From Wikimedia Commons, an image of Barbara Walters at the Metropolitan Opera in 2008, posted on flickr by Rubenstein, link to image.
“Every female broadcast journalist working today owes a debt of gratitude to the O.G., Barbara Walters, who died Friday at age 93.” Katie Couric, writing in The New York Times.
There was Walter Cronkite. There were Chet Huntly and David Brinkley. And there was a woman, a fiercely talented, competitive person named Barbara Walters. No, I don’t mean she was a TV giant of the stature of a Cronkite, but she was an important TV personality who brought needed change to a male-dominated medium.
I first became aware of her in the late 1960s as my family sometimes had the Today show tuned in on our 19-inch black-and-white TV.
I don’t recall her much from that time, but I was young. I became more aware of her as the first female network co-anchor starting in 1976 on ABC, a gig that honestly didn’t go all the well. But as she had done many times in her long career, Barbara Walters had the courage to try something new, and after she was an anchor, she reigned as the queen of celebrity and news maker interviews, first at 20/20 on ABC, and then in a series of prime-time specials.
An image of Barbara Walters speaking with President Barack Obama on Jan. 20, 2013. Image posted on flickr by Ester Vargas, link.
At an age when many people have returned, Walters in her late 60s helped create The View, a daily talk show, in 1997.
The news today, of course, is that Barbara is no longer with us. She has died at age 93. An important female figure of the Big 3 TV era is gone. Her passing is a reminder of that bygone era, and her long career a testament to her tenacity and talent.
Dec. 21, 2022--President Volodymyr of Ukraine meets President Biden of the United States in White House. Image from the web site of Ukraine's president.
Did you catch the address to Congress by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on the darkest day of the year? Dec. 21, 2022, long after darkness fell for our longest night, wearing his trademark green shirt with the presidential symbol on it, Zelenskyy spoke movingly of the struggle his country faces.
I thought it was a speech for the ages, one that will be quoted and studied. Zelensky put the war his country is waging to defend against a Russian invasion in the context of the larger global struggle for democracy—imploring American to remember that aid to Ukraine is not charity, but an important investment in that ongoing struggle that we are a vital part of. (C-SPAN video of speech below, skip ahead to 19:00 when Zelensky enters and then starts speaking.)
And he powerfully evoked some American cultural milestones—the U.S. Army battling the last German offensive of World War II in the Battle of the Bulge; and the battle that helped turned the tide of the American Revolution, Saratoga.
It’s fitting, somehow, that Zelensky referenced the Battle of the Bugle because that battle was raging at this time of year. On Dec. 16, the Wehrmacht used the cover of poor winter weather (to avoid Allied air superiority) to launch an attack through the Ardennes.
The German offensive failed. Just as Russian forces failed to take Kiev last year, the Germans stalled in their drive to split Allied forces by marching to Antwerp.
In that case, the German offensive was a long shot, almost certainly doomed as Germany was running out of resources, particularly fuel. In the case of Ukraine, they are fighting a defensive war against a Russian army with vastly greater resources. Still, the Battle of the Bulge echoes in the American mind, and Zelensky was reminding us of some parallels.
In some ways, I think, the analogy to Saratoga was more apt. In fall of 1777, British forces launched a three-pronged offensive to divide the Americans by splitting New York. Gen. John Burgoyne brought one of those prongs south from Canada, capturing Fort Ticonderoga and sweeping south towards American forces dug in near Saratoga.
The British attacked twice, but the Americans defenders held them off. Faced with losses and being cut off from reinforcement, British General John Burgoyne surrendered to American General Horatio Gates on Oct. 17, 1777. Partly as a result of the battle (technically, I suppose, the battles) of Saratoga, France decided it was worthwhile to support the American cause as the Yanks had demonstrated they maybe could win. And the tide of war was turned.
19th Century painting by artist John Trumbull of General John Burgoyne surrendering to General Horatio Gates on Oct. 17, 1777. Painting in collection of Yale University, image from Wikimedia Commons.
Of course, the Russian army didn’t surrender to Ukraine when their invasion forces stalled on the road to Kiev this spring, but still, just as American defenders at Saratoga produced a turning point, Ukraine’s valiant defense of Kiev and offensive to push back in the east give hope to its cause.
As President Zelensky noted, the first Russian defeat was its loss in the psychological war. Most of the world, and most of the body politic in the United Sates, recognizes Russia as the aggressor here. Zelensky reminded us that his country needs continued support as the battle against Russian aggression continues.
It is, as he stated, a key moment in a global fight for democracy. And, Zelensky predicted, a fight that Ukraine will win. That seemed faint hope when Russian tanks trundled across the border this spring—many of us, I’m sure, expected Russia to crush Ukraine. It seems, like the Revolution post Saratoga, that Ukraine’s ultimate victory now is at least a possibility, should its allies show backbone and stay the course and support Ukraine's cause.
Ironically, Zelensky is a TV entertainer turned politician who has proven, in his country’s darkest hour, to be an effective leader. He’s an FDR or Winston Churchill, a great communicator who showed his ability before Congress to sound the right notes, to clarify the issues at state, to rally support.
Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, in March 2022. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
How different from a recent U.S. President who was a TV entertainer turned politician. Indeed, President Trump was impeached for the first time for a corrupt phone call in which he tried to hold aid to Ukraine hostage for political favors. Trump is the anti-Zelensky, a divider, not a uniter, a man who this week was exposed yet again for attempting to undermine American democracy.
I felt it was very weird when the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection recommended that the former President face criminal charges, and the reaction from Iowa’s Republicans was a yawn. We’ve moved on. We don’t care about Jan. 6 anymore. We’re working on the issues Iowans care about now.
How American. How forgetful we are as a people. It’s less than two years since an American president attempted a violent coup in Washington DC, and too many want to close that chapter and forget about it.
Well, if we don’t forget the Battle of the Bulge or Saratoga, it is way too early to turn the page from Jan. 6. After all, the chief villain in that sad narrative, Donald Jerk Trump, is a leading candidate for President in 2024—the leader of an attempt to subvert our very democratic system is in the running for his party’s nomination for president, and the craven, cowardly “leaders” of his party are too scared of him to note that he’s proven himself unqualified to support and defend our Constitution. I’m one Iowan who hasn’t yet moved on and is disgusted with the gutless Iowa Republicans who claim we should. I’ll move on when the GOP renounces Trumpism and Trump, as long ago they should have.
And this week we have the opposite end of the scoundrel spectrum. A true icon of democracy, President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling on us to remember who we are—we are the victors at Saratoga and The Bugle, a people who have fought for two centuries for the cause of self-government and democracy.
Today, that fight is happening in Ukraine. But also in the hearts of Americans. The dark cancer of Trumpism is still with us. The fight for democracy isn’t just happening in eastern Europe.
Jan. 19, 2002, Sen. Amy Klobuchar speaks in Marion, Iowa. I listened to her and backed her in the Democratic caucuses that year.
Jan. 20, 2016--Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. I was there, although I don't think I caucused for him.
The Republicans will still do it. The Democrats say they are shaking things up.
The Iowa Caucuses have been the lead-off political event of the presidential contest season for as long as I’ve been a voter. When I was 17 in 1976, I was a Gerald Ford guy, was elected at a precinct meeting to attend the county convention and was a delegate to the next level—my memory is a bit fuzzy, I think it was a district convention, but the state meeting may have been the next step up.
I didn’t try to go to the national convention, although I recall toying with the idea (which suggests the counties sent their delegates to the state level). I didn’t have the means.
And 1976 was it, for me and the Republican Party. I was a Ford man to stand in the way of the Reagan upsurge, and when Reagan took the nomination in 1980, I became part of the immoral minority that voted against him.
In the 1980s and 1990s, I wasn’t involved. After I graduated from college in 1982, I was a newspaper journalist in Missouri. I returned to Iowa in 1991, but was preoccupied with family and don’t recall attempting to caucus in the 1990s.
I was back by 2008. I got caught up in the Obama bandwagon.
Lead singer from Vampire Weekend warms up Bernie Sanders crowd, Jan. 30, 2016.
In 2016, I was torn. I was interested in feeling the burn for Bernie Sanders, but don’t recall if, in the end, I went that route.
My 2020 choice was Amy Klobuchar. I still, in my heart, would feel better if she were President.
Jan. 19, 2020--Face in crowd at Amy Klobuchar rally.
Anyway, I drove downtown in Cedar Rapids with my youngest daughter to attend an Obama rally in 2007. I saw Amy Klobuchar speak in Marion Iowa in 2020. In 2016, Vampire Weekend sang at a Bernie Sanders rally in Iowa City before Bernie Sanders spoke, and I was there. Sadly, the Oxford Comma wasn’t.
The Iowa Caucuses were a bit of a political anomaly. In 1972, Sen. George McGovern fared well in caucuses whose date had been set early as the party grappled with complicated new rules enacted after the fiasco of 1968. That gave him a boost, and caused Iowa politicians to take note. The two political parties colluded (imagine that) to set the 1976 caucuses early, and a Georgia nuclear engineer, governor and peanut farmer—Jimmy Carter—organized early and did well, propelling him to the White House and the Iowa Caucuses onto center stage.
There has been a lot written about the value of the retail politics that the caucuses provided, and how important it was to have early voters actually meet candidates. But, in recent cycles, Democrats, in particular, became increasingly disenchanted with that process.
Iowa is not very racially diverse. It’s more rural, white and older than the nation as a whole. And Democrats are all about diversity.
Well, this week, the news from the national party is not good. A recommendation to make South Carolina the first state to select a Democratic candidate in 2024 has been approved by the panel planning such things. The 2020 Iowa caucuses, with their software glitches and delayed count, were a bit of disaster that shifted momentum perhaps forever away from Iowa’s first status in presidential contests.
Someone listens to Amy Klobuchar, Jan. 19, 2020. Klobuchar speaking (below), same date.
Still, Republicans, undeterred by the whiteness and age of Iowans, are going ahead with their early contest in this increasingly cherry red state.
I will miss the caucus hoopla. I’ll miss the chance to drive to a local bar and listen in person to a potential future president. And I’m afraid the national party decision, while it makes sense, is another blow to the Iowa Democratic Party at a time when the party is already down.
