskmaster, in this case, host Rose Matafeo. “I don’t think there is such a person. That sounds like a made-up name.”

Well, of course that’s a joke. Alex Horne is the creator of the very popular show “Taskmaster,” where Greg Davies serves as the bossy, authoritarian Taksmaster and Alex as his hapless sidekick. But in Junior Taskmaster, Greg is Rose, and Alex is Mike Wozniak.

Although we haven’t been hooked by the Australian or New Zealand knockoffs, my wife and I have become big fans of the original UK Taskmaster. The show, available in America on YouTube, features a changing cast of British showbiz types, usually comedians, engaging in humorous or odd tasks for the sake of winning up to 5 points (in most tasks, the winner gets 5, second place is 4, etc.—although sometimes a contestant is disqualified and gets zero, and Greg will arbitrarily decide now and then to allow a tie or to award a bonus point) per task.

It’s an interesting subgenre of both the TV game show, one of the medium’s oldest formats, and “reality” TV. I quote “reality” because the reality is only live coverage of events truly counts as reality TV, and shows constructed of recorded, edited content aren’t “reality” at all.

Anyway, why is Taskmaster so addictive? The fact that there are scored tasks involved creates automatic tension. The cast of comedians also provides their own wry commentary. The ongoing jokes, such as Greg always belittling Alex, can get tiresome and repetitive, but provide a sense of familiarity, too.

YouTube thumbnail of Greg Davies and Alex Horne.

Clearly, it’s a show that doesn’t take itself seriously. The prize, after all, is a ridiculous bust of Greg Davies, such as no rational human being would ever desire. That’s one feature of British TV gameshows that’s not so popular in the U.S.—think of the Great British Baking Show, for instance. The title is surely the only thing of value, as that show requires a lot of time and effort for a cake stand one assumes one could just buy at Marks and Spencer.

Anyway, how people accomplish, interpret and circumvent the tasks is the real drama of Taskmaster.

There have been a variety of personalities in the many seasons of Taskmaster, and we’ve enjoyed some seasons more than others simply due to the changing cast of contestants.

And that brings us to Junior Taskmaster. In essence, the premise is the same—a cast competes in meaningless tasks for points. However, the contestants are children, age 9 to 11 or so, and rather than 5 competing for a whole season, the cast changes from show to show, where the top two will advance to semifinals before a final.

So, the show is not as dependent on the quirks of its cast, although it seems the casting directors have done a good job a finding outgoing, expressive kids. Junior Taskmaster is a more family-friendly version of the show, absent the adult humor of Taskmaster—but the vibe is still silly, irreverent and fun.

And the Junior Taskmaster may use gentler language, but she does still dominate her assistant.

Both Rose Matefeo and Mike Wozniak were contestants, and good ones, on the original Taskmaster show, so their understanding the vibe seems natural. Rose does a good job of bantering with the child cast during the show, and Mike is a quiet, observant straight man to the shenanigans.

It's good to see the Taskmaster idea translate well into a new venue. Junior Taskmaster, so far, has been a worthy spinoff, enjoyable even for two old fans of the original series.

Our Latest Binge: ‘Only Murders in the Building’

For her birthday, one of my daughters gave my wife a subscription to the streaming service Hulu—and we have been overwhelmed, in the two seeks since that day, by an obsession.

We just can’t get enough of “Only Murders in the Building,” and have binged the first two of the four seasons of this show. There’s just so much to like in it. It reminds me a little of “The Good Place” or “Pushing Daisies”—it’s full of memorable characters saying witty things, with unusual insights into topics that aren’t often covered by TV shows.

Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez.

Granted, “Only Murders” isn’t magical realism, like those other shows, but instead is set in a real building in a real city. Still, there is a zany sense that makes this “real” show somehow unreal, somehow better than real. Maybe it’s real magicalism?

A draw of this show it its stellar cast. Selena Gomez (Mabel Mora), Steve Martin (Charles-Haden Savage) and Martin Short (Oliver Putnam) are an unlikely trio who accidently find, after there has been a murder in the building, that they are mutually obsessed with a true crime podcast. So, they decide to produce a podcast of their own, entitled “Only Murders in the Building.”

Inside Martin's brain--haunted by Looney Tunes.

