Do Editorials Need Quotes

The editorial director of the Hysteria Channel needs to be tough. This is a highly competitive business. We thrive on conflict. Do you have any experience with the kind of human misery that drives our ratings?” “If you look at the second page of my resume, you’ll see that I have destroyed at least 114 civilizations, have threatened three dozen galaxies and have haunted dimensions you’ve never even heard of. Twice, I was named Demon of the Month. That earned me a premium parking spot.”  

Danger, when it is always imminent, does harm. It doesn't need to actually arrive. You exhaust yourself in the act of forever looking over your shoulder. Your body readies itself to fight and never quite discharges that chemical cocktail. You channel it instead into anger and self-pity and anxiety and hopelessness. You divert it into work. But really what you do, with every fibre of your being, is watch. You are incessantly, exhaustingly alert. You don't dare ever let up, just in case the danger takes advantage of your inattention. I've forgotten what it feels like to have space in my brain for anything other than watching. For a long time I kept working teaching, pitching articles, writing editorial reports and for a while, that felt like a life raft. But then, incrementally, it became impossible. I was aware of a fog descending, a seizing of the gears, but it seemed diffuse until now.

Thank you Neil, and to the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks from the heart. My family, my agent, editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as mine, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice at accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long, my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction—writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists. I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. (Thank you, brave applauders.) Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial; I see my own publishers in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an ebook six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience and writers threatened by corporate fatwa, and I see a lot of us, the producers who write the books, and make the books, accepting this. Letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish and what to write. (Well, I love you too, darling.) Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I have had a long career and a good one. In good company. Now here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want—and should demand—our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom. Thank you.

I can hardly believe that our nation’s policy is to seek peace by going to war. It seems that President Donald J. Trump has done everything in his power to divert our attention away from the fact that the FBI is investigating his association with Russia during his campaign for office. For several weeks now he has been sabre rattling and taking an extremely controversial stance, first with Syria and Afghanistan and now with North Korea. The rhetoric has been the same, accusing others for our failed policy and threatening to take autonomous military action to attain peace in our time. This gunboat diplomacy is wrong. There is no doubt that Secretaries Kelly, Mattis, and other retired military personnel in the Trump Administration are personally tough. However, most people who have served in the military are not eager to send our young men and women to fight, if it is not necessary. Despite what may have been said to the contrary, our military leaders, active or retired, are most often the ones most respectful of international law. Although the military is the tip of the spear for our country, and the forces of civilization, it should not be the first tool to be used. Bloodshed should only be considered as a last resort and definitely never used as the first option. As the leader of the free world, we should stand our ground but be prepared to seek peace through restraint. This is not the time to exercise false pride! Unfortunately the Trump administration informed four top State Department management officials that their services were no longer needed as part of an effort to "clean house." Patrick Kennedy, served for nine years as the “Undersecretary for Management,” “Assistant Secretaries for Administration and Consular Affairs” Joyce Anne Barr and Michele Bond, as well as “Ambassador” Gentry Smith, director of the Office for Foreign Missions. Most of the United States Ambassadors to foreign countries have also been dismissed, including the ones to South Korea and Japan. This leaves the United States without the means of exercising diplomacy rapidly, when needed. These positions are political appointments, and require the President’s nomination and the Senate’s confirmation. This has not happened! Moreover, diplomatically our country is severely handicapped at a time when tensions are as hot as any time since the Cold War. Without following expert advice or consent and the necessary input from the Unites States Congress, the decisions are all being made by a man who claims to know more than the generals do, yet he has only the military experience of a cadet at “New York Military Academy.” A private school he attended as a high school student, from 1959 to 1964. At that time, he received educational and medical deferments from the Vietnam War draft. Trump said that the school provided him with “more training than a lot of the guys that go into the military.” His counterpart the unhinged Kim Jong-un has played with what he considers his country’s military toys, since April 11th of 2012. To think that these are the two world leaders, protecting the planet from a nuclear holocaust….

