Cagle World

We use euphemisms to soften reality. We do it all the time when forced to discuss things we would rather not discuss or even acknowledge. Death comes to mind.

I’ve completed an exhaustive study and determined that death affects one out of one human beings. Still, we’d rather not talk about it or we try to make it a bit more digestible. After all, it sounds much nicer to say he’s “passed away” than he’s dead.

Employers are good at this. “We’re going in a different direction” is much more polite than “You’re fired.”

Much of our interaction with our kids is laced with euphemisms. When my daughters were young, I found myself adopting certain euphemisms into my daily lexicon. I can remember, when I worked for the Justice Department office in Philadelphia, excusing myself from an important meeting by saying, “I need to find the ‘potty.’”

The problem with euphemisms is they can be used to deceive others and even ourselves. History is replete with state-sanctioned euphemisms designed to camouflage the truly horrible. For example, the “Final Solution” made for much better propaganda fodder than the “systematic murder of six million Jews.”

Today, in the U.S., discussions about hot-button issues such as abortion are often lessons in euphemistic gymnastics, performed with amazing skill and dexterity in the White House briefing room.

A few days ago, a reporter asked President Joe Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, a very direct and simple question. Does the president believe “a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being?”

The answer ought to be just as simple, especially for anyone who is aware of ultrasound technology.

Instead, Psaki answered, “Are you asking me if the president supports a woman’s right to choose? He does.”

That wasn’t the question and Psaki knew it. But to answer “yes” would have been an admission of what an abortion is and what it entails. It’s much easier to couch support for a barbaric procedure in terms such as, “a woman’s right to choose” and “reproductive rights.” You can change the language but you can’t change reality.

It seems we’ve crossed yet another weird sociological and moral threshold when the leader of the free world, for purely political reasons, refuses to admit that a 15-week-old unborn baby is human. For an administration that often scolds its critics for failing to consider science, it seems more than willing to ignore biological reality. If you’re interested, WebMD offers this description of an unborn 15-week-old:

“Look closely, and you’ll be able to see a network of fine blood vessels forming. Baby’s muscles are getting stronger, and they are testing them out by moving around, making fists, and trying out different facial expressions.”

That certainly sounds like a human to me.

The reason the reporter’s question was relevant and posed to Psaki in the first place was that in the fall, the U.S. Supreme court is scheduled to hear arguments on Mississippi’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks. In the past, the president, through spokespeople, has called such prohibitions on abortion “an assault on women’s rights.”

Such language has been part of the abortion debate for decades. Proponents of legal abortion would like you to believe that what is at stake in the Mississippi case and other similar cases is a woman’s “right to choose.” There’s nothing new about this defense, of course.

What is new is that we know a lot more about unborn babies than we did in 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade.

We know that some 62 million abortions have been performed in this country since 1973 and we can clearly see, through scientific innovation, the humanness in an unborn baby.

But for Psaki to admit than a 15-week-old unborn baby is human would be to admit that abortion and the administration’s support of it really isn’t about choice at all, no matter how much it tries to euphemize its way around the issue.

Because if it is, then we inevitably have to answer the question, “What choice have we really made?”

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Copyright 2021 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. You can reach him at [email protected].

Try to hit a golf ball. Go ahead. It’s just sitting there, on its little tee, smiling at you. It looks easy. It’s not.

Golf is an excruciatingly difficult sport to play, much less master. At the professional level, it’s really hard to win a golf tournament. Harder still to win a PGA tour event. There are dozens of very accomplished golfers who go their entire careers without winning a tournament. For PGA tour pros, you’re not out there playing for Team X against Team Y. It’s you against 150 other guys, and you have to beat every one of them.

Jon Rahm is one of the best golfers in the world. Last weekend, at the Memorial tournament in Ohio, he was in the middle of the round of a lifetime. He had already made a hole-in-one and had played his way to a six-shot lead. With only one round remaining, unless he was abducted by aliens in the middle of it, Rahm was going to win the tournament and $1.6 million. Then, in a society that has become increasingly hysterical and overreactive, we witnessed, in front of network TV cameras, a hysterical overreaction.

Rahm, it was learned during the day, tested positive for COVID-19 and would therefore be “withdrawn” from, i.e. kicked out of the tournament.