The building is one of the characters in the show, full of interesting people, unexpected passages, and its own secrets. It’s a large full-block apartment building in New  York—and although the name is changed, it is a real New York apartment building. And it’s inhabited by an eclectic mix of New York characters. For several episodes, our crime-investigating trio becomes convinced that the victim was killed by Sting—yes, that Sting, who happens to live in the building.

Of course, the Police lead singer is a red herring, as are so many others.

A sting against Sting goes wrong. He didn't do it.

It’s the second mystery show that has hooked us, after the UK’s “Midsommer Murders.” This show, however, is not a police procedural, but rather a comic, thoughtful rumination on some rather deep topics. One recurring theme is the distinction between memory and reality, how our own brains will trick us into magical thinking.

Another theme is that there is always a story. None of the character are all good nor all bad—the crime boss eatery owner, for example, is suffering real pain because of strains in his relationship with his son, whom he deeply loves. One of Steve Martin’s associates is the stunt woman who stood in for him in a past popular TV cop show he starred in— but she is the stunt woman who he had to continue working with after his wife had run off with her.

New York Times image of The Belnord, the real building.

And yet, one reason why they connect now is that relationship ended badly, too, so they both had been jilted by the same woman who they both cared for.

Parental relationships and misunderstandings between parents and children is another theme. Martin is estranged from his stepdaughter, who he deeply misses. Martin Short’s character is a Broadway producer long past his prime who is depending on his son for support and hates himself for it. Selena Gomez’s mother pleads for the old men to leave her daughter alone so she can move on from previous trauma.

Theo, deaf son of a crime boss, but not who you think he is. Nobody is.

I think one of the real charms of the show is the way it so often shows “the other side.” The unpleasant head of the tenant’s association is actually a deeply lonely woman who just wants some human connection. Sting thinks he drove the murder victim to suicide (and is so relieved when he learns it’s just a murder).

And we learn, along the way, the importance of a turkey to open doors and start conversations.

As a media professor, the nature of podcasting, the way in which a need to record experience changes the experience, the jokes about theater productions, the use of text messages as a key communication tool for dialogue that fuels the plot, the impish pokes at the nature of fandom—well, this is one sweet show.

It is sweet, It’s also saucy and spicy. The mystery is almost beside the point, and yet it’s there, too, with unexpected layers being peeled back and new secrets coming to light.

We’re taking a short break between seasons 2 and 3, due to Thanksgiving and house guests. We just can’t sit, rapt, in front of the TV for several hours each evening as the most pleasant of murder shows washes over us. But don’t’ worry, Hulu, we’ll be back. We’re hooked.

The End of the Editorial as We Know It

Thanks a lot, Jeff Bezos. Democracy dies in darkness and it seems you’ve turned the lights out.

You got a quarter of a million subscribers to drop the Washington Post by deciding the Post shouldn’t run its already written editorial urging voters to choose Kamala Harris for President. And Bezos is not alone. The Los Angeles Times and the Des Moines Register are joining venerable names in newspaper journalism that have decided not to publish an endorsement editorial in this year’s presidential election.

Are billionaire and corporate newspaper publishers running scared? Or are newspapers returning to their roots? The Post can at least note that 60 years ago it has a tradition of not endorsing presidential candidates, although to cancel a planned editorial via a ruling by your billionaire owner days before an election makes the “we are returning to our roots” explanation a bit thin. However, see excerpt of a Post statement below.

No doubt our politics are becoming more sharply divided. Newspapers have been shedding readers for years, and only a few outlets, such as The New York Times, seem to be getting numbers of online subscribers to compensate for the loss of print readers.

1862 editorial

And online news outlets don’t have the editorial tradition that newspapers have. In 1862, Horace Greeley published “The Prayer of 20 Millions” in The New York Tribune, calling for freeing American slaves during the Civil War. That prompted President Abrahan Lincoln to actually write a letter to the editor in response, arguing his priority was to unite the country, and slavery was not his focus. But months later, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which didn’t actually end slavery everywhere, but nonetheless represented a historic shift in that direction.

Most newspaper editorials aren’t that consequential. But I am a fan of newspapers having an active editorial board that can inject ideas into the marketplace of ideas that are worth considering. To me, if the paper covers national news, that makes a presidential election endorsement almost obligatory. It’s one reason I feel lucky to live in Cedar Rapids, where our daily paper hasn’t yet joined the trend of staying silent on the most obvious public policy question of the day.

The argument against endorsements is that a newspaper’s role is to inform so that voters can decide.

