Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

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THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.

PERMALINKS:

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Sunday, August 24, 2008

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

In this astonishing piece a teacher tells us what should have been plain to most of us for ages: students don't like literature. It's not entirely their fault; it's the disconnect between an age that had no electronics and an age that has nothing but. But this teacher's plaint that students won't start reading until they're handed more "contemporary" stuff won't work; as she notes, some of her students have mighty quick minds, and they won't eat the thin gruel that passes for writing these days. It's a vicious circle; kids need great literature, but as it passes further into oblivion there are no models for the new great literature, thus no great literature. It is also, as she notes, the mechanized manner of teaching the classics, with its emphasis on symbolism and trivia designed to suck the life out of it. It is also, let's face it, some of the assigned works themselves; Tristram Shandy no longer has a legitimate place in the classroom. That the students seem to like Fitzgerald offers a modicum of hope.

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