PGA officials dismissed Rahm with as much ceremony as Michael Corleone dismissed longtime consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather – “You’re out, Tom.” – and with even less tact. They grabbed Rahm, on live television, while he was still on the course, and delivered the news. Understandably, Rahm was visibly shaken though gracious in his post-ejection comments to the media.

Aside from the PGA’s sausage-fingered handling of the matter, it’s fair to question whether such a drastic step was necessary.

Golf, more than any other sport is, even under normal circumstances, socially distanced. In fact, part of the appeal of golf, at least for me is its social distancing. For PGA tour golfers, during tournament play, they’re on the course with their caddies, their clubs and their thoughts. That’s it.

Since President Biden and Dr. Fauci gave us permission to go out and play, I see people, every day, outdoors, at the park, in the grocery store, in church, without masks, functioning normally. (And by the way, if you’re vaccinated and it makes you feel better to wear a mask, or two masks, or a space helmet, go for it. Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.) But how many of those people have been tested for COVID or vaccinated, or might be walking around asymptomatic as Rahm had been? We assume a certain level of risk when we leave our homes.

It appears Rahm was not vaccinated, though that hasn’t been confirmed. I’m not sure why he wasn’t vaccinated, but that’s his choice. I say this as someone who is vaccinated. But Rahm is a healthy, 26-year-old athlete. His chances of dying from COVID are, according to the CDC, in the neighborhood of one percent or less.

But what about him transmitting the virus to someone else? It’s a fair question but the wrong one, at least in this case. The question should have been, could he play one round of golf without putting anyone else at risk? Yes, he could have.

Yet, Rahm was exiled and within the aftermath came a fair amount of victim-blaming by the media. Rahm’s story is now a “cautionary tale” or, as New York magazine wrote, “a great vaccine PSA.”

Yes, if only he been vaccinated, this entire fiasco could have been avoided. Possibly. But perhaps Rahm, as a healthy 26-year-old, didn’t feel comfortable receiving a vaccine approved for emergency use. In fact, the lack of full FDA approval is what’s holding many American adults back from getting vaccinated.

Perhaps the Rahm story will inspire a more reasonable response the next time something like this happens and there will be a next time.

In a June 8 Yahoo sports column, Henry Bushnell asks, “If Rahm felt well enough to play, and if his competitors were either protected by vaccination or unconcerned by the virus to an extent that they would refuse vaccination, why couldn’t Rahm play on?”

An excellent question. At least someone other than Rahm is asking.

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Copyright 2021 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. You can reach him at [email protected].

Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes. I didn’t write that. It was actually Billy Joel in “Say goodbye to Hollywood” from the Turnstiles album. Love that album, which I’ve always thought was very underrated.

The point is he’s right and there is, perhaps, no more bittersweet, triumphantly-excruciating, joyfully-heartbreaking goodbye than the one we say to our children.

I’m reminded of this now because it’s graduation season and our kids are heading out, on their own, for the first time. Whether the independence is actual or perceived, the result is the same.

It is interesting that young people, especially those heading to college, though not yet involved in coursework, believe they’ve suddenly become smarter, for no reason other than the rising of the sun.

A teenager who couldn’t microwave a burrito a month ago is now an expert on a wide range of topics, from international affairs to home renovation.

Moreover we, as parents, become stupider, for no reason other than the rising of the sun. This is a byproduct of what behaviorists, and me, call the “Good riddance affect.” This phenomenon is part of the natural order of things, provided by God as a gift to parents so we don’t miss our little know-it-alls quite so much.

In fact, there have been rare cases in which parents have called university admissions offices to see if they might consider taking their sweet treasure a few weeks early.

“But the dorms won’t be open.”

“Can’t he just hang out on campus?”

Not that I’ve ever made such a call or imagined how the conversation might go if I phoned, anonymously, and disguised my voice just to test the waters to see, you know, if there was any precedent for such thing.

No, no. We’ll miss our children terribly. But life does go on, after all. Can’t sit around moping all day long.

What am I going to do, for example, with two fewer cars in the driveway? I can either look, mournfully, out the window, at the empty spaces or I can do something productive, such as, I don’t know, buy a Corvette. I spotted a bright yellow one online.

“It’s very bold,” I told my wife. “It makes a statement.”