Here is the expert of a statement posted by the Washington Post from William Lewis, publisher and chief executive officer:

“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.
“As our Editorial Board wrote in 1960:
“‘The Washington Post has not ‘endorsed’ either candidate in the presidential campaign. That is in our tradition and accords with our action in five of the last six elections.’”

Fair enough, although it’s a bit lame in the wake of what appeared to be a personal decision by one billionaire rather than a strategy based on traditional journalistic norms. On the contrary, I think expressing clear, sharp opinion informs in a way that merely reporting facts doesn’t. I think thinking an issue through and coming to a conclusion in a public way is part of encouraging civic engagement.

And it can be dicey, especially these days where the social media information system we’re all part of favors quick, over-the-top outrage because the goal is attention, and strong emotion brings more attention.

So, I understand the strategy that there isn’t much to gain by poking the bear and alienating half of your potential readership. However, I disagree with it. Again, I think “traditional” opinion writing, with its careful, rational voice is important.

Gazette, Nov. 1.

See the Gazette’s editorial endorsement of Kamela Harris. I think it’s clear and carefully written. Part of what the Gazette had to say:

“Trump has talked about using the military and Department of Justice to attack ‘the enemy within,’ including his political opponents. Trump has called Inauguration Day ‘Liberation Day’ if he wins. If he doesn’t, he likely won’t accept the outcome. The best way to avoid the shredding of the Constitution is voting for Harris and dealing Trump a loss he can’t come back from.”

It’s a good editorial—and, while readers don’t always understand this, the reporters who report the news are not the editors who opine on behalf of the paper, so this editorial doesn’t mean that the Gazette’s news coverage is skewed for Harris. (It’s skewed for Harris because objective, fair reporting in the fact-based, rational universe doesn’t favor the clearly deteriorating crazy lying old fascist, but that’s another story).

For an even stronger editorial on this topic, see the New York Times endorsement of Harris. Part of what they have to say:

“This unequivocal, dispiriting truth—Donald Trump is not fit to be president—should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election.”

Whew. Don’t be shy, NYT, tell us how you feel.

Screenshot of online version of NYT editorial.

Anyway, I would rather see more newspaper endorsements, even if some are for Donald Trump. I don’t think they move voters a lot. But they help sum up ideas, to sharpen and clarify the necessary public debate in a democratic republic. So, Bezos, you’ve turned out the lights, and you’re not alone. The trend is for dozens of newspapers that endorsed in the past to flip the switch and stay silent this year, when silence is particularly painful in one of our most consequential elections. Darkness, indeed.

And that, to me, the lack of courage to speak out on the part of newspaper editorial boards is a shame.

Does it Matter if Donald Trump is a Fascist?

Self-disclosure. Yes, all my yard signs are for Democrats. Republicans this year scare me too much.

Is Donald Trump a fascist? His own former chief of staff kind of did a decent analysis of this question, ticking off the criteria. Hyper nationalism? Check. Racial identity politics? Check. Treating political opponents as “the enemy” and threatening them with prison? Check. Calling for mass roundups into detention camps? Check. Admire Adolph Hitler and “Hitler’s generals?” Check.

Clearly, a fascist. But is that the key question?

Half of America doesn’t see it that way, and we’re only six days away from (knock on wood, it could take longer) seeing if America chooses fanatical fascism or traditional governmental competence. Will we choose the felon or the prosecutor? The jury is still out, and it makes me anxious.

But even the “f” word and f question isn’t the key issue, to me. Whether wanna-be Hitler wins next week or not, we’re at a strange place politically when he’s got a very good chance. And it does, partly, reflect a wholesale breakdown of the troubled relationship between the American public and America’s journalists—we don’t trust our own trustworthy voices in the news anymore.

Because, yes, the New York Times has a strong liberal bias. Yet it works a lot harder to report facts and correct its reporting mistakes than the entire weird alt universe of right-wing disinformation systems that have grown and spread and become many people’s main sources of social media lies wearing fact Halloween costumes.

Oct. 9--Visited Czech and Slovak Museum. One theme there is long-standing thirst for freedom and democracy.

The key question to me is: Is America in 2024 too much like Germany in 1924?

Germany: Had recently lost a cataclysmic war that most people thought it had won until, suddenly and shockingly, it hadn’t. Germans had thus grown cynical and untrusting of a nascent free media and the lies government told them. After all, while Germany was the cradle of the press, it was not the cradle of the free press.

