Minor Epiphany

Inspirational. Timeless. The One you've been waiting for. These words/phrases in your experience probably best describe a Disney direct-to-video movie trailer. I recently saw one particularly egregious example, involving Tinkerbell and a land full of other similar fairies that nearly made my Dr. Pepper go out my nose in amusement when the narrator made the announcement: "The Wait Is Over." I was not aware I had been waiting. Need creation taken to the extreme, I suppose. Then again, how else is Disney supposed to sell such saccharine vacuity if not by creating a need?

It is intriguing, and sad, that such hyperbole is applied today for the basest of reasons, i.e., to sell product that generally does not live up to the hype that is heaped upon it. Hyperbole loses all of its impact when used liberally, as any regular viewer of Disney trailers is painfully aware. Saving your adulation for the right moment and the right thing will make others perk up and listen when yo have something real to rave about.

Which is why I hope I have saved my adulation for the right moment here, because I found something tonight that I consider truly remarkable. It is one of the most beautiful pieces of essaymanship that I have read in a great while. It is, dare I say, Inspirational and Timeless. And maybe the one you've been waiting for, if you are discouraged by evil and boneheadedness.

The article is written by a woman named Susannah Black, and it concerns the joy (and the necessity, by odd extension) of writing. Writing in order to philosophize, writing in order to cheer, writing in order to convince. Her style is simple, but powerful. In many ways it was an eye opener for me, because everything she writes about in this piece is concerned with why I started this blog in the first place. She meaningfully and convincingly ties thought to action, the written word to impetus, the power of speech to the ability to move. 

She ties God and a sinful world together, accurately describes their proper relationship to each other, and proceeds to infuse that relationship with a kind of whimsical joy. Her writing treads lightly, because she realizes that writing that is true and good is not of this world.

I hope I am not over-hyping her work, but it quite honestly almost brought me to tears in that it hit so close to home for me. Take a read for yourself and tell me what you think.

Photo by Antonio Litterio, via Wikipedia.

Opinion Vs. Truth

Rush Limbaugh

In my rather short experience regarding talk radio, be it conservative or liberal, I have detected an overarching trend that all talk shows on the radio dial exhibit, It is not that these shows all spew lies and deceit for the entirety of their running time. Few of them do that. On the contrary, many of these shows utilize the same news stories, talk about the same subjects, cite the same facts and figures, and generally agree on the facts of the latest headlines. However, it is here that the truth in many respects ends. Listeners are not listening to talk radio to hear the facts; they are listenng to hear the host's interpretation of the facts.

How trustworthy are these interpretations? It depends. The modern political talk show world is plagued with agendas, left and right. Glenn Beck would have you believe that the world will end with Barack Obama's second term and that George Soros controls everything on the left. Neal Boortz would have you believe that killing a child is a womn's personal decision and a right to be protected. And finally, the "doctor of democracy," the god of the radio talk show universe Rush Limbaugh, would have you believe that any education that does not directly tie into "job training" of one sort or another is a monumentally idiotic waste of time and money.

The other hosts' contentions put aside, Rush Limbaugh's assertion regarding education, particularly the liberal arts, strikes a powerfully sour note with me. If you will recall, in my Thanksgiving post I gave thanks for a fantastic liberal arts education that has gotten me several of the jobs that I have held in my lifetime. I hold a B.A. in English Literature and it was worth every penny. But I would rather give Martin Cothran the intellectual floor here and point you all to an excellent article he wrote published to Memoria Press's web site. He does a fantastic job of disassembling Limbaugh's senseless rant against a liberal arts education. It is worth the read.