"Kill the Brain and You Kill the Ghoul”—this is either the worst motto for any teacher to live by or the key to killing zombies according to Night of theLiving Dead, the movie that led us to the Walking Dead.

                  So, this post could be about George Romero setting the arbitrary rules that zombies, when re-animated, must eat people.  In a zombie-reality, zombies may not crave human flesh but merely crave rutabagas.  Our world would not be lessened if our rutabaga supply was depleted by the Meandering Dead.   

                  But that is not the topic of this post.

                  Watching TV it does seem that the idea “Kill the Brain and..Kill the Ghoul” is the choice of a new generation.  Our attention span is getting shorter and TV is helping this.  Binge watching 30-Rock is so easy because each episode is only 21:30 long.  If you watch the show in syndication, almost 30 percent of the time is spent in commercials.  If you enjoyed TheWalking Dead, as all humans should have, we had to spend about 33% of each hour watching commercials.  Why does this matter? Well, everything around is conspiring to make our attention span shorter.

                  God forbid we get emotionally engaged in any TV show.  A commercial break of four minutes will often take our attention away.  God forbid we relax and allow ourselves to be lost in mediated literature.  A commercial break will sweep us to a reality in which we learn that apparently every drug that saves our lives can kill us in twelve other ways.  Or that without hair, we can not find love. 

                  A very smart student recently pointed out to me that our shorter attention span affects us in other ways.  We don’t read the whole article anymore.  We read some of an article, get the gist and use that gist as a basis for our facts.  If we read the whole article, we would get all the details and all the context.   We don’t have time to read the whole article.  Not when we are receiving a Facebook message informing us of that a friend has found an actual use for rutabagas. 

                  According to the first 30 seconds of a news story I saw on Fox News and the first four paragraphs of an article I read in some online newspaper, ISIS is trying to destroy us. (I may have read it somewhere else, like a blog, a facebook post or random ramble or something on my computer)   

                  Seems like ISIS does not need to go to this effort.  We are destroying ourselves just fine.  Uncritical acceptance of all media content as being accurate, equating bloggers with actual journalists, the diminishing population of actual journalists combined with our ever-shorter attention span is destroying our minds, our brains.  And when we destroy our brains, we destroy the ISIS version of ghouls--us.

Racist Kids Will Be Racist Kids..

Racist  Kids will be Racist Kids…

(please note that linked articles include strong racist terms and profanity)

I hate when someone starts a column or a speech with rhetorical questions.  But I am going to.

If a teen publishes something stupid on the internet, should the teen suffer consequences?  And does the school have a responsibility in bringing that student to justice?  Does the term "bringing that student to justice" suggest that broadcasting something stupid is a crime?  

When I look back on my teen years, there are stupid things I said that I wish I hadn't.  In my case, most don't remember the dopey things I said.  When teens  vent their worst thoughts they're on the internet.  On twitter and Facebook.  Available to the world in perpetuity.  Tracie Egan Morrissey found some of these tweets and reprinted them.  

Tracie's November 9  article on Jezebel.com, ran a column of tweets of teens venting their anger at Obama being reelected.  The tweets include the racial terms that I can not repost here.  And profanity I wouldn't repost here.  Then she called those student's high schools to find out what, if any, action the school might take toward those students.  

Is the role of a blogger to rat on a tweeter exercising First Amendment rights?  Maybe what 

Tracie has highlighted is the checks and balances of the internet.  If we search we can find the range of viewpoints that exist in our world.  We need to know that such racism exists.  

A follow up article from Jezebel.com  featured the racist and profane responses of adults who were mad at the website for calling the kids out.  Teens hate being called "kids."  But teens are, by definition,  young and going to make mistakes that adults will catch.  But now those mistakes might be captured and retweeted.  The follow up article featuring the bigotry of adults only shows us that the kids learn from the adults.  

The racist teens and inquiring Jezebel bloggers are part of the checks and balances. Should a blogger have called the schools?  I'm a parent.  I want my daughter's school to be challenged.  Is printing racist terms a crime that should be called to justice?  What do you think about hate speech?

Yes, I left you with a rhetorical question.  

Of Newsrooms and Icons

Even though the Olympics are done, there is still TV worth watching...

Aaron Sorkin's HBO program Newsroom is doing what Sorkin's West Wing did:  create a thoroughly fictitious world where standards and ethics still matter.  While he's at it, he paints complex, fascinating characters whose emotional needs are always secondary to their needs to serve the public interest.  Whether the latter point is a virtue can be debated since most all the characters from both West Wing and Newsroom are single or divorced. 

Another point that can be debated is whether creating such an ideal world gives us something to strive for or something to bemoan as unattainable. 

I also appreciate that although Newsroom take all of its story lines from the headlines, its promos never mention "ripped from the headlines."

The show had its season finale already.  That is an annoying aspect of HBO series.  Very few episodes until they take their siesta.  Wait for it to come back.  (well, you have no choice but to wait…)  (it is worth wait)

And if you absolutely, have to read…

Two from Tom Shales.

Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.  Sure, it's ten years old already. SNL is like the economy--people are constantly predicting its demise and then it resurrects again for no apparent reason and despite 

the advice of experts.  Tom Shales (and James Andrew Miller) tell the story by letting all those that lived it tell the story.  Through unedited interviews with basically everybody (except Eddie Murphy), all those moments that you remember or heard about are explained and demythified.  The stories of John Belushi's excesses, Chevy Chase's excesses, producer Lorne Michael's excessive ego and all the others that made up the show are told--by the people that lived them.  With no foreshadowing and minimal opionating from the authors.  It is an amazing look into broadcast history from those that made broadcast history.

Extra good news:  Live from New York is available in the cheap racks at most book stores.

Also, ESPN  Those Guys Have All the Fun  Inside the World of ESPN.   Shales and Miller explain the early days of ESPN when it was a goof with little hope of becoming, well,  ESPN.  The people that created and nurtured the network from a theory to a legend tell their own story.  The authors offer minimal editorializing and do not foreshadow.  Full disclosure: I went to college with Linda Cohn, legendary ESPN SportsCenter anchor.  I don't include this disclosure for journalistic reasons. I am bragging that I did the news on our campus radio station with Linda.  One of the nicest people I knew. 

ESPN and SNL supplied iconic programming that has collectively given us so many moments that are part of our media history.   How they started, how they both almost failed and who made them what they are today--amazing stories told first hand by those that lived them.  

And finally:

ABC New's Nightline beats Leno and Letterman in its time slot after local news.  So, this January, ABC is going to take away its time slot and move it behind Jimmy Fallon.  Because two variety shows after local news is clearly not enough.  I believe if ABC supervised Jamaican sports, it would have Usain Bolt competing in equestrian events.