“What’s the statement?” she asked. “I’M YELLOW!?”

She had a point. How about a Miata?

“It’s so small,” she said. “It looks like someone trying to have a midlife crisis but can’t afford it.”

Touché.

I found another place online that sells cars no one really needs. “Supercars.” Not the real name but it might as well be. It boasts a healthy inventory of jacked up cars under the tagline, “We specialize in impractical vehicles for middle-aged men.” Sign me up!

But even Supercars didn’t have a car dumb enough for me. So, I dream.

The kids meanwhile, unaware of my plans for their parking spaces, or their rooms, continue to plan their exits. That’s when they’re actually here.

When children are getting ready to leave the nest, home turns into a kind of bed and breakfast. For them, not for us. They have business to conduct – parties, photos, dinner engagements with associates. Every once in a while, we’ll catch a glimpse of someone purported to live here but that might just be the dog.

And yet, we anticipate the moment when we say, “Goodbye.” For real. We give them our best, last-minute advice, we hug them and drive away. And in that moment, as we peak in the rearview mirror, all of the “firsts” and “lasts” rush passed us – the first day of kindergarten, middle school, braces, birthday parties, high school, sports, band concerts, driving, dating. We hope we’ve done it right. How will be know? How can we?

The house will be quiet; quieter than we’re used to. The cars will be gone, the rooms empty, save for the reminders; stuffed animals, books, blankets, shoes. They’ll be back. But it won’t be the same. It can’t be. They know it and we know it.

Yes, they’ll come back but they’ll leave again. They’ll always leave. I didn’t understand this when I left home. I do now. Billy Joel did:

“Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes. I’m afraid it’s time for goodbye again.”

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Copyright 2021 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. You can reach him at [email protected].

The disappointing April jobs report should surprise absolutely no one, given that we now have a government more interested in providing incentives for people not to work rather than paving the way to gainful employment.

What this approach fails to account for is the value of work itself. There is something to be said for and gained by getting up in the morning, showing up at a place of business, putting in an honest day’s work and collecting a paycheck. That doesn’t mean all work is fun or even fulfilling but it all has value.

Of course, I didn’t always see things that way.

When I was a teenager, my mother worked as my talent agent. She was great at it. Unfortunately, her network of contacts went only as far as the world of minimum-wage, manual labor.

She worked the angles on my behalf, talking to bartenders, shop owners, grocery store managers. She landed me two busboy jobs, a few babysitting gigs, and a handful of snow-shoveling and grass-mowing jobs in the neighborhood. But her biggest score, by an overwhelming landslide, was the Enchanted Village.

It was a small store in a strip mall that sold Christmas items – decorations, wrapping paper, small gifts – and was owned and operated by the meanest man I have ever met. I’ll call him Wally.

One afternoon, my mother walked into the shop and asked Wally if he needed anyone after school. They talked for a while. My mother worked her magic. It was the first and only time in my life that I was hired without being interviewed.

You would think a guy who spent his days around twinkling lights and snow globes would have a bit of the Christmas spirit about him. But Wally saw Christmas as if it were a bully who pulled his pants down every afternoon at recess. It was his mortal enemy, a nemesis, a burden to be endured. I think Wally just wanted Christmas to lose interest and leave him alone.

The problem was Christmas kept coming back and rather than flail away at his invisible enemy, Wally redirected his rage toward his employees.

Wally was in his forties. He had a beer belly and a big, wild, salt and pepper moustache that seemed to be trying to overcome his entire face. His most distinguishing feature, however, was his absolute hatred of anyone under twenty-one.

One day, I was on my knees stocking shelves with boxes of red satin Christmas balls.
“Reverse them,” Wally ordered as he stood over me with his arms folded.

Reverse what? I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Reverse them!”

“Reverse” seemed like an odd word. My brain defined “reverse” as to move backwards. I think that’s what threw me. I looked at Wally. I didn’t say anything but I hoped my look told him I didn’t know what he wanted me to do or how he wanted me to “reverse” the red balls. He didn’t take the bait.

“Reverse them!” he yelled.

I figured I’d better do something. Maybe I’d guess right. So I took each box of balls and turned it around so the front of the box was facing the back of the shelf.

“No!! Idiot!”