For 50 years, from 1972 to 2022, the caucuses have been important. Perhaps their time is gone. If the Democrats won’t caucus here first in 2024, how long will the Republicans? Even if they continue, a one-party contest isn’t the same.
Besides Democrats, another loser may be Iowa media companies. In 2015, a big owner of local TV stations, Gray TV, purchased channel 9 in Cedar Rapids for $100 million. The company then raked in lots of revenue from the 2016 and then the 2020 presidential contests. The flood of campaign money into Iowa TV stations may be abating.
Crowd ready to listen to Dr. Travis Lacy speak. I helped carry in extra chairs, and yes, I wore my mask. Most popular event of this year's MMU Fall Faculty Series.
Dr. Travis Lacy, assistant professor of religious studies, speaks.
"So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far We may choose something like a star To stay our minds and be staid."
Quote from "Choose Something Like a Star" by Robert Frost, quoted by in a presentation by Dr. Travis Lacy.
I live in the modern world, too, even if I learned to keyboard on a manual typewriter and didn’t own my first computer until the 1980s were almost the 1990s. So, like many who live now on the planet, I exist in a zone that includes both the actual reality around me and the virtual reality that beckons like a siren.
Does social media make me sadder? Probably. Am I addicted to what Dr. Travis Lacy, assistant professor of religious studies at Mount Mercy University, noted is a “hit of dopamine” we get from “likes” on social media?
I’m not sure that something that is habitual is an actual addiction, in a psychological or medical sense, but it’s something like that. And yes—I write three blogs that have fairly low readership, but if someone responds to what I write, or even just likes the link or image that I post on Facebook, it does make me feel better.
Of course, I think there is more going on. I think writing, for me, is more than just a habit or a means to get the next hit of positive brain chemistry—it’s the muscle I used for years to earn my living and that now I do for the pleasure of creation. It’s brain therapy, too—it keeps my most important organ, the one between my ears, a bit more in tone.
Ironically, to me, thus what I post on social media is partly the antidote to social media—I am ruminating on my life, processing my experience, connecting, in an introvert’s lonely way, to reality. Not just running from it. Author (and social media creator) John Green recently talked about the value of creating online:
But I do use my smart phone to “kill time,” as Lacy called it. Dr. Lacy spoke Nov. 15, giving the final presentation in a fall faculty series at Mount Mercy University on “Humans and Machines” in a provocative discourse that he entitled “Scrolling is Unpaid Labor.” The thing that we do when we feel private and alone on our phones or tablets is not as alone as we think—it’s an act that is recorded, watched and commodified.
Our attention is a product that we produce. And advertisers pay, according to data cited by Dr. Lacy, more than $500 billion a year to catch some of that digital audience's attention. Oddly, as he noted, online ads are weirdly different from classic advertising, in that most of us don’t recall much of those ads we see on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube—and an impression that funds the marketing marketplace of cyber commerce is defined as half of a screen being on our device or at least a second.
Dr. Travis Lacy makes a point.
True, ads exist to motivate consumers. True, that is not a new concept, in our culture, as the main system that funds American media—both news and entertainment—has historically been ads. But what feels weird is the brief snippet of eyeball attention that somehow seems so disconnected from an act in the real world would be so valued.
Then again, consumers tend to define themselves as immune to ads in a way that advertisers know they’re not. If online attention were completely divorced from actual commerce, it would wither. It’s not withering.
Yet, the way social media is constructed, it’s almost insidiously rewarded for making us sad. As Dr. Lacy noted, an addict is most vulnerable when the pain of their real life demands some balm. Whether whiskey or the Meta-verse, whatever drug we turn to when we’re down can give us a brief relief, but often leaves us hollow in the long run, more divorced from our lives, more troubled in our souls.
Book title from my notes, propped against my computer screen as I write this post. "Iber Pumpon Makes You Stupid?" How dare Iber Pumpon.
I’m not trying to recreate Dr. Lacy’s whole message here. I’ve skipped Karl Marx and his insight into labor. And I wrote down the title of a book Dr. Lacy cited, because it sounded like something I would want to read, but my handwriting is so bad that I can’t make it out. “Something Something Makes You Stupid” states the illegible ink squiggles, on my notebook’s page. The something-something in my notes looks like “Iber pumpon,” which seems a bit unlikely as a book title.
Update Nov. 20: Thanks to Dr. Lacy (and Dr. Joy Ochs) for noting the title of the book in question. It's “How PowerPoint Makes You Stupid,” by Franck Frommer. Iber Pumpon seems more like a prescription drug name than the name of slide-making software.
I tell my communication students that the act of hand writing notes helps fix memory, and I believe there is some truth there. Still, it can fail. It may help if the squiggles themselves aren’t made by an old southpaw whose handwriting was always iffy (a consistent D grade on my paper report cards in elementary school), and whose crippled index finger and arthritic hands aren’t improving his finger dexterity.
Above and below, others making notations during Dr. Lacy's speech. May their notes be more legible than mine.
Nonetheless, while I was sitting in that room, listening to Dr. Lacy read a long script (not as bad as it sounds, speech students, as I say in class, you should learn to deliver from an outline so you can engage an audience, but if you’re experienced, you can learn to read a script and still be engaging, and Dr. Lacy has achieved that higher level of speech competence), I was connected. I was not “killing” time, but inhabiting it, living in it, enjoying it at the slower pace that the unfolding world can provide.
I don’t hate social media. I understand it’s a force that can, and often does, isolate us and make us sadder. But we each construct our own social media—my Google is not yours—and can, I believe, learn to use it to also inhabit the real world in a more healthy way. Used in reasonable doses, it’s like red wine. It would hurt us if we use it too much, but modest use is not only OK; it can even improve us.
Above and below, people listening to Dr. Lacy, not killing time on social media, but inhabiting time.
Maybe by listening to each other. Maybe by making images, writing essays and then sharing our actual creative work.
Even if it’s unpaid labor. Because creating a full thing that you’re engaged in and care about is not labor that alienates you, it connects and grounds you.
Now, turn off your phone and go take a walk.
Key audience members, connected in reality to the speaker. And maybe social media just made you a little happier.
Leonard Pitts, Jr., who will retired in December as a Miami Herald newspaper columnist, at the 2015 Texas Book Festival, image by Larry D. Moore from Wikimedia Commons.
I read the news this week that Leonard Pitts, Jr., a columnist for the Miami Herald whose syndicated work appears in The Gazette, the newspaper I read, is to retire from newspaper writing this December.
Darn. Pitts has spoken several times nearby, not that long ago at Coe College. I don’t recall what was going on that I did not attend, but I regret it. He’s a sharp, smart, talented newspaper opinion writer, and a type of voice sorely needed in our public discourse. I wish I had heard him speak.
Pitts was very opinionated, and I don’t mean that as a pejorative statement. I think an opinion writer should make clear points. But I don’t think Pitts, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for commentary, was a bomb thrower.
His columns read like a smart person ruminating out loud, thinking it over. He’d begin by grabbing your attention, and then build his essay, paragraph by paragraph—often, sharp, short paragraphs. As a result, his writing had a pleasing rhythm to it.
And he was a master of the clincher, of the ending that summed it up in a crescendo. The most recent column he wrote—about his lack of surprise that the increasingly conservative Republican party is also measurably more racist than any other mainstream political group, according to a social science study of attitudes—ended in this line:
“It isn’t surprising in the least.”
Pitts will let you know where he stands. His was a voice worth listening to. Besides being a newspaper writer, he’s written several books, and according to reports, isn’t retiring from writing but devoting himself to the longer form. I’ve not read any of his books yet, but given how much I like his columns and will miss them, it’s something I should look into.
And if they turn out to be good? Well, I think a wise man summed up what I think my reaction would be: “It isn’t surprising in the least.”
2017 image of Leonard Pitts by Emily Johnson/Columbia Missourian. The 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary spoke in Columbia, Missouri, as one of the Missouri Honor Medal winners awarded by the MU School of Journalism.
Sept. 6--Painter working at Warde Hall, oldest building on Mount Mercy University campus. Some things that are old are worth holding on to. Like reading.
For years, thinkers have written (irony) about a “post literate” world. And, indeed, in our culture we can see all kind of odd impacts of a tendency to avoid reading.
Reading, it seems to me, is such a fundamental act. There is simply no way to tune into long narrative or to absorb certain kinds of raw information that works as well. Yes, I have used YouTube videos when I want to use a new technique or discover how to fix something—I don’t deny that there are other key ways that we humans communicate.
But I see reading as representing a deeper dive into abstract thought.
Well, while reading as an activity is on decline, it hasn’t disappeared. Both reading and writing can still be observed among the young.
In August, I gave one class of writers the assignment to start their own personal blogs—to give themselves a public platform from which to show the world their writing skills. I’m liking the results, including this post one student wrote on the importance of reading.
Aug. 26--Above and below, students in a writing class at MMU begin working on their personal blogs.
And Sept. 15 will be a key day at Mount Mercy University. The first edition of the student newspaper, The Mount Mercy Times, of the fall semester will be distributed. Thus a mass of student writing will be available to student readers—and readers may be a minority of the student body, but they are there.
Today, I handed copies of the paper out in a class where students have written for the paper for the first time. One young man saw that his story was the anchor of the sports page, and I’ve never seen him beam more. It’s heartening to see how excited students can be due to their words.
Front page of Sept. 15, 2022 edition of the Mount Mercy Times.
Right now, the student newspaper is rebuilding. We had a lot of experienced editors graduate last year, and a new crew is just getting started. But the first edition came out. It’s a tabloid this year—we’re saving some paper by using the smaller pages, and emphasizing posting our news online.
So some of the news that is available in paper Thursday was been available online already. Still, the arrival of the first print edition marks something important.
Reading is still alive. And writing can still excite students. Which makes Thursday, in my book, a good day.
A few of the students who brought MMU this edition of the Times, from a "meet the editor" event in the University Center:
From CNN.com, logo of "Reliable Sources," last episode was today, Aug. 21, 2022.
So, today was the final show, after 30 years, of CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” Ratings were not always great for this show, and CNN informed host Brian Stelter this week that it was ending the program with today’s episode.
I’ll miss it. Stelter showed class in the final show, ending it by thanking the boss who had fired him, noting that it’s rare for a news program to get a final episode to say goodbye. And he expressed hope that CNN would continue to push its news coverage.
“The free world needs a reliable source,” Stelter said of CNN.
CNN has new owners, and the corporation is shaking things up. One thrust of those changes is to try to emphasize straight news coverage, which is OK, but “Reliable Sources” was useful as a look at the media world. It wasn’t an “infotainment” show of just opinion commentary. While Stelter often made his own comments, at is heart, the show was an interview program and panel discussion about the media.
CNN image used on YouTube clip of Brian Stelter's final show.
Some of those guests, and Stelter, made key points during the final show:
It’s not a coincidence that democracy is on decline at the same time that independent news media is on the decline. “The pendulum swinging against democracy all over the world,” Carl Bernstein said. He noted that he and Bob Woodward, who 50 years ago uncovered the Watergate scandal as reporters for The Washington Post, understood that their job was to report “the best obtainable version of the truth.”
But, what truth? Journalists are not stenographers—using sound news judgement to frame events in context is also a key to what journalists need to do. As David Zurawick, a CNN analyst formerly with the Baltimore Sun noted, the current call to report “just the facts” ignores the reality that facts need context—that the body politic needs what he called “explanatory journalism,” such as the many times Carl Bernstein was able to compare action by former President Donald Trump to actions by Richard Nixon.
Zurawick also noted that, in the 30 years that "Reliable Sources" was on the air, local newspapers and local TV news have been on the decline.
Part of that decline is fueled by ownership changes—there always was an elitism problem in American journalism where it was typically rich families that owned media companies, but at least those families had some sense of responsibility that hedge funds lack.
Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg said that owning a media outlet is “not like owning a chicken restaurant or whatever. You have to be willing to stand up to authority.”
I agree. It’s good that in this social media era, rich owners can’t control the information anymore but it leaves media chasing the eyeballs at the expense of any sense of mission. And the impulse to report “straight” news can be a positive one, although the danger now seems to be a false equivalency where facts and nonsense are reported as equals.
Jodie Ginsberg, president of the Committee to Project Journalists noted that a true journalist doesn’t ask if it’s raining, they go outside to feel the rain. These days it’s harder to agree on “the importance of facts, the importance of agreeing on some fundamental, important information.”
“When those in power denigrate journalism, journalists become fair game,” she said.
The panelists and guests on the final episode, not all of whom I quote here, were insightful and interesting. It impressed me that, although lots of media and news trends are dark, the tone of the show was nonetheless hopeful.
And Stelter ended on a positive note. It was a classy way to go out. The CNN "Reliable Sources" newsletter continues for now, which is nice, but it’s still a sad day when a show that provided valuable context on the media stories of the week is suddenly gone.
I’m late, of course, to the party. Just as I watched “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” two decades after the show was made, more or less, I’m 15 year behind the time with another show about a compact woman child who packs a punch—in this case, summer 2022 was the summer my wife and I binge watched the three TV seasons of “Veronica Mars.”
And then got the movie and watched it, too.
Movie image from IMDB.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees some parallels between Veronica and Buffy. Both are attractive blondes who are often under-estimated by their adversaries. Both are quick-tongued—flash back to Buffy: Professor Walsh: “We though you were a myth.” Buffy: “Well, you were myth-taken.”
And both shows begin in high school, which is a bit of hell in both universes.
Wikimedia Common image of Kristen Bell in 2007 on set of TV show "Veronica Mars."
Did I like “Veronica Mars?” Heck yes, for many of the reasons I liked Buffy. Both Sarah Michelle Geller and Kristen Bell have the chops to be leading characters, and both are fun to watch. Both shows feature ensemble casts—indeed, there is a bit of crossover between them, with several actors from Buffy having roles in Veronica.
And I enjoyed both takes on American education. They weren’t either entirely real or realistic, and oddly enough, I found Buffy’s universe in some ways more relatable. It was just a random town, and if Sunnydale still existed in the same universe as LA, it wasn’t like Neptune, a village partly populated by media elite.
Season 3 TV cast of "Veronica Mars." The season ends abruptly mid-story, so it was nice to have a movie to wrap things up a bit. But kid, seriously, you can do better than Logan.
Buffy was a cleaner character, more ethical, in many ways. Veronica was never above bending the rules nor breaking the law to achieve revenge, for example. Buffy could get mean to save the universe, but not so often to offer payback.
That, to me, was the main weakness of Veronica Mars. Too often, it was a revenge fantasy, which left me a bit cold. Fortunately, that wasn’t the main arc of the show, and it was fun to see a feisty female with the smarts to figure it out. When Veronica said, “I know what happened,” she usually did.
Other parallels:
Both Buffy Summers and Veronica Mars aren’t lucky in love. Buffy’s serious relationships include two vampires, an ex-soldier who loses his way and various high school boys who either betray her or turn out to be seriously unsuitable, for some reason. Veronica Mars has a very screwed up love life—to me, one of the main weaknesses of the show is that I never warmed up to her longest and most serious relationship, that weird rascal Logan. She would be better off without him.
Law enforcement is best not trusted in either universe. The Sunnydale police, at least for a season, are controlled by a demonic mayor. Keith, Veronica’s dad, gets to be sheriff now and then, but when he’s not, the local deputies are often a disreputable bunch.
High School, and college, are populated by awful people doing awful things. In Veronica Mars, Hearst College and Neptune High School are both terrible places. Even worse that Sunnydale High School or UC-Sunnydale.
Nerds make the best friends. Whether it’s Willow or Mac, it pays to have a gal pal who knows her way around computers (or witchcraft, in Willow’s case—the equivalent for Mac might be a talent for shady business deals).
Anyway, tonight we watched the 2014 movie “Veronica Mars.” It was fun to see to see the cast run through their paces again, and it did have the attractive flavor of the TV show, warts and all. But seriously, did she have to end up with Logan? Meh.
I’ve recently read two very different books about media, and they prompt me to marvel a bit about how our media consumption can, at the same time, unite and divide us.
“Narratives, Nerd-fighters and New Media” by Jennifer Burek Pierce explores the geeky corner of the internet created by the Vlog Brothers, Hank and John Green. The book describes how the two authors and media producers have created and facilitated a global village of readers and online content creators, centered at first about John Green’s books and their Vlog Brothers channel.
The other book, “Hoax,” by Brian Stelter explores the fake narrative of the 2020 election that took hold and led to the Jan. 6, 2021 attempt to overthrow a legal, and relatively clean, election.
First, the book about uniting. In “Narratives,” Burek Pierce briefly reviews the reach of an online community crated by the Green brothers. Hank Green in particular has been a driving force behind the creation of many interesting corners of You Tube through the company Complexity. SciShow, Crash Course and others are places where one goes to satisfy curiosity.
John has been involved in some of those projects, and is a well-known young adult novelist. In recent years, Hank also has joined John as a novelist, writing two science fiction books. One central theme of Burke Pierce’s book is how central reading is to the online community that centers around the brothers. How reading, and sharing about reading, creates a sense of place.
Place and community can be promoted by the internet. And the Green brothers are to be credited because they use their moment of fame not just for self-gratification, but for their ongoing “project to reduce world suck” in which worthwhile causes, like health care in Sierra Leone, are supported.
“Hoax” is a different kind of book about different media. Stelter describes the weird, symbiotic relationship between Fox News and former President Donald Trump—how, due to his media consumption habits, Trump picked up many of his key talking points from Fox News programs.
And, driven by ratings successes, Fox evolved to emphasize the opinion programming that Trump favored. Journalists and journalism were squeezed out of a network whose name has “news” in it. As the corrosive and destructive Trump presidency went on, it seems like Fox was coopted by the MAGA movement to the point where it was almost captive to the whims of Trump.
To me, one key to the weird new era we inhabit is the influence of social media in the form of things like Facebook and YouTube—where community can form that, unlike nerd fighters, doesn’t seek to build a club of readers so much as a mutually cheering squad that pushes and promotes the most extreme views. What I mean is that the community-building power of the internet can work strongly against the community as a whole. And the incentives to echo more extreme views is something Hank Green ruminated about in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capital:
The body politic seems to mostly be suffering from the community building being done by election deniers and the MAGA crowd—but I don’t think those negative effects of incentivizing extremism are exclusive to the political right.
Anyway, one interesting aspect of "Hoax" is that, due to its time and place and sizeable audience, part of what drove the Trump years of insanity was Sean Hannity and his kin on an old-school cable news channel.
Of the two books, I enjoyed “Narratives” more, but then I’m a casual inhabitant of the neighborhood it describes. Perhaps “Hoax” is on a more important topic. The books suffers from its chatty, gossipy tone, where who is sleeping with whom gets in the way of the main narrative but is still worth the time to unpack some of what went on as Trump and Fox grew together.
But books both are interesting reads on recent moments in media history. And both remind us that media often rewards the most noise, which can be a detriment to us if we remain unaware of that tendency.
Movie posters. Images, besides YouTube videos, from https://movies.disney.com/turning-red.
Have you seen “Turning Red,” the latest Pixar-Disney movie? “Turning Red” was, for me, yet another hit, a worthy follow up to the other recent female coming of age saga, “Encanto” (yes, I know, “Encanto” was a Disney flick, not a Pixar flick, but it was part of the same film genre, to me) “Turning Red” is mostly delightful.
“Turning Red” starts with a very charming opening credit scene, when Mailin Lee goofs off as only a confident 13-year-old can. In my experience with children, there is an age, around 10 or 11, that I think of as the start of the “mini-adult” stage. The storms of adolescence are not yet in full force, for one thing. If the child is bright, if they’re well-read enough and smart enough, they can make interesting observations. They can be confidence, not yet too self-absorbed and fun to be around. Their future adult personality is showing, but not yet the angst of the teen years.
Not every tween is like that—some who will grow to be dull adults are already working on the intelligence level of bagels, reading makes a huge difference—but there is for many tweens this time of relative sophistication combined with a fresh take as a new human spirit starts to grapple with the universe. Yet, it's an awkward time too, for both young women and young men, a spirit captured in the Barenaked Ladies song "This is Me in Grade Nine."
And Mailin, a driven first-generation Chinese-Canadian living in Toronto, fits into the mini-adult mold. She has a good relationship with her parents (for the most part), a supportive set of close friends and is doing well in school, one of the keys to early adult onset. So it’s not just the Toronto Transit Authority—in some ways, Mailin has reached a foreshadowing proto-adult level of maturity.
Of course, humans are cognitively complex beasties, and it’s dangerous to generalize. And faux adulthood of a 13-year-old isn’t adulthood. There’s puberty (and panda magic) that will create new life challenges.
“Turning Red” is yet another movie in which a maternal ancestor creates the conflict. In "Encanto," it was abuela. In “Turning Red,” mom is having trouble adjusting to the maturing daughter’s changing life—and grandmother is a bit of a foreboding figure, too, as dysfunctional generational patterns that can persist in families is one of the themes of this tale of the red tail.
Parents can be a pain. Mailin reacts after Miriam tells her that her mother is outside.
Partly, the movie is a cautionary tale for helicopter parents. If you try too hard to control or solve every problem for your child, you risk driving them farther away when the inevitable life changes come.
Partly, the movie is a female coming of age story, which is both familiar to and different from the coming-of-age process for males. Menstruating is not exactly a common theme in Disney or Pixar films, and, honestly, I was rather delighted that it was a topic in “Turning Red”—as something natural, normal and that makes men (dad) a bit uncomfortable.
It’s also interesting that the movie is set in the early zeros. People who were 13 then are becoming parents now, and if their daughters aren’t yet at the red panda stage of life, making a Pixar movie that will evoke so much nostalgia in new parents does seem like a pretty smart move.
There is some child sass in “Turning Red,” which may make some adults uncomfortable—but it’s a magical realism story where the sass is not overdone and the early teen rebellion is tempered a bit by the reality that the main character still loves her parents and, while wanting to assert herself, doesn’t want to be too far from them, either.
What don’t I like about “Turning Red?” Why “mostly” delightful? My problem is with mom, not only her dismissive treatment of Mailin, but her equal dismissive treatment of her introverted but insightful husband. His “maybe we should trust her” line is bulldozed over.
The most cringeworthy scene is mom’s tirade in the Daisy Mart, and that felt off, to me. That was a level of public shaming of a daughter that even most protective parents could avoid. That, and stalking your daughter and holding up a box of pads before her entire class to say she forgot them—I would think almost any parent, in that situation, would have quietly left the box in the school office with the request that the daughter be notified to discretely come get them.
Mom’s freakout and turning into the “Turning Red” equivalent of the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man from “Ghostbusters” didn’t bother me as much. That the panda spirit was slightly different in each woman of the family, and that the mom, who suffered so much internal discord over her relationship with her own mother, would have a larger, more violent panda kind of worked. It did seem over-the-top peril of every teen and boy band member at the concert, true, but it was in a clearly fictional Toronto and no actual 4-Townies were stomped in the making of this panda-pocalypse.
In short, I enjoyed the movie. I wish mom had been toned down a little, and that there had been a bit more of the friend group. Miriam was really my favorite character, but I liked all of the friends and wanted a bit more of them.
Was it a better movie than “Encanto?” I don’t think so. It was a different movie and a very good one, but I felt the family themes of “Encanto” ran a bit deeper. And, while the music in “Turning Red” was fun, “Encanto” was a genuine musical production with superior songs that moved the plot.
Also, “Encanto’s” Miriam was Mirabel, and it was nice that the central figure who held the group together was the main character of the film. In “Turning Red,” the heart of the Scoobies, Miriam, was too much of a side note.
Also, not to diss Pixar, one of my favorite movie companies, but “Encanto” was a step above in animation—a visual feast. “Turning Red” was well done but it didn’t have Mirabel’s swirling dress nor bouncing curls (yes, it had a fluffy panda, but I mean overall “Encanto” had far more pleasing, colorful visual details).
I do like that both movies. Along with the “Frozen” universe, they represent a clear, positive evolution in the Disney-verse of the heroine. Unlike the princesses of movies past, current Disney females have much more drive, intelligence and decision-making power. And I’m a fan of the diversity representation, too. We’ve come a long way since “Pocahontas,” thank goodness.
Not a happy story. There's violence, such as World War II. Image from wikipedia description of book.
Late to the party, I know—but I’ve just finished the two-volumes of Maus, the graphic memoir by Art Spiegelman.
Of course, I have the wise leaders of the McMinn County Tennessee School Board to thank. In January, the board banned what is called a “graphic novel” from its eighth-grade curriculum. And I immediately wanted to read it.
A student who leads the campus newspaper staff happened to have taken a recent course on the Holocaust, and Maus was one of the books for the class (or two, they read both volumes). So, she let me read her copies. What with one thing and another (school, exams, etc.) it took a while for me to crack open these comics and have a look see at the latest threat to the tranquility of our children was.
And, wow. They banned that?