Mosseri’s answer to the important question was perfect by Facebook standards: “Technology isn’t good or bad—it just is,” he wrote. “Social media is a great amplifier. We need to do all we can responsibly to magnify the good and address the bad.” But nothing “just is,” especially Instagram. Instagram isn’t designed to be a neutral technology, like electricity or computer code. It’s an intentionally crafted experience, with an impact on its users that is not inevitable, but is the product of a series of choices by its makers about how to shape behavior. Instagram trained its users on likes and follows, but that wasn’t enough to create the emotional attachment users have to the product today. They also thought about their users as individuals, through the careful curation of an editorial strategy, and partnerships with top accounts. Instagram’s team is expert at amplifying “the good.” When it comes to addressing “the bad,” though, employees are concerned the app is thinking in terms of numbers, not people. Facebook’s top argument against a breakup is that its “family of apps” evolution will be better for users’ safety. “If you want to prevent interference in elections, if you want to reduce[…]

So, in summary: The market for Negro writers is very limited. Jobs as professional writers, editorial assistants, publisher's readers, etc., are almost non-existent. Hollywood insofar as Negroes are concerned, might just as well be controlled by Hitler. The common courtesies of decent travel, hotel and restaurant accommodations, politeness from doormen, elevatormen, and hired attendants in public places is practically everywhere in America denied Negroes, whether they be writers or not. Black authors, too, must ride in Jim Crow cars. These are some of our problems. What can you who are writers do to help us solve them? What can you, our public, do to help us solve them? My problem, your problem. No, I'm wrong! It is not a matter of mine and yours. It is a matter of ours. We are all Americans. We want to create the American dream, a finer and more democratic America. I cannot do it without you. You cannot do it omitting me. Can we march together then? But perhaps the word march is the wrong word—suggesting soldiers and armies. Can we not put our heads together and think and plan—not merely dream—the future America? And then create it with our hands? A land where even a Negro writer can make a living, if he is a good writer. And where, being a Negro, he need not be a secondary American. We do not want any secondary Americans. We do not want a weak and imperfect democracy. We do not want poverty and hunger and prejudice and fear on the part of any portion of our population. We want America to really be America for everybody. Let us make it so!

STIVERS: In Infinite Jest you didn't mention online services. Is there a reason for that? WALLACE: To do a comprehensive picture of what the technology of that era would be like would take thirty-five hundred pages, number one. In the book, what I was most inrerested in was people's relation to filmed entertainment. There were other things, too. This is one of the ways that rhe cuts hurt. There was some more stuff that would have explained, for instance, the allusions to a virtual reality fad. My guess is that what's going to happen is that these things are going to be real exciting for a while, but the sheer amount of information on them is going to be overwhelming. What is going to become particularly valuable are various nodes and filters and sites that help you lock in and specify sorts of things that you want. In the book, "Interlace TelEntertainment" has become one of those sites. In the future, it is likely that concentrations of economic power are also going to be concentrations of informational power. For instance, in a way it'll be online; anybody who wants to is going to be fiction goes abie to publish a book on the net. The obvious problem, if you ve ever worked at a magazine or at a publisher, is that a lot of people write books but very few of them are any good. The person who is on the net, who has got maybe two hours to find something that's any good, will go to ner t magazines that act as filters and exert some sort of editorial control, which of course will simply mean that online we have the same elitism. What frustrates me is that people have this idea thar the internet and the web are going to be this tremendous democratizing force, that people can do anything they want. What they fail to understand is that people can't receive it all-their heads will bleed, right? So people are going to need help choosing. The places they go to for that help will have the power. They will decide; they will have the credibility. This is good since it isn't exactly the way it is in the publishing and informational world now but it isn't entirely different either.

