CSotD: Komix Kavalkade
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Agnes provides a salute to ADD and the Internet. I'm in no academic peril, but I might be in danger of a visit from the health department, because every time I resolve to finally get this place cleaned up, I see something on the web and disappear into the Black Hole of Cool Stuff.
Back in the Day, we didn't have ADD or any other forms of learning disabilities and emotional disabilities. We just had good kids and bad kids. So now that we've entered the Age of Up Yours, we've got all these people who managed to overcome whatever life handed them, writing on-line screeds and posting memes about how they did it and anyone who doesn't is a spoiled wimp.
It's simply the new version of walking uphill to school both ways. More than that, however, it's also the mark of a bully who ignores the people who weren't so lucky and yes it's luck not character.
One of the best of my young reporters was mentioned in the main part of the paper in a story about a play he was appearing in, and the piece mentioned that he has ADD. So I dropped him an email and talked about how newspaper reporting is a great place for people with ADD because you have to be able to shift focus quickly, and, when you haven't any to begin with, it works out pretty well. Same thing with emergency responders like firefighters, police officers and trauma nurses.
I realized as I was hitting "send" that I'd really described ADD not as a disability but as a superpower. Which, for people with the right complementary skills and the luck to find the right niche, it really is.
But that's the key: Find the place where it works for you. That could be due to luck or it might be due to good guidance counselors or it might be due to self-knowledge but it sure as hell isn't a reflection of "character" and anyone who claims they overcame problems by being a better person has one hell of a lot bigger problem than ADD.
Not all blind people can become Stevie Wonder and not every kid with a problem can solve it by simply becoming a better person.
And speaking of arrogant, insensitive whiners:
Steve Kelley nails one with this commentary on the Riley Cooper dust-up.
Cooper is a wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles who had the poor judgment to let fly with a commentary on his view of African-Americans, within range of a phone with video. Given that videos of prominent people saying stupid things tend to go viral, his opinions on the topic did not remain private.
And given that two-thirds of the athletes in the National Football League are of African ancestry, there was some consternation in both the Eagles locker room and the front office. Mr. Cooper has now decided to undergo some counseling in lieu of working out with the team.
Oddly enough, while I'm sure the crybabies are somewhere, they haven't emerged in defense of Riley Cooper this time around. This may be because, rather than thinking he had a license to talk like Snoop, he expressed actual hostility.
(Update: Turns out there is plenty of crybaby wailing posted under Kelley's cartoon at GoComics … but, then, clicking on comments is like poking through the brush to see what has the dog so fascinated. If you don't have a strong stomach, you really shouldn't look.)
Anyway, Riley at least had enough character that he didn't hide behind "but that's what we all called them when I was a kid," the defense for television cooks who did not realize that a "kitchen hood" is supposed to go over the range and not over your head.
And I like Kelley's take, contrasting the Official Disapproval of the League for Cooper's comments with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodall's justification of using the Native American equivalent of the N-word as the name of a team.
Goodall, of course, falls back on the Paula Deen defense, a variation on the standard crybaby line that points out other ethnic sports names without noting that there are, in fact, a lot of Irish-Americans in Boston and a lot of Scandanavian-Americans in Minnesota and that, in any case, "Celtic" and "viking" are not ethnic slurs.
As for being "proud of its heritage," until recently, the Redskins held their spring training at Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
There's some heritage for you, all right.
Finally, on a lighter note:
Why fret over the foolishness of the American people when you can turn it into one of our most profitable national resources?
This is a frequent topic for The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, and I think he's onto something with this one.
I remember, long before little Edison was born, a woman so terrified that Skylab was going to fall on her that she was afraid to go outside. Never mind that, had Skylab fallen on a building she was in … well, it was good nobody brought that up.
Anyway, not only does Edison have a good profit margin going here, but the potential for free advertising is almost limited: Nearly every neighborhood you drive through has several houses with a Meteorite-B-Gone prominently displayed on their roof.
(Note: In the not-a-scam portion of Edison's world, there's a fun contest going on that you may want to get in on.)
(Other note: Remember to bring a Meteorite-B-Gone with you if you decide to look for this.)
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