The spring semester is ending. This means it’s time for all of us college professors who teach writing to buckle down and read a huge stack of final projects we constructively evaluate.
It’s a lot of work but it’s also a lot of fun.
Just kidding!!
Reading someone’s original material (Note: In my case it’s screenplays and TV pilots) gives you a peek into who they are, how they look at the world and reveals any number of unexpected secrets about all sorts of things.
This has nothing to do with talent, skill or the level of excellence on that particular effort.
Every one of the many hundreds of choices a writer must make shows you their point of view, a way of looking at things that is uniquely their own.
we’re all a little bit Lydia
This goes not only for writing students but for the writing of writing teachers.
And often we’re not even aware of it.
It’s the stuff we can’t stay out loud.
That’s why this time of year is also always a little bittersweet.
It means saying so long to a group of young people that allowed you to get to know them and trusted you with their innermost thoughts.
Drowning in the feels
Oh, and for those of you who think 20, 21 and 22 year-olds don’t have many of those worth reading or hearing because they spend most of their time looking at their phones, posting on social media and not working your version of hard enough….
GET OVER YOURSELVES.
It’s simply not true. And… you sound like a character in the first act of any number of Clint Eastwood movies.
Not a compliment
Even in the few moments they might not be living up to their potential, consider what YOU would be like:
If you were raised with the internet, spent your formative years with Donald Trump in the White House and could access porn at any time of day or night.
Don’t even answer that.
Because we all know the answer to that.
Stay out of it!
Instead, as I submerge into the thoughts of a new generation who I sense will do just a little bit better than any of us did, I will leave you to think about…
Watching the new third season of HACKS on HBO. (Note: Must we ALWAYS say MAX?)
Deborah Vance would definitely say HBO
The first two episodes dropped Thursday night and they’re fab, funny, bawdy and more often than not even a bit moving.
They also speak to that great, timeless generational divide but in a far wittier way than we presently do. And better than I’ve seen done in a very long time.
This week the spouse of the person third in line for the presidency got seriously attacked by a hammer-wielding, 2020 election-denying conspiracy theorist that regularly spouts racist, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ views via a blog not like, but not 100% unlike, this one.
Now, before you go jumping to conclusions —
We here at Notes do NOT believe, as the attacker does, that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is the power behind some cannibalistic, child abusing cabal.
Step one
Nor do we traffic in the notion that non-white people, Jews or gays are evil incarnate.
And not only because the Chair is in the latter two of those three groups.
Rather it is due to the fact that we, like him, use the WordPress platform to regularly espouse our views for all the world to read, and perhaps rally behind, via our own personal BLOGs.
Tale as old as time
I was thinking about this a lot after hearing my fellow blogger broke into the Pelosi home after 2 a.m. bellowing, Where’s Nancy, struggling with 82-year-old Paul Pelosi before hitting him REALLY hard on the head. (Note: Nancy was not at home, but hard at work rallying Democratic voters far away on the opposite coast).
Nevertheless, Mr. Pelosi suffered life threatening injuries from this attack – a fractured skull and serious injuries to his hand and arm that required surgery – but it is now reported he will be okay.
This was not solely due to his doctors but also to the fact that an intuitive 9-1-1 operator dispatched the police to his home with a high alert warning.
Still, it momentarily left me wondering:
Exactly where do we stand with free speech in our presently advanced information age??
Quite a prickly situation
Oh, OF COURSE FREE SPEECH NEEDS TO CONTINUE! (He ranted).
WHAT ARE WE, A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY OR…..RUSSIA? (He asked).
OR A MAGA STRONGHOLD IN THE SOUTH OR MIDWEST? (He irrationally screamed).
OR THE HOUSE JUDICIARY GOP, which still has up the following three-week old tweet:
Shoot (oops), even billionaires (Note: Up until this week) get to say anything they want, like the rest of us.
Or in solidarity with Elon Musk’s plan, after buying Twitter for $44 billion, to let back on the platform many of the hate spouting, fake conspiracy-promoting users whom former Twitter execs permanently banned for life. Beginning with:
@realDonaldTrump.
Get ready America.
Fly, my pretties! Fly!
I don’t have answers as to where free speech ends and governmental intervention begins.
Nor do American politicians or its citizens if the last six plus years of the MAGA agenda to poison our social discourse with lies about the efficacy of the 2020 elections (and beyond), amid white power salutes and calls to lock up every elected official they don’t agree with, are any indication.
Phew, that was a mouthful.
And we’re not done yet.
I have a headache
Because when there is no agreement on what is true, or what is even real, it’s hard to know where to even start.
Or end.
When I was in graduate school in Chicago once upon a time in the seventies there was a big hoopla around the Nazis marching in the nearby suburb of Skokie, a primarily Jewish enclave.
It was a provocative move to cause an encounter, we were all sure, so eventually it was decided that as heinous as Nazis were, it would be against freedom and even worse for democracy to not allow this monstrous group who supported the extermination of a race/my people, to be free to express themselves in a place where my people/that race most particularly presided.
Of course, this was in an era where almost everyone believed Nazis were heinous.
A time very unlike today.
This could be the reason…
As I watched former President Obama campaigning this weekend in support of democracy and Democratic candidates in swing states like Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin he was incredibly inspiring. But his words felt almost…
QUAINT.
Oh, he made the case and then some for the imperative to vote Blue in the 2022 election and beyond.
He proved without a doubt that to not elect these representatives could signal the end of democracy, not to mention extinguishing popular social programs like Social Security. Not to mention more tax cuts for the rich and less affordable health insurance for the rest of us mere mortals.
Please don’t let this be you this November
But he was speaking to thousands of Democratic supporters who wanted to be inspired and be given numerous exciting, rational reasons to get off their phones and up off their asses to make a difference.
Still, it made me wonder if this was the only way to stop the MAGA movement for now. Get every conceivable, rational, believer in facts and democracy that we all know to move up and out to the polls, even if we need to take them there ourselves.
And to worry about how free our free speech should be AFTER this election cycle.
To forget about the lies, and hate, and crazy right wing fan fiction on social media for right now.
Unless they try to stop us from voting. And then we’ll…
Welp, see you later.
Well, we’ll cross that bridge in 10 days or less. I guess.
A friend of mine sincerely asked me how I can be even slightly positive about the future of the country in light of where we are now.
I immediately responded it’s because I spend a lot of my working life around young people in college, the vast majority of whom loathe the MAGA agenda.
Deniers aside, it is a fact that 65% of Gen Zers voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and that in 2024 they will be the most powerful block of voters.
Zoomers unite
So now is the time to TALK, not lecture to them, about their fears, their truths and the truth of what is going on in the country vs. what is passing for truth these days.
And ask them to vote for themselves, or as a favor to you, if you know them well enough. (Note: Yes, guilt can work. I’m living proof!).
And then get your butt and the butt of everyone else you know into a virtual/mail-in or literal voting booth.
Yes
We can then scream, rant, chat or even blog about the distorted views and/or rights of any crazy that comes to mind after that.
Because we will still have the freedom and luxury to do so.