As early as November 1966, the Red Guard Corps of Beijing Normal University had set their sights on the Confucian ancestral home in Qufu County in Shandong Province. Invoking the language of the May Fourth movement, they proceeded to Qufu, where they established themselves as the Revolutionary Rebel Liaison State to Annihilate the Old Curiosity Shop of Confucius. Within the month they had totally destroyed the Temple of Confucius, the Kong Family Mansion, the Cemetery of Confucius (including the Master’s grave), and all the statues, steles, and relics in the area... In January 1967 another Red Guard unit editorialized in the People’s Daily: To struggle against Confucius, the feudal mummy, and thoroughly eradicate . . . reactionary Confucianism is one of our important tasks in the Great Cultural Revolution. And then, to make their point, they went on a nationwide rampage, destroying temples, statues, historical landmarks, texts, and anything at all to do with the ancient Sage... The Cultural Revolution came to an end with Mao’s death in 1976. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping (1904–97) became China’s paramount leader, setting China on a course of economic and political reform, and effectively bringing an end to the Maoist ideal of class conflict and perpetual revolution. Since 2000, the leadership in Beijing, eager to advance economic prosperity and promote social stability, has talked not of the need for class conflict but of the goal of achieving a “harmonious society,” citing approvingly the passage from the Analects, “harmony is something to be cherished” (1.12). The Confucius compound in Qufu has been renovated and is now the site of annual celebrations of Confucius’s birthday in late September. In recent years, colleges and universities throughout the country—Beijing University, Qufu Normal University, Renmin University, Shaanxi Normal University, and Shandong University, to name a few—have established Confucian study and research centers. And, in the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing Olympic Committee welcomed guests from around the world to Beijing with salutations from the Analects, “Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar?” and “Within the fours seas all men are brothers,” not with sayings from Mao’s Little Red Book. Tellingly, when the Chinese government began funding centers to support the study of the Chinese language and culture in foreign schools and universities around the globe in 2004—a move interpreted as an ef f ort to expand China’s “soft power”—it chose to name these centers Confucius Institutes... The failure of Marxism-Leninism has created an ideological vacuum, prompting people to seek new ways of understanding society and new sources of spiritual inspiration. The endemic culture of greed and corruption—spawned by the economic reforms and the celebration of wealth accompanying them—has given rise to a search for a set of values that will address these social ills. And, crucially, rising nationalist sentiments have fueled a desire to fi nd meaning within the native tradition—and to of f set the malignant ef f ects of Western decadence and materialism. Confucius has thus played a variety of roles in China’s twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At times praised, at times vilified, he has been both good guy and bad guy. Yet whether good or bad, he has always been somewhere on the stage. These days Confucius appears to be gaining favor again, in official circles and among the people. But what the future holds for him and his teachings is difficult to predict. All we can say with any certainty is that Confucius will continue to matter.

