The "Short Attention Span" Column

(From the Janesville Messenger, 4-29-07)

• Okay, I hate to admit this, but as a baseball fan, I’m truly hoping something (like an indictment for perjury or tax evasion) prevents Barry Bonds from breaking Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record. If he surpasses Hank, it will be the most tainted baseball record ever, far more deserving of an asterisk than Roger Maris. Perhaps Major League Baseball should consider officially designating Josh Gibson’s 962 Negro League home runs as the official record, or the 868 that Sadaharu Oh belted in Japan.


• I was married on April 19, 1986. Since that time, my anniversary day and week has become the Week From Hell as far as national tragedies go. April 19, 1993: The Waco standoff. April 19, 1995: The Oklahoma City bombing. April 20, 1999: The Columbine massacre. Now we have the Virginia Tech student shooting to add to the list.


• On the plus side, April 19, 1987 was the first television appearance of “The Simpsons.”


• In the wake of Don Imus’ firing, I encourage you to go online and read a column by Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star. Whitlock, an outspoken black journalist who was let go by ESPN after criticizing the network a few years ago, points out that Imus’ idiotic comments pale in comparison to hip-hop lyrics and he also takes on Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for using the incident for their own gain.


• An ESPN writer, Dr. Tom Boyd, disputes Whitlock and all “haters of hip-hop culture” and says comparisons between Imus’ comments and rap lyrics are an apples-and-oranges comparison. For one thing, he states, rap songs aren’t “real.” Boyd also praises hip-hop for making words like “diss” and “bling” a part of mainstream conversation. Hey, Tom, where do you think Imus got the word “ho”?


• At a church service I attended last weekend, the pastor was talking about how to get people to believe in Jesus Christ’s resurrection. I have the perfect solution. Just send the story of Christ in a mass unsolicited e-mail. It appears that people will believe anything they read in an e-mail and then forward it to everyone they know. I wonder how many people are still waiting for their $50 check from Microsoft or their free beer from Miller.


• Write this Web address down on a post-it note and stick it on your computer: http://www.snopes.com/. Whenever you receive a mass e-mail, look it up on that site and it will tell you whether it's truth, fiction or hoax. Since I’ve started doing this, I’d say 98% of the mass e-mails I’ve received have been revealed to be garbage.


• The Beloit Education Association has joined the AFL-CIO labor union. Other Wisconsin teachers unions are expected to follow. What I hope this means - that teachers will work hard to force Madison to fix the state’s broken public education funding system. What I hope this doesn’t mean - that I will be continue to be greeted by union t-shirts, buttons and rhetoric when I attend parent-teacher conferences; and that unions will continue painting their local school boards as the bad guys when the board is faced with the thankless task of trying to balance the budget when expenses are outpacing revenues. I know many wonderful, dedicated teachers, but teachers’ union tactics of late are not presenting the profession in a positive light.


• For an example of how unions and management can successfully work together, look no further than the General Motors plant in Janesville. Their partnership is probably the biggest reason that the plant avoided being shut down by Detroit.


• An informal non-scientific poll reveals that I am the only person I know that fills in his own income tax forms by hand. I believe the appropriate mathematical formula would be Old Dog ≠ New Tricks.