I mean, it’s the Holocaust. There was language, implied violence, abuse—all the neat features that genocide brings to the table. Plus, some difficult family dynamics, a mother who committed suicide plus a father who clearly was damaged, and although he’s a survivor, his life and his relationship with his narrator son is neither smooth nor easy.
I had also read that there is nudity—and frankly, I think there may have been some, but I didn’t notice it at all—whatever flash of the naughty bits there was, it wasn’t exactly a central feature of this tale. And, besides, naked mice. Land swan.
Would I have voted to ban this book? Heck no. The 13- and 14-year-olds of McMinn County probably, I would think, experience rougher content in most country music videos, let alone most PG-13 movies. Heck, remember abuela’s pain in Encanto?
One of the values of reading stories, both fictional and fact, is to learn, just a bit, to see the world through another’s eyes. And I don’t know about you, but by age 13 I was ready to learn that the world is not a perfect place of unicorns and fairies. There are cats and mice and pigs and fascists, too. I think it’s fair for a parent to know what their child is reading. And maybe some opt out option has to be offered to a parent who objects—but why would they? Maus requires some processing—some conversation and education. That’s what an eighth-grade class is for. Maus brings a compelling and important story to life in an interesting and different way—it’s exactly the kind of book to help young teens maybe start to understand the value of deeper stories, even if it is an expanded comic book.
For the most part, I don’t think most young teens are too immature for Maus. Apparently, some school board members are.
Banning books that make some people uncomfortable is where we are. It’s a step that ties into all kinds of unpleasant cultural threads that are unraveling our intellectual life and stifling our culture. For example, there are parents who want fairy tales re-written to eliminate what’s dark or scary. And, to be fair, older versions of many of our mainstream fairy tales are far rougher than the versions we typically read today—anybody remember Cinderella’s step sister slicing off her own toes?
However, it’s easy for this protective impulse to quickly go too far. A certain amount of peril or conflict is necessary for any powerful story. It’s why do so many parents die so early in so many foundational stories—a common feature of fairy tales. I think the reason is that children worry about that very thing, and it’s about the worst fate that they can imagine—so the story serves as a pleasantly scary “what if” kind of tale.
That’s fairy tales, however. There are no fairies in Maus. The middle schoolers who should have had access to this truth-based story are long past the point where they need The Wizard of Oz sanitized. Maus has great value because it’s a quick read that touches on deep subjects at many levels—and gives Miss Simmons (assuming Miss Simmons is the eighth grade English teacher) an outlet to bring in the true dark story of what actually happened in the time of World War II.
Truth, they say, is the first casualty of war. Our culture wars have escalated to the point where we don’t wait for combat, we stick a stake in the heart of truth before it can rise from the graves of our ignorance.
If you have a 13-year-old, buy them a copy of Maus. Have them read it (after you have) and then talk about it. It can open their eyes and yours.
And show you how wrong the McMinn County School Board was when they McMinn-imized education for their eighth graders.
Katy Sebers and Wyatt Sebers unveil the new name and logo for their Marion, Iowa martial arts studio at an open house March 31. Katy, my daughter, designed the logo.
Drew Evans, a Marion, Iowa, artist, checks one of his sculptures brought to Lowe Park for image-making purposes.
As March turned into April, I recently ran into two interesting examples of art used in communication.
Before becoming a college professor, I was a print journalist. Art is outside my area of expertise, but it’s something I enjoy. On March 31, I attended a ceremony where my daughter and son-in-law had a renaming open house at a martial arts studio in Marion Iowa that they had purchased. They unveiled the new logo of the school.The next day, while on a walk in a Marion, Iowa, park, my wife and I by chance ran into a artist who was using the park as a backdrop to photograph several of his sculptures.
I’m going to write more about the logo—since it has a family connection to me and because I just have more to say about it. Besides being an object of art, it’s a commercial piece that has more literal meaning, too.
Pictures (above and below) of logo displayed at March 31 open house.
My daughter, Katy Sebers, designed the logo. I like the subtle use of ying and yang in it. The symbol is, I assume, a Korean character, maybe the word for “guardian,” although it could also mean “four busy kids.”
Anyway, the dragons use colors from the Korean flag, used to represent taeknwondo. The yellow color of the character echoes the colors of the Bruce Taekwondo logo, and this studio is a continuation of the Bruce Taekwondo legacy—Katy and Wyatt Sebers purchased the business from Master Bruce.
I like the logo in black and white, too.
Grandson wears logo on new headband at March 31 open house.
Logo in black and white on T shirt.
The day after that March 31 open house, I and my wife encountered Drew Evans, who runs “Chainbreaker Welding” in Marion. We were walking April 1 on the trail at Lowe Park, and Evans was there to photograph a couple of his sculptures, human figures constructed of metal objects welded together. Both sculptures were female figures, one made of nuts, the other of bicycle chains.
Both the martial arts studio logo and the figures in the park appealed to me, for different reasons. As a person who most often expresses himself via words, I respect those who can do visual communication that is evocative. I liked the contrast between a clever two-dimensional logo and the three-dimensional nature of sculpture.
I don’t always understand what an artist is trying to say. Then again, any creative expression partly belongs to the audience—it means not just what the creator intended, but what the viewer or listener extracts.
.jpg)
.jpg)
_cover.jpg)
