Posted on 05/27/2013 6:07:28 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets
See You in the Funny Papers
A tribute to an anti-mentor.
The vice provost of California State University, Northridge, retires today. Ordinarily that would be unworthy of a national newspaper's notice, but Cynthia Rawitch was a formative figure in your humble columnist's professional and intellectual development. The student newspaper, the Daily Sundial, hinted at why in a February story on her planned retirement:
She worked for 29 years in the journalism department, including a 10-year period in which she served as advisor and publisher of the Daily Sundial.
"Being advisor to the student newspaper was absolutely the best experience I ever had at this university," Rawitch said, "Even if it was, on occasion, also the worst experience."
Her time as publisher was busy and marked with a lawsuit regarding free speech. Former student James Taranto, now editor of OpinionJournal.com and a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, sued for being suspended after he printed a cartoon on the paper's opinion page. The suit was settled out of court, with Taranto receiving $93 kept from him during his suspension as editor-in-chief of the paper.
A correction: We were not editor-in-chief of the Sundial. We were news editor,
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Today no editor would dare publish the cartoon.
Notwithstanding that the cartoon's message today about the injustice of Affirmative Action has been borne out in thousands and thousands of ways.
But we should not kid ourselves, our free speech rights have been seriously infringed by PC and there's no end in sight.
The remedy? Bravery. The faculty adviser should not have caved to the idiot protesters. But caving is what most people do in such circumstances, at least nowadays.
Just a point regarding the author’s presentation: the use of “we” instead of just plain old “I” throughout the article was extremely annoying.
Made a very long read even less readable.
It’s the “ironic editorial we”. Taranto actually has a small staff that does a lot of research for him and uses it all the time. You have to recognize it. This entry of BotW was unusual in that he spent a lot of time on a single topic and it was autobiographical. A typical column touches on about a dozen topics, lightheartedly for the most part, with few personal references.
Ok, I get it. Still don’t like it in this context. The story involves himself only, and I just think it would read far more smoothly if he said kept it I, me, mine. I kept seeing groups of people taking off on a plane heading for DC or LA, meeting in offices, etc.
No harm, no foul and Thanx for the response (I did like the story itself).
We liked it, too, enough for us to post it ;)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.