America: We recently experienced a collective trauma, a pandemic (which, by the way, was badly mismanaged by none other than President Donald Trump, although much of the story of that time is being badly rewritten now). We also face challenges abroad, reacting to a bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan and seeing conflict spread in the Middle East and Ukraine. But despite our challenges today, we’re not a defeated power like Germany was in the last century—we just seem to weirdly feel like one.

Germany: A century ago, a young country, around 50 years old, that had, for most of that history, weak democratic institutions, and monarchial rule. By the 1920s, a republic had been established—but it was also seen as the government that betrayed the Fatherland by signing the Treaty of Versailles.

America: The world’s oldest functioning federal democracy, with a strong history of constitutional, lawful government. That history is not perfect, and there are all kinds of issues facing our democracy, including that it seems to be for sale for the likes of shady billionaires like Elon Musk, but for all our faults we can’t validly give our own institutions the kind of side eye Germans cast on the Weimer Republic. And yet, we do. It’s sane and very American for us to be skeptical of our government, but deeply and foolishly cynical to dismiss it altogether.

Germany: In the 1920s and 1930s, riots and political violence became an increasing part of the politics of the day.

America: Yeah, sort of. In 2021, a violent mob (prompted by none other than President Trump) stormed our Capitol and tried to stop the count of the 2020 election results. Granted, riots and violence aren’t exclusively the purview Trump or of the right, but despite a history of sometimes violent civil unrest in these United States, we don’t have a history like that of Germany a hundred years ago. Yet, this one is more of a tossup—our rhetoric has become rougher and more violent, and workers in our democracy such as election volunteers face unprecedented risk from delusional vote second-guessers who threaten and intimidate. So, maybe this is a criterion in which the parallels are a bit valid.

In summary: We aren’t Germany of the 1920s or 1930s. But half of our electorate is ready to give an incompetent strong-man who failed miserably at the job the first time a second chance to remake America in his own sick, twisted image. And Trump himself is quite clear that he’s running as a revenge candidate—he has no positive plans for a better future; he wants retribution for often imagined slights of the past.

And that’s what gets me. That the election is still so close and that we are flirting with decisions as wrongheaded as Germans did in the past. I hope that Trump loses in six days, but it’s even money right now.

In October, my wife and I visited the Czech and Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids. Many of the displays recount the struggle for freedom the Czech people endured, from the Soviet crackdown in 1968 to student resistance in the 1980s to the eventual Velvet Revolution that brought democracy to that land.

Student hand-drawn protest poster of the 1980s at Czech and Slovak Museum.

Not sure why mutant Smurf is a symbol of freedom, but another student protest poster.

Not sure why the Czech fashions represent freedom, but to me, they do.

Never fear books. Even a book robot just looks friendly.

Czech out the art protesting lack of freedom in the Communist era.

We Americans constantly talk about the heroes of our past who fought for our democracy. Yet too many Americans today seem to dismiss Trump’s own words as bluster and exaggeration and resent his being classified as a fascist when he loudly and openly threatens attacks on all of the guardrails that keep our democracy functioning.

I’m ashamed of Republicans who won’t call out this anti-democratic strain in their party and its stain on our democratic ideals. Best case: Harris wins by a whisker.

And that’s a true shame. Really, America? I do hope Trump loses—but even if he does, the disfunction in our politics doesn’t go away. Our obsession with competing media universes remains. Trump and Trumpism is a symptom of something dark and enduring. We are badly in need of lots of clear-headed and effective political reforms, even given the best case, and we badly need to rebuild a more respected news media system.

Decades ago, the Czech people took to the streets in a desperate, dangerous call for freedom. We need a similar rebirth of the spirit of freedom here. To me, the election next week is not the end of the story nor the end of the danger.

I don’t have the cure, sadly. But I can see the disease.

Students Say ‘Sure’ and Get the News Reported

 

Home page of MMU Times, thanks to some new students getting involved.

Advising an online student news site has been a journey. The Mount Mercy Times at Mount Mercy University, where I teach, gave up a print newspaper last year.

I’m sure it was the right move. We were throwing away too many printed copies, and finding a newspaper in Iowa with a press to handle our small press run was becoming too difficult—too much cost, too much waste, too much hassle. Thus, now we’re the online Mount Mercy Times.

