You may have seen the reports about actresses Lori Laughlin (“Full House”) and Felicity Huffman (“Desperate Housewives”) being caught up in a standardized test scandal. At the time of this writing, Huffman had actually been arrested. It seems (and as much as I criticize those who leap to conclusions in this space, I hasten to add — innocent until proven guilty) some people were paying for special consideration so their children could get good grades on their ACT or SAT.
We ship Kylie back to college this week. It’s sad on multiple levels. But it is part of the process of watching a young person grow up. On the whole, it would be much, much sadder if it didn’t happen. If I tell Tracie that enough times, maybe she will start to believe me.
Without trying to take sides in the gun vs. anti-gun argument, allow me to cautiously make the following observations: one, a gun tragedy is guaranteed to bring people out of the woodwork, quoting outrageously misleading statistics and claiming that all gun advocates are essentially guilty of murder; two, gun advocates will try to “put things into perspective” by saying the problem isn’t actually as gigantic as it is made out to be, and essentially come off like jerks who think a dozen or so dead children is not that big a deal. In short, everyone still believes what they already believed, they’re just louder about it.
I find facts a lot less argumentative than rhetoric, so let’s look at some facts.
What is with college football fans, media and administrations with regard to the firing of coaches? It happened again recently, as Florida residents know. Yet another coach let go before his contract expires — before Halloween, even. You’d think no one had ever lost to their biggest rival by more than five touchdowns before.
I will confess to a bit of bias in the other direction. It’s easy for me to wince a bit when a disgruntled population grows fed up with the status quo and lashes out at the one behind the microphone. Been there, done that.