Piers Morgan Piers Morgan is a British journalist best known for his editorial work for the Daily Mirror from 1995 through 2004. He is also a successful author and television personality whose recent credits include a recurring role as a judge on NBC’s America’s Got Talent. A controversial member of the tabloid press during Diana’s lifetime, Piers Morgan established a uniquely close relationship with the Princess during the 1990s. I mentioned I’d been in contact with her mother. “Oh crikey, that sounds dangerous!” “She’s a feisty woman, isn’t she?” William giggled. “Granny’s great fun after a few gin and tonics.” “Sh, William,” Diana said, giggling too. “My mother’s been a tremendous source of support to me. She never talks publicly; she’s just there for me.” “And what about William’s other granny?” “I have enormous respect for the Queen; she has been so supportive, you know. People don’t see that side of her, but I do all the time. She’s an amazing person.” “Has she been good over the divorce?” “Yes, very. I just want it over now so I can get on with my life. I’m worried about the attacks I will get afterward.” “What attacks?” “I just worry that people will try and knock me down once I am out on my own.” This seemed unduly paranoid. People adored her. I asked William how he was enjoying Eton. “Oh, it’s great, thanks.” “Do you think the press bother you much?” “Not the British press, actually. Though the European media can be quite annoying. They sit on the riverbank watching me rowing with their cameras, waiting for me to fall in! There are photographers everywhere if I go out. Normally loads of Japanese tourists taking pictures. All saying “Where’s Prince William?’ when I’m standing right next to them.” “How are the other boys with you?” “Very nice. Though a boy was expelled this week for taking ecstasy and snuff. Drugs are everywhere, and I think they’re stupid. I never get tempted.” “Does matron take any?” laughed Diana. “No, Mummy, it gives her hallucinations.” “What, like imagining you’re going to be king?” I said. They both giggled again. “Is it true you’ve got Pamela Anderson posters on your bedroom wall?” “No! And not Cindy Crawford, either. They did both come to tea at the palace, though, and were very nice.” William had been photographed the previous week at a party at the Hammersmith Palais, where he was mobbed by young girls. I asked him if he’d had fun. “Everyone in the press said I was snogging these girls, but I wasn’t,” he insisted. Diana laughed. “One said you stuck your tongue down her throat, William. Did you?” “No, I did not. Stop it, Mummy, please. It’s embarrassing.” He’d gone puce. It was a very funny exchange, with a flushed William finally insisting: “I won’t go to any more public parties; it was crazy. People wouldn’t leave me alone.” Diana laughed again. “All the girls love a nice prince.” I turned to more serious matters. “Do you think Charles will become king one day?” “I think he thinks he will,” replied Diana, “but I think he would be happier living in Tuscany or Provence, to be honest.” “And how are you these days--someone told me you’ve stopped seeing therapists?” “I have, yes. I stopped when I realized they needed more therapy than I did. I feel stronger now, but I am under so much pressure all the time. People don’t know what it’s like to be in the public eye, they really don’t.

All the experts proved what we’ve all known all along. That they are full of shit. They all got it so wrong they needed cover and when they saw something, no matter how asinine, it became gospel to cover their abject failure. Still, the left wouldn’t feel sorry for itself for long. First it picked up the Russian spy story and started pushing it to every devastated reporter who would listen. Then it did everything it had told us the Trump supporters would do if Hillary won. Think about it. For weeks leading up to the election, we had been hearing about all the horrible things Donald Trump would force his supporters to do if he lost. DJT wouldn’t accept the defeat they were all so sure was coming. The editorial boards at the New York Times and the Washington Post both ran many articles warning us about the chaos that was about to ensue. According to popular opinion, Trump supporters were going to riot in the streets, refuse to accept the results of the election, and begin some kind of underground coup against the duly elected president, Hillary Clinton. They would start a second civil war. The streets would become absolute anarchy. And when things didn’t go the way the Democrats had wanted them to go, what happened? Let’s see. They held riots in the streets. (Check.) They refused to accept the results of the election, cooking up one of the strangest spy-movie stories I’ve ever heard in order to maintain their collective delusion. (Check.) Then they formed an underground group of online keyboard warriors called “the Resistance,” dedicated to taking down my father one stupid hashtag at a time. Prominent journalists, liberal activists, and actors have all identified themselves as proud members of “the Resistance” on Twitter. When I’m attacked by an outraged mob online, their voices are usually among the loudest. (And Check.)

The editorial in the current Dickinsonian (which I thought was a very good editorial) quotes a previous president as stating it in these words: “The grand design of education is to excite, rather than pretend to satisfy, an ardent thirst for information; and to enlarge the capacity of the mind, rather than to store it with knowledge, however useful.” My own inclination would be to state the goal in more operational terms: “to prepare students to serve, and be served by, the present society.” By this I mean that a college, operating through the program its faculty chooses to design, will influence its students to be a more constructive building force in society and to do this in a way that helps them find their own legitimate needs, psychic and material, better served, than if they had not participated in the college program.

