Talking last night to an old friend who was a neighbor during the anti-war (Vietnam) era and the fullness of the Civil Rights Movement, we asked ourselves how we became so passive and silent during the intervening years. Like so many we can come up with many worthy reasons, but the fundamental question still remains: what happened to us? We should have learned forever from Reagan, Nixon and others the folly of thinking that things must fall somewhere in between what our leaders said, and what we ourselves suspected and sometimes, even observed. It seems we learned to "overweight" officials and "underweight" our own observations and insights. We asked ourselves how we could hold on to the Obama-activism that swept the country and brought hope, because we did believe that " we were the ones we were waiting for." Now that the shooting star campaign and its courtship of the public has begun to morph into an "institution," we are forced to self-motivate. There was a suggestion by the President Elect that we dedicate ourselves to community service on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I like that idea and will do it, probably not perfectly, or forever, but I will try it out. I am trying to remember all the lessons I learned and once taught about the various kinds of journalists-even though new varieties such as bloggers now exist-and others are fading. Once with an elementary school class we marked up newspapers to see the parts that were "objective," the parts that were devoted to a point of view, "political," advertising no matter how cleverly handled," and "editorials," to offer the wisdom of the paper's editors. We used to have columnists and we still do, but they are a hard group to categorize. I am falling back on the "several sources" concept and reading from more sources and making my own "news summary." I wish I could say that clarity results, but it doesn't. I do know that paying attention to my personal experience and "overweighting" it helps me in understanding what is going on. The reading of blogs has taught us all that there are many valid representations of the truth. Perhaps this would help in self-directing ourselves into the kind of citizens we must be if we are to have the country we want to have.
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