When Wally yelled “No!” or “Stop!” he wasn’t just barking an order. It was more desperate than that, almost like he was watching some horrible tragedy—the Hindenburg disaster or the sinking of an ocean liner.

“Oh, No!”

Not being able to put up with my stupidity any longer, Wally grabbed the boxes of red balls and put them on the floor.

“Reverse them! Reverse them! Moron.”

He then took boxes of green balls from the shelf and put them where I had been stacking red balls and he put the red balls where the green ones were.

There is a point to this story. Yes, I hated the job. Yes, Wally was insane. But it wasn’t the last
job I would hate nor would Wally be my last combustible and unreasonable boss. I needed to learn how to deal with bad jobs and bad bosses. And, when it was over, I took my paycheck to the bank and deposited it – like an adult.

There are scores of jobs, right now, in the U.S. – well-paying jobs – that remain unfilled.

“I hear from too many employers throughout our state who can’t find workers. Nearly every sector in our economy faces a labor shortage,” Montana’s Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte said last week. Gianforte announced that his state is no longer accepting the federal government’s extra unemployment payments.

Hopefully, there are more governors out there like Gianforte, who understand that paying able-bodied Americans to stay home is bad for business, and that it’s even worse for Americans.

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Copyright 2021 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. You can reach him at [email protected].

I’ve been hacked. Officially. Someone pretending to be me – go figure – has applied for unemployment benefits in my name.

By the way, if you, whoever you are, really want to serve as my stuntman, there are a variety of situations in which you could actually be helpful to me. For example, the next student complaining about his or her grade would be a good start. Go for it, Pretend Me. You respond to the next email that begins, “Dear Professor: What can I do?!” My usual response of “How about turning back time and paying attention in February?” doesn’t seem to resonate.

Back to the identity theft.

Keep in mind, this is Kentucky’s fault. The state unemployment system suffered two data breaches last year. Initially, state officials said the personal information of Kentuckians was not at risk. Turns out, it was.

My pleas to the state of Kentucky, “Hey! This is the real me. I have a job!” have since been sucked into the vortex that is the state office of unemployment insurance. Go ahead. Give them a call and see what happens. Leave it to bureaucrats to come up with new ways not to deal with humans.

I rang them expecting to be put on hold for several hours. Fine. I had it all planned out. I was going to call from my desk phone and just listen to hold music all day while I graded assignments. However, in a subtle but brilliant tweak of the system, sitting on hold and working or watching bluegrass grow is no longer an option, at least not in Kentucky.

“Your call is very important to us…We’re experiencing very high call volume. Please try your call again later.” Click. I guess my call wasn’t that important after all.

Yes, they hang up you. It’s genius. They’ve built rudeness into the system so it seems completely routine. I’m not sure when “later” is because I’ve been trying this for weeks. But I’m no hayseed. I’ve been around the block a time or two. I’m beginning to suspect they’re really not going to be there later, or ever.

Undaunted, I went to the website, which looks like it was designed by me – not a compliment. Then, I saw it, in small print. My way around the system. The greatest idea in the history of bureaucratic circumvention.

“For those who speak Spanish, call…….” Do I dare? Yes. Yes, I do.

Surely, that line won’t be as busy. I’ll get right through. I rehearsed. “Hola. Como estas?” I dialed. Ringing. Ringing.

“Buenos tardes. Oficina de Seguro de Desempleo.”

“Um, um…Hola! Como estas?”

After that, I had nothing. I panicked. Then it dawned on me that the 30-year interim – since my college freshman Spanish class – of not speaking a word of Spanish to anyone would be a problem in a conversation, in Spanish, about fraudulent unemployment benefits.

Me duele la cabeza.

Back to the phone. I called again, and again, not in a normal way but in the way you might call a radio station contest line for Supertramp tickets back in the day. I didn’t work then and it’s not working now.

“Try again later.”

This leaves me with only one viable option. Show up. Go to the unemployment office, if there is one. As Tony Soprano once said, when explaining how to extract money from a borrower behind on his payments, “You gotta go over there.” Of course, the guy Tony sent “over there” was carrying a baseball bat, which is where the analogy breaks down, but you get the point.

I must admit, I’m kind of curious. What’s really going on over there? I imagine diabolical laughter, a la Vincent Price, when they see my number pop up. Well, no one will be laughing when I turn up, in the flesh, and declare, “I’m employed!” Bet they don’t hear that one very often.

Finally, and perhaps as a way for the office of unemployment to prove that it A. exists and B. is doing stuff, it sent me a three-page letter yesterday on how to reset my unemployment PIN because, you know, I’m unemployed.

I was invited to call if I had any questions.

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Copyright 2021 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. You can reach him at [email protected].

I knew it. I get the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine and three days later, “J&J vaccine paused due to blood clots.”

I have to admit I felt a little uneasy when I trudged into the local public library in an Orwellian procession of citizens on their way to inoculation. My hesitancy had nothing to do with the vaccine. The shot hurt a bit but I never let on, mostly because the elderly man next to me, who looked as if he’d seen the Civil War – not the Ken Burns series, the actual war – never even blinked.

My reluctance had everything to do with my natural tendency not to do what most everyone else believes is a good idea. This often works to my detriment. Holiday trash pick-up for example. All the neighbors have their cans at the curb. I don’t. “What could they know that I don’t?” Everything, as it turns out.

Now that I think of it, I can come up with several instances in my childhood when my tendency to swim upstream really didn’t help me.

I can remember, in junior high school, standing in the middle of two dozen or so of my classmates, most of whom – but not me – were throwing snowballs at teachers pulling into the parking lot. There I was, minding my Ps and Qs, doing the right thing, when an art teacher whom I recognized but didn’t know parted the crowd like the Red Sea and pointed directly at me.

“J’accuse!” she shouted. I didn’t know French but I knew whatever she said wasn’t good.

My plaintive cries of “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!” were ignored as I was dragged by my earlobe to the principal’s office.

In a similar incident when I was about 10 – as many of my childhood traumas involve snowballs – I was with a group of boys who were throwing snowballs at buses. I was the only one not throwing.

In this particular case, and in a highly unusual and unexpected turn of events, the driver stopped the bus, dismounted and gave chase while his passengers, noses pressed against their windows, viewed the unfolding drama. The other boys scattered while I stood there. After all, I hadn’t done anything. Then, the burly busman grabbed me by the arm.

“Where do you live?” I told him immediately, of course, assuming that he was merely in the exploratory stages of investigation and simply wanted some background information. Wrong again. I wintered in my room that year.

Given my history, and despite my skepticism in following government recommendations of any sort, I joined the crowd and got the vaccine.

I thought I was in the clear. No side effects, though I did naturally wonder if this vaccine push was nothing more than a deep-state cover to collect my DNA which, my wife predicts, will be used to build a superior life form and create millions of progeny. Obviously. But no one said anything about blood clots.

I felt better when I learned that the clots were discovered in only six of some six million who received the vaccine. A minuscule percentage. Fine. But as my physician wife says, “If it happens to you, it’s a hundred percent.”

Nevertheless, I was feeling OK about it until I made the dreadful mistake of doing some research online. Now, I’m not only convinced I’ll develop a blood clot, but I’m pretty sure I also have Adams-Oliver syndrome, Papillitis and hysterical pregnancy.

The good news is that in another week or so, I’ll be impervious to COVID and I can make a long overdue visit to my mother who had banned me from the premises, I think because of COVID but I can’t be sure.

However, I do believe in planning for the worst. So, in the event that something other than COVID kills me, I’ve been workshopping a few epitaphs, you know, for the headstone.

“The government killed me.” Not married to this one. “At least I didn’t have COVID.” This one will be dated in 20 years. Or my personal favorite, “I was just minding my own business…” It works on so many levels.

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Copyright 2021 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. You can reach him at [email protected].

This is almost too easy but I can’t resist. I was actually going to write a column about President Biden’s dog, Major, biting people; also among the lowest of the hanging fruits. “President’s dog a Major pain.” It writes itself.

But then, out of nowhere, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt served up some choice morsels and made an excellent case for entry into the Stupid Things Journalists Said Hall of Fame.

If you’re playing catchup, Holt, who was receiving a lifetime achievement award for journalism at the Murrow Symposium on Wednesday, said journalists don’t need to provide both sides of an issue, that fairness is “overrated” and “the idea that we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does not reflect the world we find ourselves in.”

