This is my surrender.
I think I need to officially give up on the idea that I might write this blog as an independent person; the blogger is mostly Mr. McAteer and only partly Mike, liberal sprinkler of sarcasm and profanity.
What has driven me to this conclusion? My reluctance to offend, I suppose. I’m a registered Independent, possibly so I can criticize both aisles in the Capitol without betraying my party, yet I hold my tongue, so to speak, when it comes to printing my political points of view. The only explanation I can come up with is that I don’t want to offend any of my students, don’t want to drive a wedge, however subtle, between them and the work we do, don’t want them to confuse what I think with what I teach.
Yet at the same time, I don’t want the blog to be a teaching tool. I know that I plan to sneak classroom content here because that is much of what I think about. Maybe this means that I see a lot of personal relevance in the content of the classroom, or maybe it’s just inevitable that I would write, as one former student put it, the “geekiest blog I’ve ever seen.” The blog is the apple, and I am the tree, I think she is implying.
If I were a true blogger, I’d be commenting right now on the President’s speech, spouting some opinion about his laying claim to the legacies of FDR and Truman, his comparison of the war in Iraq to WWII. But I’m not. I’m only masquerading as a blogger. Still, I’ll figure out how to keep it interesting from time to time. But let me be bugged by something here. It is impossible to watch ABC’s “The Path to 9/11,” not because I’m an angry Clintonista, or because it just seems wrong to fictionalize the actions and words of real people and claim some kind of narrative license. It’s just that the directing sucks. Maybe the cameramen shouldn’t have been overloaded with Red Bull and Jolt cola; they might have been able to stop shaking and we might have been able to actually follow the story. Please, hold one shot for more than five seconds. Between the mega close-ups, the ridiculous camera angles, the artful and obscuring colors that represent violence and suffering and the efforts of every actor to be Jack Bauer, the whole thing seems like parody, which wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t trying to create true history for the many Americans who get their history from TV shows and movies.
I’m looking forward to it not being September 11 for another 365 days. It’s too much to think about.
I think I need to officially give up on the idea that I might write this blog as an independent person; the blogger is mostly Mr. McAteer and only partly Mike, liberal sprinkler of sarcasm and profanity.
What has driven me to this conclusion? My reluctance to offend, I suppose. I’m a registered Independent, possibly so I can criticize both aisles in the Capitol without betraying my party, yet I hold my tongue, so to speak, when it comes to printing my political points of view. The only explanation I can come up with is that I don’t want to offend any of my students, don’t want to drive a wedge, however subtle, between them and the work we do, don’t want them to confuse what I think with what I teach.
Yet at the same time, I don’t want the blog to be a teaching tool. I know that I plan to sneak classroom content here because that is much of what I think about. Maybe this means that I see a lot of personal relevance in the content of the classroom, or maybe it’s just inevitable that I would write, as one former student put it, the “geekiest blog I’ve ever seen.” The blog is the apple, and I am the tree, I think she is implying.
If I were a true blogger, I’d be commenting right now on the President’s speech, spouting some opinion about his laying claim to the legacies of FDR and Truman, his comparison of the war in Iraq to WWII. But I’m not. I’m only masquerading as a blogger. Still, I’ll figure out how to keep it interesting from time to time. But let me be bugged by something here. It is impossible to watch ABC’s “The Path to 9/11,” not because I’m an angry Clintonista, or because it just seems wrong to fictionalize the actions and words of real people and claim some kind of narrative license. It’s just that the directing sucks. Maybe the cameramen shouldn’t have been overloaded with Red Bull and Jolt cola; they might have been able to stop shaking and we might have been able to actually follow the story. Please, hold one shot for more than five seconds. Between the mega close-ups, the ridiculous camera angles, the artful and obscuring colors that represent violence and suffering and the efforts of every actor to be Jack Bauer, the whole thing seems like parody, which wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t trying to create true history for the many Americans who get their history from TV shows and movies.
I’m looking forward to it not being September 11 for another 365 days. It’s too much to think about.
posted by Mike McAteer @ 9:42 PM
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