The biggest disadvantage of that is, even if the printed papers were mostly tossed, they were a visible reminder to the campus that the Times exists, and the need to fill a print edition pushed the students to organize, collaborate and get things done. Sadly, with no print deadline to push us, the Times produced far less journalism last year compared to years before.

It did not disappear, but it hasn’t yet found its legs as an online news source.

Still, today was a hopeful day. Mount Mercy was set to announce a new football program today, a big deal—but one of my few staff students (we’re still building the staff for this year), the sports editor, had class at the same time as the announcement was being made.

However, in a general education communication class I teach, there is a student who had expressed some interest in writing for the MMU Times this semester. The Oral Communication class ended at 11:20 a.m.—would this student be willing to rush over to the Plaster Athletic Complex, take a camera with him, and cover his first story?

He thought about it for a second. He has a science test this afternoon. But, heck, he had a few minutes. “Sure,” he said.

So, Jonas shot a picture of me to get used to the camera, and then took off. But a few minutes after class, he and Lillian, another student from the class, saw me walking across the Rohde Family Plaza, heading for the library. “Professor Sheller!” Lillian yelled. “Where is the ceremony?”

At the Plaster Athletic Complex. A quarter mile from where we stood. In 10 minutes. Jonas looked a little doubtful. “Can you give him a ride?” I asked Lillian. I would have offered, but I ride a bike to work and Jonas would not fit on my bike's front handlebars (besides, I had to meet a student in the library and could not go to the ceremony myself anyway).

She thought for a second. “Sure,” she said.

Sometimes, “sure” is the best thing you can have a student say.

Jonas, chauffeured by Lillian, covered his first news story—a major one, as it turned out, that ended up on the top of the Times home page.

Jonas Gutierrez, MMU students, writes his first story for the MMU Times, I hope he writes many more.

Not all my problems with the story were over, however. As anybody in the news business can tell you, shooting images and writing a story is only the start. Who would edit the story?

As it happened, Keira was in the Times office to take a mid-term exam in a PR writing class. Would she be willing to have me, both her professor and the Times faculty advisor, have her take a brief break to read and copy edit a story Jonas had just finished typing?

“Sure,” she said. Well, I don’t recall if she used that exact word, but it seemed to be the word of the day, and in any case, she agreed and did it so she said “sure” in spirit.

Keira Carper in the MMU Times office, where today she edited her first Times story. In the middle of a mid-term exam.

The ceremony started at 11:30 a.m. I put together a shell of a story based on a statement posted by MMU, so Jonas could have a head start entering his information. When he came to the Times newsroom in the library at about 12:15 p.m., he said “here is the camera, now I have to go take my exam.”

Great—but any chance you could add your quotes and finish the story before your exam? He didn’t exactly say “sure,” but I’m sure he meant it, because, again, he paused for a second, thought about it, and then agreed to do it. The story was drafted by 1. By 1:30, Keira had edited the story. By 2 or so, it was posted to the MMU Times web site.

Cheerleaders at ceremony. One of the images made for MMU Times by Jonas Gutierrez.

Well, reporting news on the same day is one advantage of being an online news source, over being a paper printed twice a month. Nevertheless, it was a roller-coaster of a day for me—would we have a story? Would we have images? Early this morning, it seemed like the stars would not align, but here we were in the afternoon with a news web site updated.

There’s more to come. Another student shot more images at the ceremony, and I’m sure we’ll update the Times web site with a longer photo gallery from this big day as soon as I get my hands on the Times camera that she used. And our sports editor will be collecting campus reaction for a second-day reaction story on the news.

Still, score one for student news media at MMU. They pushed themselves, and scored a sports news touchdown today. And may many more students say “sure” and keep student news alive at Mount Mercy University.

Worst Night for Ohio Dogs Since John Denver

What I see watching the Sept. 10, 2024 presidential debate.

The last time Ohio dogs got so much press was decades ago when singer John Denver rather rudely warbled about how bad his experience in Toledo, Ohio, was, ending his scathing tune with: “And here's to the dogs of Toledo, Ohio/Ladies, we bid you goodbye!”

Ouch. Mean and unfair on many levels. An odd, maybe even weird, insult, given that any town of any size, including Toledo, has a diverse range of women, none of whom deserve to be classified as canines by any shallow man.

And yet, the strange media universe was not yet done with weird men making peculiar mentions of Buckeye bowwows.