He also said the media should not be in the business of “providing an open platform for misinformation.” This, of course, is correct. Misinformation is more of a Facebook and Twitter thing.

“That the sun sets in the west is a fact. Any contrary view does not deserve our time or attention,” Holt said.

Again, Holt is correct but unless I’m missing something, no one is debating that the sun sets in the west. Even with my lousy sense of direction, I’m willing to stipulate.

There is, however, fierce debate over a number of issues that weren’t settled at the dawn of creation – illegal immigration, abortion, economic policy to name a few.

In the interest of context, Holt also said, “Decisions to not give unsupported arguments equal time are not a dereliction of journalistic responsibility or some kind of agenda, in fact, it’s just the opposite.”

What constitutes an “unsupported argument”? There are, for example, plenty of bona fide scientists who question the causes of and solutions to climate change. But, I suppose that as long the science is “settled,” Holt is right. The other side doesn’t deserve a hearing. Contrary arguments are unsupported by the kind of evidence we, in the media, deem relevant. In other words, your evidence runs contrary to our conclusions.

That Holt’s comments were lauded by his media colleagues on the left and liberal academics is not a surprise. This stuff is being taught in journalism schools throughout the country. Nor should it be a major revelation that Holt’s twist on truth has made its way into straight news reporting.

In a recent story about girls’ sports, CNN news reporter Devan Cole wrote, “It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there are no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.” Remember, this is a news story, not an opinion column.

I didn’t know the gender of either of my children before they were born. When they were born, I distinctly remember, in each case, the doctor saying, “It’s a girl!” The reason he said, “It’s a girl!” is because it was, in each case.

Thus, based on Holt’s comments, I can dismiss Cole’s assertion that there are no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth as complete rubbish.

On the other hand, if Holt can get buy-in for his fractured take on fairness, it could transcend journalism. It could also transform our criminal justice system. After all, you would only need to hear whichever side of a case that comported with your version of truth. Due process? Bah! We can have the preliminary hearing in the morning and get to the penalty phase by lunchtime.

Journalism is a pursuit of truth. A free press provides a necessary check on power. But remove objectivity, as Holt suggests, and journalists become either advocates or part of the resistance. I don’t know that I need to get another perspective on this.

After all, the sun sets in the west.

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Copyright 2021 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. You can reach him at [email protected].

I need someone to tell me what’s happening. Not a tinted version of events but what’s really happening. I make the request because mainstream (if there is such a thing) news outlets seem to fundamentally disagree about what’s important.

On Sunday morning, the top story on the Fox News website, complete with video, was rioting in west coast cities on the anniversary of Breonna Taylor’s death – a dozen or so arrests, vandalism, clashes with police. Sounded like a pretty big deal.

In the interest of balance (if there is such a thing) I went to CNN’s website. No mention of the riots.

As I write this, CNN’s top story is “Russia targeted U.S. elections in 2020.” This story is “breaking news” so it must be important. The subhead reads “An intelligence report identifies Russian efforts aimed at denigrating Biden and helping Trump.” The story is based on a U.S. intelligence report that also indicates “Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects.”

Back to the Fox News website. Crickets on the election story.

You can see the problem.

We have two, U.S.-based, international news organizations that appear to be operating in their own alternate universes.

Surely, news organizations, covering the same country, should at least be able to agree on the big stories. We expect some variety among the clickbait, the snouts and entrails of news websites – the “Look who’s drunk” and “Pop star wears Kleenex to Grammy’s” stories. But I’d like to believe there should be agreement on major issues.

The easy explanation is that each outlet (and this discussion is not confined to Fox and CNN, they just happen to be easy targets) is driving its own agenda. But there’s a more complicated discussion to be had regarding why the media has abdicated its responsibility to seek truth, opting instead to advance its own subjective version of reality.

Stories that run afoul of political orthodoxies aren’t reported because they don’t exist. Moreover, there’s really no interest in seeking balance on certain hot-button issues – abortion, immigration, gun control or pick another – because there is only one side worthy of representation. Thus, a big story for one news outlet isn’t even worthy of a mention for another. “Big” and “important” are no longer synonymous for “far-reaching” or “impactful.” Ideology is now the metric by which we measure importance.

