Leonard Pitts, Jr. was my favorite columnist for years. I shared so many of his articles with my journalism students that it prompted one boy to say to me: "If you love Leonard Pitts so much, why don't you marry him?" (As in, "If you love ice cream so much, why don't you marry it?" Ah, teaching in high school...)
Then one year, Pitts was the keynote speaker at our state journalism convention. I was beside myself with excitement, telling my students to look forward to this with enthusiasm!
And then Leonard PItts got up to the podium. First, he complained about the lighting annoying him. Not in a cute, funny way, but in a grumpy, mean way. And then, in a room full of 1,000 teens who are interested in journalism, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist began to speak about...race relations.
Now, say what you want about this generation, but from what I've seen, they're a pretty tolerant bunch. I've learned this by spending more hours with teens than any adult human should probably spend with them, and I've learned this by watching the 21 Jump Street movie starring Channing Tatum. For the record, I pretty much hate all movies and practically never watch any. But I was on a very long flight. I had already watched The Iron Lady about Margaret Thatcher, and then I picked 21 Jump Street next. (Is there anyone else in the universe who has seen both of these movies -- not to mention in one sitting?!)
Anyway, Channing Tatum is pretending to be a high school student, and he tries to act cool by bullying someone. Then, all the cool kids yell at him for being intolerant! This obviously further supports my own anecdotal evidence that this group of journalism students did not need to hear a speech about racial strife more than it needed to hear one about, say, HOW TO BE A JOURNALIST.
The kids started squinting, squirming and looking around in a confused manner. My students, in particular, looked askance at me. This is the guy you were so excited about? I was mortified.
It's taken me years to somewhat and gradually forgive Leonard Pitts. I shared a column of his for the first time in quite a while this week. It's about Manti Te'o and how a guy could think a person who didn't exist was his girlfriend. Here is an excerpt:
"...the streets are filled with people who pass one another yet never see one another, sit next to one another yet never share so much as a nod of acknowledgement, so enrapt are they – we – in words and images on tiny screens. Indeed, if the ’70s were the Me Decade and the ’80s were the Greed Decade, it seems entirely likely historians of the future will remember this as the Screen Decade, the years spent looking down."
Okay, Leonard Pitts, Jr. Your writing is wooing me back slowly. But I'm still not going to marry you.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/27/3201031/manti-teo-story-offers-lessons.html
Here's the link to the column.
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