What works: Stories about undocumented immigrants killing Americans Stories about citizens standing up to the government bureaucracy Stories about college students disrespecting the flag Stories about hate crime hoaxes Stories about liberal media outlets suppressing the truth And, whenever possible, stories involving attractive women (They could be the hero or the villain, it didn’t matter, but they had to be attractive.) “Job one is to titillate the audience,” the former producer said. “For celebrity stories, I had to pick the sexiest photos. And then I’d still hear, ‘Can you find hotter photos of her?’ Sigh. Okay, we’ll spend another thousand bucks on three photos from Getty.” It got to the point where the producer knew, without being told, which specific photos of Angelina Jolie the execs would expect to see. This sexualized approach spilled over to other parts of the show. If it was a quiet news day and the producers needed to fill a spare block, “we would look and see, what are the locals doing?” Fox tapped into its network of stations in big cities all across the country. “Then we would Google around to find the hottest reporter.” Workers striking in Detroit or rush hour flooding in Houston? Sometimes that’s how the editorial call was made.

When I filed my stories on the ‘Children of the Tsunami’ I had thought there was no special eloquence needed to convey such visceral sadness and loss. Children dead in their thousands in one of the worst natural disasters the country had experienced—this was a story that told itself. But that night, after the telecast, I got a call from a friend who said, ‘Do we really have to watch this depressing stuff on television right now?’—as if life’s grim reality was an optional item on a movie menu in a hotel room and you could pick out only the cheery stuff to view. In several of my reports I actually began editorializing more than ever before, appealing directly to those vacationing in happier, sunnier spots to pause and at least think about these children. The callousness of the well-heeled was eye-opening. To be reminded that for a section of Indian society the deaths of the children of poor fisherfolk mattered not at all was both disconcerting and disturbing.

However, the reality is that you do not need to be motivated to take action.

They were ready to permanently resolve what they referred to as “the Indian problem.” As one western newspaper editorialized: “The American people need the country the Indians now occupy; many of our people are out of employment; the masses need some new excitement. An Indian war would do no harm, for it must come, sooner or later.

For the First Few Weeks of a New Group 1. What section of the newspaper do you read first—funnies, sports, world news, local news, editorial, business? Why? 2. What vacation or big trip (either as a child or as an adult) did you enjoy the most? 3. When you are lost, which of the following are you most likely to do? a. stop and ask for directions b. check a map c. drive around until you find the place you’re looking for d. not admit to anyone that you’re lost 4. When you undress at night, do you tend to put your clothes on a hanger, fold them over a chair, stuff them into a hamper, or leave them on the floor? Be honest! For Established Groups After a few weeks, history-giving questions can come right out of the sermon or biblical text. While tied to the message, they still need to be safe and nonthreatening. Some examples: 1. (for a message on the miracle of Lazarus): What is the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen? 2. (for a message on the Prodigal Son): Which of the following characters in the story do you most identify with—and why? a. the father b. the rebel son c. the “good” brother d. the friends at the party e. another character: __________ 3. (for a message on Matthew 7:1–5): Which phrase(s) best describe(s) the attitudes in the home you grew up in—and why? a. high expectations b. live and let live c. harsh d. tolerant e. merciful

The presence of Fascism anywhere constitutes a threat to peace, and you do not need to debate it.

2 Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union—and take its side. We tend to assume that institutions will automatically maintain themselves against even the most direct attacks. This was the very mistake that some German Jews made about Hitler and the Nazis after they had formed a government. On February 2, 1933, for example, a leading newspaper for German Jews published an editorial expressing this mislaid trust: We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in [Nazi newspapers]; they will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob. They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check…and they clearly do not want to go down that road. When one acts as a European power, the whole atmosphere tends towards ethical reflection upon one’s better self and away from revisiting one’s earlier oppositional posture. Such was the view of many reasonable people in 1933, just as it is the view of many reasonable people now. The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do. Revolutionaries sometimes do intend to destroy institutions all at once.