There are some stories whose mere coverage transcends editorial judgement – natural disasters, elections, wars. Such events are covered because they have to be. There’s no decision to made, for example, as to whether we should cover presidential campaigns. How they’re covered and what’s reported is a different issue.

It’s not as if no one else has noticed. A recent poll by the Knight Foundation found that “Sixty-eight percent of Americans say they see too much bias in the reporting of news that is supposed to be objective as ‘a major problem.’”

Socially media exacerbates the problem, of course, especially when Facebook and Twitter now see themselves as independent arbiters of truth, allowing them to advance narratives they deem acceptable while extinguishing others. But Facebook and Twitter are not news organizations in and of themselves. There are not Facebook or Twitter reporters. Ground zero for journalistic malpractice is the newsroom, where editorial decisions are made.

It’s no mystery why young people often can’t distinguish between opinion and news reporting, two things that Walter Cronkite once said should have has much daylight between them “as the Bible and Playboy magazine.” A bit crass, maybe, but correct.

I deal with students everyday who will submit what they think is a news story which, in reality, is nothing more than an opinion column. Why? Because what’s being marketing by news outlets and what’s being consumed is often an amalgam of news, commentary, analysis and predetermined narrative. Is it any wonder an 18-year-old doesn’t know the difference?

You would think that with approval ratings only slightly north of the local parking authority, news organizations would feel some sense of urgency to restore order.

There are still excellent journalists doing wonderful work in news outlets throughout the country – from community newspapers to TV networks. But if the pendulum is ever going to swing back to objectivity, it’s going to need a push from those who really value truth.

It will take some hard work and self-awareness for news organizations to admit that we’re doing this wrong. On the other hand, it will take almost no effort to stay the course, cater to biases and tell us only what you think we should hear.

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Copyright 2021 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. You can reach him at [email protected].

The basketball game ended. Then, something happened that I haven’t seen.

Every member of the winning team stood and cheered the players they had just defeated; six members of the Asbury University women’s basketball team. There were only six Asbury players in uniform to laud. The rest of the team was in COVID quarantine.

The standing ovation was an acknowledgement by the winners, from West Virginia Tech, that they had just witnessed something unusual, something heroic. This was more than a ceremonial handshake or fist bump. This was a tribute to the extraordinary.

Tech took the last shot in a 72-72 game, a desperate three-pointer as the buzzer blared. It was perfect. The Tech players mobbed the shooter at midcourt. But as the defeated Asbury players left the floor, most of them in tears, the winning team and the crowd stood as one, in appreciation for six young women who had given every bit of themselves for each other and for those who weren’t here.

This is a good story and one that needs telling because you probably haven’t heard about it. Nor will you. It isn’t big enough. Small-college basketball. It wasn’t on TV and no one will be discussing it on sports talk radio tomorrow. But it happened.

The sports-as-a-metaphor-for-life theme is overused. But if there’s a better example of what a handful of young people are capable of when their greatest attributes are faith and commitment, I haven’t seen it, at least not in person.

On a rainy Saturday afternoon in Wilmore, KY, on Asbury’s campus, the Lady Eagles basketball took the floor in a River States Conference semifinal against a powerful West Virginia Tech team. The Eagles consisted of one senior starter and five freshmen. The remaining starters and leading scorers weren’t in the building. The purple and gray jerseys of those not here were draped over their seats on the bench.

With the same six players in uniform, the Eagles had already stunned a good Oakland City University (Indiana) team two days earlier, winning by 10 in the conference quarterfinal. It was the story of the year, at least so far. The conference had asked the Eagles if they even wanted to play the game.

“Not playing never entered our minds,” Eagles head coach Chad Mayes said.

But Tech would be a much taller order. A better team with its full roster of players against an Eagles team which would, once again, start four true freshmen, two of whom saw very little playing time during the season. It seemed only a matter of time before the upstarts would run out of gas and hit a wall. Truth is, it would have surprised no one had the Eagles lost by 25 – no one except the Eagles players themselves, who were unfazed by their circumstances.

Every time it looked as if Tech was ready to take control, the Eagles found a reserve, even taking an eight-point lead in the second half. This was Miracle, Hoosiers and Karate Kid in the making before our eyes.

Back and forth they went, as the lead changed hands multiple times in 40 minutes. With 53 seconds remaining, that game was tied at 72.

