Today I return to less political terrain... or is that even possible?

I return today to Frank Bruni's e-newsletter feature "For the love of sentences," for more musings on language use and how we might makes use of sophisticated examples in high school and college classes. This one has been in my inbox since Feb. 9, just in hopes of taking me away from political moaning and groaning. 

Susan Dominus went to the doctor and wrote this in the New York Times: “The meeting was only my second with this gynecologist, a woman who struck me as chic, professional and in a bit of a hurry, which was to be expected, as she is part of a large health care group — the kind that makes you think you’d rather die from whatever’s ailing you than try to navigate its phone tree one more time.” 

This reference relies on pathos for its power, depending upon a common shared experience most adults would recognize: the endless phone tree run-arounds. I often find myself mindlessly repeating "agent, agent," or "I want to speak to a person." Amazingly, this scattershot approach often gets me to a live customer service rep. But even then, most of my encounters with large businesses is annoying and even maddening.

I most admired the control of the writer, however, creating that compound-complex sentence that rolls along for 63 words. Particularly impressive were those two descriptive phrases -- the first on the doctor and the second a comment on large health groups. 

Most students will struggle to create such lengthy sentence, and I often find myself suggesting to my college writers that they would save themselves trouble by simply stopping their sentence and starting a new one. Run-ons, usually involving comma splices, continue to be the single most common grammar error among my students.

I continue to point out where sentences spin out of control. Students appear to generally ignore my advice. So it goes.

Michelle Cottle previewed (also in the NYT) the State of the Union address: “One question that always carries with it a frisson of unease during big presidential addresses: On a scale of 1 to Lauren Boebert, how disrespectfully will members of the opposing party behave?”

It's always nice to see one of our state's "best and brightest" mentioned in a national publication. Of course, Boebert might take this sort of reference to her as a complement. See, she might point out, my name and reputation are so well known that no explanations are needed as to this writer's meaning.

This was fun since an informed reader knew at this point (a week later) that things got quite out of hand... though Mr. Biden handled the chaos adroitly. Boebert was uncharacteristically well-behaved.

The Economist examined a winter pastime: “In ancient Israel, somebody walking across a body of water constituted a miracle. In Minnesota, it just means that it is ice fishing season.” 

For those who grew up in the northern latitudes of the U.S., frozen-over ponds and lakes are taken for granted. This excerpt requires minimum understanding of some basic Bible stories to work. Another argument for teaching "Bible as literature." The allusions to that text are endless. The possibilities of not connecting to readers only grows as religion recedes in the country.

The more articles I read about the death of the English major, and the more I learn about various efforts to decrease teacher independence... added to increasing unwillingness to take on anything controversial among teachers generally (understandable, but...), the more I can imagine a time where even a "Jesus walked upon the waters" reference can't connect.

And in The Atlantic, Sophie Gilbert described the onetime ubiquity of an American sex symbol with the first name Pamela: “In the ’90s, Anderson was one of the most famous women in the world, the highest-paid actress on the most-watched television show (that would be ‘Baywatch’), her scarlet swimsuit and box-blond curls covering more bedroom walls than Sherwin Williams.” 

The reader is expected to recognize "Sherman Williams" as a brand of paint. Not knowing this basically ruins the sentence, and if the reader can't add in HOW Ms. Anderson ended up on those walls, the assumption that we all know of her famous poster becomes too subtle. So this example requires at least two pieces of information in the reader to make sense.

Let's face it: much of the "clever" writing that Frank Bruni shares in his newsletter relies on readers being "of a certain age." 

I am definitely in that group.

Breaking news: I'm fed up

In trying to make sense of American politics, and the Angry White People Party in particular, I have for some time tried to differentiate between politicians and the vast mass of Republican voters. After all, when some of our family and friends and neighbors continue to support the odious 45th president, despite everything we now know, there is comfort in thinking they are being manipulated.

So, yes, shame on those Republican politicians who are fanning the flames and making Trump the odds-on favorite to run for the most powerful office in the world for a third time.

But there comes a point when absolving all those garden variety voters for their poor choices becomes indefensible. I'm not happy to say this, but it's where we are at this point.

It is possible to be a "bad citizen" in a democracy and it's time to start finding ways to point out the lack of policy thinking, the lack of support for basic tenets of democracy, and the painful trolling of one half of America by the other. 

The situation in America has echoes in current Russian society, where a large percentage of the population is being fed constant lies, leaving many Russians choosing between what they can see in their busy cemeteries and online and what they are told by a government that many realize consistently lies to them.

