Month: March 2013

Over the past two weeks, I have received questions from many people concerning the supposed White Student Union at Towson University. This is a delicate matter for me personally, for reasons I will explain. But it demands attention for numerous reasons, including the widespread and inaccurate reporting by the press. So I will address the matter here, while necessarily omitting certain details, as ethical and professional concerns demand.

The beverage industry has been lavishing money upon civil rights organizations. And two of the biggest, the New York chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. and the Hispanic Federation, repaid the favor by filing an amicus brief supporting the beverage industry’s successful challenge to NYC’s new law regulating sugary beverages.

This was a particularly stunning revelation because if Mississippi is geographic ground zero for obesity in the United States, then African Americans and Latin@s are the demographic poster children.

I awoke this morning to find scattered patches of snow on the ground and small droplets of water drizzling down from the sky.  By mid-morning the snow was gone, washed away by the patter of rain. Nevertheless, before anyone’s 6:00 A.M. alarm clock could go off, the college where I work had sent official notice: it was closing for the entire day. It’s now nearly 3:00 P.M. Most of the days’ classes would have already ended, and there is still no snow on the ground. [Update: Essentially there was no snow] We live in a panic culture. Blame could be assigned to myriad causes: competitive media frenzies; gross litigiousness; a loss of machismo with the decline in blue collar labor; an infantilizing obsession with safety; a general softening in the world’s wealthiest nation. But whatever the reasons, there’s really no denying that American culture is now quick to push the panic button.  Freaking out has become a national pasttime, and as the propensity for worrying grows, the scale of problems that beset us becomes more and more irrelevant. Increasingly fretful public reactions to minor inconveniences like holiday traffic and maybe half a foot of snow mirror the public reactions to real traumas like school shootings and economic downturns.