I watched the presidential debate Tuesday night. Yikes! What a difference contrasted to the first one. Then, the focus was on how confused and old Joe Biden seemed. To be honest, lost in the reaction to Biden’s poor performance was the fact that Donald Trump spent much of even that night spouting weird nonsense.

Well, how times have changed. In the wake of the first debate, President Biden decided to drop out of the presidential race, and the Democratic Party named Vice President Kamala Harris as its nominee.

And at debate two, delusional Don was back in full force with no slightly older man to hide behind and shield the crazy. Apparently, every country in the world is emptying its mental hospitals and prisons and dumping its criminal or confused people on Uncle Sam. As a result, crime worldwide is down, but dogs in Ohio are worried.

Sound plausible? Really?

ABC fact checked the dog claim—so, so surprising that this story seems to have little basis in the reality most of us inhabit on planet Earth, and yet some weird people, like GOP VP nominee JD (Just Doing the weird) Vance keep repeating the weird anecdote.

Post immigrant barbecue photo from Springfield, Ohio. Or skeleton image of Saint Bernard from a Brazilian vet college's collection, taken from Wikimedia Commons. Do your own research.

As Harris said during the debate, some of Trump’s remarks make a rational person question his ability to understand what is a fact and what isn’t.

Another example of the wacky, weird world of doddering Don: When Harris said foreign leaders don’t like him, Trump’s retort was that Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán thinks he is great. Now, I know that Viktor’s vigorous opposition to both immigration and the LGBTQ+ community have made him a bit of darling on the worst fringes of the right wing—but Orbán is an anti-democratic ruler, an authoritarian. Holding him up as your evidence that “world leaders” like you is, yup, weird.

June 2024, Giorgia Meloni, prime minister of Italy, speaks with Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary. Is V the prominent world leader that would prove you have global popularity? Image from Wikimedia Commons by the European Union.

My wife doesn’t drink, but we had some large chocolate bars, and she decided we would play a non-alcoholic version of a drinking game during the debate. Instead of a shot, we would each break off and eat a small piece of chocolate every time we clearly heard Donald Trump say something inconsistent with reality. In others, one lie equals one munch.

I don’t think the chocolate lasted 20 minutes.

It’s an odd measure of our dysfunctional current politics and the disinformation age we live in, but it’s not likely Trump will lose much of his support despite his being the confused old man in the race. More than confused, Tuesday he was petulant, racist (his anti-immigrant extreme rants are racist dog whistles), even delusional.

Still, Trump’s support is rock solid. But the candidate, despite claiming he and JD are “solid” rather than “weird,” was clearly a bit shaky and unhinged Tuesday. He was unprepared to debate. He also seemed, to those who aren’t caught in his rather shockingly large, weird bubble of popularity, unprepared  and unqualified to be President.

Harris wasn’t perfect in her performance. Like many candidates in many debates, she preferred to deliver canned stump soundbites rather than actually answering the questions that were asked, a habit she started right off the bat with her first non-answer to the first question. Since starting her run, she has been correctly criticized for avoiding reporters and their nagging questions.

Still, she didn’t need to be perfect Tuesday night. The race is still close and Trump still has a clear path to victory, God helps us—but the night was a much better one for sane Kamala than crazy Donald.

Following the debate, Taylor Swift noted on Instagram that she is endorsing Kamala. Swift has endorsed Democrats in the past, and her public pronouncement wasn’t a surprise—but it was partly prompted by Trump, who had posted fake AI-generated Swift endorsements of Trump.

Most famous Instagram post in the immediate post-debate time period. A swift Swift reaction to the crazy.

Passing on those lies, and Trump's poor performance in the debate, seems to have been too much for Miss Swift.

As for me: I’m not single. I’m not childless. I’m not a lady. I have no cats. Even though I think of myself as a bit of a Swiftie in that I enjoy her songs, any political statement from any pop singer, even an intelligent, accomplished woman like Taylor Swift, isn’t going to move my political needle much.

And I concede the reality that I was already firmly in the “never Trump” camp well before Tuesday night anyway.

Still, what the heck. Viktor O’s endorsement? Fake stories of Springfield, Ohio’s endangered animals? Calling Kamala a “Marxist?” Trump is the worst. And the weirdest. The debate Tuesday just made that reality obvious.

A Pair of Cool Summer Films on Life Stages

Magnolia Pictures publicity image for Thelma, June Squibb as titular character, Fred Hechinger as her grandson Danny.