I know it's Putin's War, but when thousands of Russians are dying in Ukraine each month and the economy waddles along and nothing seems likely to change any time soon... how is that much different from the world of the angry white people who subsist on the manipulations of FOX "news" and refuse to come their senses no matter how many times they are presented with the truth?

And this week we have Tucker Carlson, an entertainer on FOX, presenting bizarre "evidence" that Jan. 6, 2021 was no big deal. Just tourists. Just reverential visitors to the Capitol. Ha! It's nice to see some backlash to his blatant lying and manipulating, but I have doubts that many dedicated FOX viewers care much about actual facts at this point.

They just want what they want. And that makes me a type of elitist, since I feel justified in looking down on people who make immoral and illogical choices when there are readily available options that could not only make them better citizens but help them in their daily lives.

But at least I am not a hypocrite.

And while on the subject of hypocrisy, I am increasingly appalled by the whining of the Angry White People Party when they sense they are being made fun of or criticized by normal Americans. After all, they never hesitate to label anyone not sharing their views as perverts and scum and traitors. They love to troll the "woke."

But they can't take the heat. Wimps.

Observation remains the first journalistic practice we need to teach and support

I finished up judging about 50 sports profiles for the Florida Student Press Association yesterday, and they were not good. 

There is a danger, of course, that I have been out of the daily advising grind long enough that I have lost track of what level of reporting and writing should be expected from students entering a writing contest. And it's hard for an old guy to imagine just how messed up current juniors and seniors in high school could be. 

By all accounts, many teachers seem to be in despair over their students and the lack of motivation, the rise in depression, and the disinterest in engaging with school (and society?).

All three of those trends seem to have combined to produce a cohort of student journalists who are unwilling to invest even a few minutes actually observing the news... watching the action... experiencing reality in real time.

I make this conclusion because it was quite clear that not one of the 52 writers of those sports profiles had spent any time at all watching a practice or a game. In fact, they all relied exclusively on interviews that rarely had any depth, if the direct quotes are any indication.

Here is what I wrote in the comments for the first contest entry I read: 

It is ironic that we often publish profiles that rely entirely on asking questions of those being profiled… but that don’t involve the reporter seeing the person being profiled “in action.” Adding observation does so much to enhance our sports reporting... not only giving us visuals and other sensory details but prompting better questions. It is a bit time-consuming and adds a complication to any reporting assignment, but the pay-off is worth it. Imagine professional sports reporters who don’t spend time hanging around practices or attending games… we would feel short-changed by their reports, don’t you think?

The second entry demanded something similar... and then the third. So I copied and pasted the above into a Word doc so I could use it as needed, thus saving a lot of typing the same basic thing over and over. 

I used that observation about 50 times as I read lifeless profile after lifeless profile. Many were fine as to basic statistics and most at least hinted at some intriguing angle. Few followed up on those intriguing angles, settling for a series of quotes tied together by obvious transitions and skeletal descriptions.

The only conclusion I could reach is that student sports reporters don't invest much time in their reporting, despite the fact that athletics offers all sorts of fine experiences if we just spend some time in the environment. 

The curmudgeon in me wants to bemoan the laziness of current youth, but I know that is an unfair generalization. I have seen our granddaughters invest plenty of time in their school work and sports teams, and assume they are not alone. 

Those Florida students could put together a basic quote-transition story and punctuate the quotes correctly, and find ways to fold in statistics and honors... but readers rarely got to know much about how the athletes profiled had become so good, how they trained, what their motivations are, how their families helped or not.

Nearly every athlete profiled seemed to get a graf on some past injury that had to be overcome. Some were quite serious. But every potential angle received the very same treatment: a graf with a direct quote surrounded by paraphrasing from the longer interview.

My guess is that because the only connection the reporter had with the athlete was on the phone or sitting across a table in the cafeteria, the reporter couldn't see any theme to the student's sports life. They approached the sports interview the same way they would an interview with a nuclear scientist: they knew almost nothing and therefore had to settle for the most superficial of answers.

My rant has gone on too long, but the bottom line is that sports reporters simply must invest some time in observing practices and games in order to capture the theme, the energy, and the pressures/pleasures that the athletes feel.

Is it too much to ask a student reporter to spend 45 minutes just observing an athlete at practice, or to attend even one game? If the answer is "yes, that's too much," then the entire point of student media is lost.