The Eagles had a chance to take the lead but barely missed a driving layup attempt that rolled around the rim and out. Tech would hold for one last shot.

With time running out and nowhere to go, a Tech player launched a three-pointer that seemed to rest, temporarily, on a shelf in midair. And down it went.

As the Tech players piled on one another at midcourt, there stood Asbury’s six – freshmen Kayla Harlow, Spencer Harvey, Trinity Shearer, Paige Taylor, Emma Strunk and senior Kelsey Johnson – drained, staring in disbelief at the scoreboard.

No, this wasn’t Hoosiers. Rocky, maybe, but not Hoosiers. And then it became something even better.

As the Tech players stood and applauded the six Eagles as they left the floor, I couldn’t help but think of what those who weren’t here, in this central Kentucky gym on Saturday, were missing.

It was perseverance in purple and gray. No excuses, no hesitation. It was mutual respect between rivals; a deep appreciation for one another, even those on the other side. It was selflessness embodied and a willingness to sacrifice, body and soul, for teammates.

A good story indeed. The heroes just happened to be basketball players.

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Copyright 2021 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. You can reach him at [email protected].

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

- 1 Corinthians 15:10

He couldn’t have been more than a kid, early twenties maybe, though he looked older. Life outdoors tends to age a person prematurely. He was homeless, addicted, alone.

I’ll call him “Daniel” and I met him at a homeless shelter where I was volunteering with my wife the other night. More accurately, Denise is the active volunteer, serving on boards, giving out scarves and blankets, getting to know the residents. Mostly, I tag along for support.

On this particular night, temperatures were in the teens and a steady snowfall covered the streets and sidewalks in front of the church where we waited for walk-ins.

Denise recognized Daniel from another shelter where she volunteers. She asked him how he was doing, what he was up to, showed him where he could sleep for the night and where to get some food in the kitchen.

For the four hours we were there, from 8 p.m. to midnight, Daniel left and returned a few times. At one point, he produced a drawing pad on which he had made a few sketches. He showed them to Denise and she made a fuss, as you would when one of your kids presents you with a few doodles.

A little later, Daniel asked us what the temperature was supposed to be tomorrow. It took a minute but it dawned on me that he wasn’t asking us about the weather in an effort to make small talk. He wanted to see if it was going to be warm enough to survive.

As we spoke to him, I couldn’t help but wonder. How did he get here? What led a young and seemingly healthy young man to an aimless existence on the streets? Certainly, addiction is part of the answer but only part. What happened in his past? Was he ever nurtured or encouraged by anyone?

Then, after the questions, came the realization that there are so many others, like Daniel, living life day-to-day; outdoors and forgotten.

It is true that a few homeless people are homeless by choice. Though able to work or even get back on their feet in a shelter, they choose homelessness instead of structure and rule-following. Denise will tell you that some of the men with whom she worked at the shelter simply walked away on their own rather than follow the house rules. Others were kicked out.

I had another thought as I spoke to Daniel. Could I have been him? With a slight alteration of circumstances, could I have wound up in the same situation due to job loss, financial ruin or illness?

Oh, we say, “Not me. Don’t be ridiculous. Those people are sick. They have problems. They can’t be helped and they don’t know how to help themselves.” Exactly.

There was a time when it was easy for me to disregard young men like Daniel. After all, in Philadelphia, there were hundreds of them. It was easy to walk by, not make eye contact, even snicker.

“Better him than me,” as if I were somehow impervious to personal catastrophe.

We’re all fragile, vulnerable, mortal. Ask the people of Texas where a winter storm has turned life upside down.

While politicians bicker about why it’s so cold and whose fault it is, millions of residents are freezing, without power or drinking water. Warming shelters have opened throughout to state. People who were warm and secure suddenly found themselves hungry, cold and in need of help.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, there are an estimated 553,742 people in the U.S. experiencing homelessness on a given night. In the Kentucky county where I live, 400
public school students were identified as homeless in 2019.

This is not a call to action to volunteer or donate to your local homeless shelter, though you may feel led to do that. Rather – and I’m speaking to myself as much as anyone – it’s a call to compassion and empathy.

The truth is there’s less daylight between Daniel and me than I was ever willing to admit.

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Copyright 2021 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. You can reach him at [email protected].