Disney publicity image of Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, from "Inside Out 2."

I don’t go to the movie theater all that often, but twice in recent weeks my wife and I decided to catch a flick at the local cinema. As chance would have it, both movies we saw were, to some extent, ruminations on maturity, on the nature of aging and stages of life. To me, one was good although not great; the other was unexpectedly excellent.

When “Thelma” comes out on DVD, for us dinosaurs who don’t consume all our media from streaming services, you can bet I’ll snatch up a copy. Thelma is the gem.

When “Inside Out 2” hits the bargain bin, I’ll be willing to pick it up, too. It’s re-watchable, a good movie, but the disappointment is that it’s a sequel to a much better film.

“Inside Out 2” continues the adventures of Riley, a girl who has moved from Minnesota to California, where her father is part of a tech startup in San Francisco. The premise of the first movie was to personify key emotions and visually represent the interior working of the brain as Riley struggles with the stress of the move. That first movie was poignant, clever and thought-provoking.

Who thought we could choke up over the fate of an imaginary character who is part cat, part elephant, part dolphin and mostly cotton candy? Bing Bong, Riley may have left you behind, but we won’t ever forget you.

Anyway, that was the first movie. Part of its theme was that sadness is as important as joy, and maturing means learning to acknowledge and live with all of your emotions. At the end of the film, an expanded control panel is installed in brain HQ, with a big warning light labeled “Puberty.”

Which, almost inevitably, sets up “Inside Out 2.” And, of course, the siren sounds, the light flashes and suddenly, puberty hits, signaling a total remodel of HQ, among other things—including new emotions. Anxiety, Ennui and Embarrassment join the club.

The sequel is still clever, and has many good themes and moments. I like the idea of your self-concept being healthier if it is more inclusive of your actual experience and self, and not just what you desire to be rather than what you are. But the new emotions didn’t make as much sense to me. In the first movie, we saw inside HQ of the adult characters, who had the same core set of emotions as the 11-year-old Riley. And while I thought she was amusing to watch, is Ennui an emotion? And isn’t Embarrassment really an Elaboration of Fear?

I also wasn’t in love with all of the new side characters, the popular girls Riley aspired to be with or the current friends she was willing to leave behind. Funny that an imaginary friend from movie one seemed more emotionally “real” than any real friend from movie two. The concept makes sense—puberty is certainly a time of intense anxiety about one’s place in the peer social order, it’s just that the characters and dialogue didn’t resonate all that well with me.

Still, it was a good, watchable film, one I would be willing to see again, but probably wouldn’t do lots of repeated watches as I have with the original "Inside Out."

And then there is “Thelma.” How to describe “Thelma?” Think action move where our hero is a realistic character in her 90s. She has a death-defying trip across a maze—the interior of a cluttered shop—that is as dramatic as any break-into-the vault scene in a thriller, but reflects the limits of mobility of a body as it ages. Thelma has a grandson who looks after her and loves her, but in some many ways, it turns out Thelma is the adventurous, capable one, unfazed by and able to overcome her limits in a way that her grandson isn’t.

I think that’s part of the theme of this movie—so much of what holds us back is ourselves and how we picture ourselves. It’s not only what we can do, but what we allow ourselves to do.

And yet, “Thelma” acknowledges realities of ageing. As her main sidekick, an old man from a nursing home, says, “we are diminished.” A person in their 90s can be emotionally and mentally very sharp, but not quite as quick nor as physically strong as a younger person can be. In one sad scene, Thelma and her sidekick visit an old friend (to “borrow” a gun), and the old friend is obviously well beyond the point where she should be living alone at home. It happens at different rates and different times for different people, but age will eventually diminish any who survive to their golden years.

In a way, both movies are about self-knowledge, about the importance of recognizing who you really are, and what the realities are about your point in the road of life. And both have June Squibb—as a minor character (Nostalgia) in "Inside Out 2," and the main star of "Thelma." In my mind, “Thelma” is a 4.9 and “Inside Out 2” is a 3.9; they’re both worth seeing and thinking about.

And I suppose that’s the best thing one can say about any work of dramatic art—play, novel, TV show or movie. It if makes you more aware of yourself and seems to explore some fundamental realities of this human life, well, that’s a win. Maybe it’s a binge-worthy thing—watch “Inside Out 2” and then “Thelma.” That would seem to be a few hours well spent.