Season 25: ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy,’ The WORD Vows

Donning his gorget and swashing his buckle, the WORD took a deep, cleansing breath and unbolted the door to the lead-lined isolation cave where he has spent 3-1/2 months, striding out into a hopeful dawn.
 

That’s right, you MAGA weinies, it’s morning in America again.
 

Bill & Hill were in the White House when the WORD launched 24 years ago — Man! How time flies when you’re having fun! — and journalism had not yet been redefined as 4-letter word (or, as AP, which recently has suffered a series of debilitating strokes, now says, 4 letter word . . . more on that later). 

Then came Dubya, temporarily labeled the worst president ever, followed by the hopeful and comparatively cerebral Obama Era.

And then . . .
 

Well, you all know what happened in 2016. Confirming that truth is stranger than fiction, a concept that even Hulu rejected as impossible to sell to audiences sold so many red hats and gallon jugs of hallucinogenic snake oil optioned the American democratic experiment.
 

In past years, Today’s WORD on Journalism has had to concoct wily escape plans involving tunnels, commando seals and hot-air balloons to escape from St. Mumbles Home for the Terminally Verbose (and Emotionally Exhausted). Since 1995, when he first took up the challenge of waking up America to the primacy of free speech, free press and free thought, the WORD’s daily doses of “wisdom” on journalism, words and the marketplace of ideas have not always been universally welcome.

“This year, we’re taking America back from those wingnuts,” the WORD announced in a brief statement to the mouldering corpse of the last member of his press corps. There were no questions.

Brace yourselves, gentle and beleaguered WORDsters, and get your own swashes buckled up. It ain’t going to be pretty.

TODAY’S WORD ON JOURNALISM: The Perennial Season Opener. Again.

“I thank God we have no free schools or printing, and I hope that we shall not have these for a hundred years. For learning has brought disobediences and heresy and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them and libels against the government. God keep us from both.”

      —Sir William Berkeley (1605-1677), Governor, Virginia Colony, 1671

 

The WORD’s Back-story: The WORD was originally concocted (“conceived” is, I think we all agree, altogether too grand) as a way to get journalism students to pay attention to their email. Strange as it may sound, email was a new and unpleasant disturbance of the general peace back in 1995, and many students did not then spend 16 hours a day online.

As a professor hoping to get and keep their attention while also instructing them, my object with the WORD was to give them something to think about before class. Hope, like the WORD, springs eternal.

I think it’s fair to say that this strategy was a dismal failure. Most of my students ignored their daily WORDs and gaily accepted point reductions on their quizzes for not knowing that day’s wordish wisdom from philosophers ranging from Soren Kierkegaard to Lisa Simpson.

But the WORD has become rather frighteningly popular with non-students — purported grown-ups, mostly, who actually ask to be afflicted or who send email addresses of unsuspecting friends/enemies/ colleagues/parents/bosses, so that they might be victims as well.

When the WORD was trundled by those nice white-jacketed men into St. Mumbles last spring, about 2,000,0006 victims voluntarily or involuntarily subscribed to the direct email WORD list. More got the WORD by checking the website, whence it was linked and Tweeted and forwarded like a pox to many more unsuspecting folk by so-called “friends.”


• Editorial Comment: And so it starts again. 

PeezPix 

The WORD Motors Away from St. Mumbles. Game on.

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,006 (or so) subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard